The world grown old in later medieval literature 9780915651047

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Preface (page vii)
Abbreviations and Editions (page ix)
List of Illustrations (page xi)
Introduction: The World Grown Old and the History of Ideas (page 1)
1 A Morphology of Subtopics De Senectute Mundi (page 37)
2 Genesis and the World Grown Old in Middle English Historical Writings (page 113)
3 Jean de Meun and the Critique of Erotic Idealism (page 143)
4 Dante and the Uses of Nostalgia: Inferno 14.94-120 (page 173)
5 Innocence, Untime, and the Agrarian Metaphor in Piers Plowman (page 197)
6 Social Deterioration and the Decline of Love in John Gower's Narratives (page 233)
7 Chaucer and the Decay of Virtue (page 271)
Conclusion: The Idea of the World Grown Old in the Later Middle Ages (page 315)
Bibliography of Works Cited (page 325)
Index (page 357)

Citation preview

‘THE Wor.Lp GROWN OLD IN LaTEeR MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Medieval Academy Books, No. 101

‘THE Wor_tp Grown OLD IN

~ Later Meprevat LITERATURE

James M. Dean

The Medieval Academy of America Cambridge, Massachusetts 1997

Copyright © 1997 By The Medieval Academy of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-63249 ISBN 0-915651-04-1

Printed in the United States of America |

Contents

Preface vii Abbreviations and Editions ix List of Illustrations x Introduction: The World Grown Old and the History

of Ideas /

1 A Morphology of Subtopics De Senectute Mundi 37 2 Genesis and the World Grown Old in Middle English Historical

Writings 113 3 Jean de Meun and the Critique of Erotic Idealism 143 4 Dante and the Uses of Nostalgia: Inferno 14.94-120 173 5 Innocence, Untime, and the Agrarian Metaphor in Piers Plowman 197 6 Social Deterioration and the Decline of Love in John Gower’s

Narratives 233

7 Chaucer and the Decay of Virtue 27] Conclusion: The Idea of the World Grown Old in the Later Middle Ages 315

Bibliography of Works Cited 325

Index 357

y

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Preface

ALTHOUGH I CONCERN MYSELF IN THIS BOOK with the later Middle Ages—

roughly the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries—I focus on the place, time, and writings I know best: English literary works of the Ricardian period (1377-99). In order to tell the story of those writings, I have recourse to authors and works from earlier (sometimes later) periods and other countries; but the scope of my considerations rarely strays from western Europe. To put the case another way, I generally confine myself to the languages that Geoffrey Chaucer knew best: English, Latin, French, and Italian. Because of the prominence of monastic culture in fashioning and perpetuating the idea of the world grown old, I make liberal use of

patristic authors, particularly in Chapter 1. The story I am trying to tell | here, however, is not merely that of the influence of patristic culture on later vernacular literatures; rather, it is a story about the transformations of literary and cultural ideas. My project should also be considered the pouring of old wine into new bottles. The old wine is the idea of the world grown old; the new bottles are my frames of reference and categories, which I hope will render the old idea in fresh and useful ways. My chief hope is that medieval scholars will not be quite so quick or eager to dismiss the theme as “the good old days,” “nostalgia,” or “the six world ages.” I wish to pluck out various strands of the idea—strands often expressed as rhetorical topics—and then show how they work in combination in significant literary writings of the later Middle Ages. This book has been many years in the making, and my debts, intellectual and otherwise, have accummulated over time. This study received first encouragement at the Johns Hopkins University, where it began as a thesis with the late Donald R. Howard and D. C. Allen, but it has since evolved into a different kind of study. Researched largely at Widener Library, Harvard University, the book has changed even as I have changed and as the profession has altered; but its roots in the history of ideas (and Johns Hopkins) are manifest. Howard read a version of this book, as did John Fyler, John Ganim, Steven Lally, and Carole Fabricant. To them, and to the two anonymous readers for the Medieval Academy of America, I give thanks for comments and encouragement. I owe an especially large vil

viii PREFACE : debt of gratitude to Luke Wenger and Jacqueline Brown, whose wisdom and experience improved and guided the book at every stage. Many others have read portions of the manuscript and have helped me think through issues pertinent to the book’s conceptions. These include Mark Amsler, John Baldwin, David Benson, Larry Benson, Daniel Callahan, High Campbell, Giles Constable, Jackson Cope, Lori Dixon, Larry Duggan, Judith Ferster, Bruce Finnie, John Freccero, Brian Gastle, Ralph Hanna, Richard Helgerson, Erick Kelemen, Ira Levine, Juris Lidaka, Margaret Maurer, Kathryn McKinley, Larry Nees, Derek Pearsall, Jeffrey Russell, Gregory Sadlek, Harriet Spiegel, Lynn Staley, Sarah Stanbury, Karla Taylor, and Christian Zacher. I have profited from e-mail conversations on specific issues with George Brown, Abigail Firey, John Fried-

man, Thomas Hill, Jim Marchand, Al Shoaf, Michael Twomey, and Charles Wright. A special word of thanks to Richard Davison, Carl Daw-

son, Leo Lemay, Don Mell, George Miller, Lois Potter, and Mary Richards, who offered steady encouragement and support throughout the proj-

ect. My research assistants, Karin Dean, William Frost, and Lisa Kochanek, helped me with a number of topics and problems. A University of Delaware Summer Grant, through the Research Committee, furthered completion of revisions on the book. Richard Duggan rendered invaluable technical support for many phases of the work. I also wish to acknowledge Paul Anderson, Rich Law, and the Interlibrary Loan Staff of the Morris Library, University of Delaware, for helping me secure needed books and essays in timely fashion. My wife, Jenny, and my children, Matthew and

William, have sustained me through the many years of work. To them and to my parents, George and Peggy Kauffman—to whom this book is dedicated—I offer heartfelt gratitude. Newark, Delaware July 1996

Abbreviations and Editions

MIDDLE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS FROM THE BIBLE are taken from The Holy

Bible... Made from the Latin Vulgate by ohn Wycliffe and His Followers, ed.

Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden, 4 vols., cited either by chapter and verse number or by volume and page number with column designation (A or B). I have preferred the so-called “Later Version” (LV) to the “Earlier Version” (EV), although Anne Hudson has shown persuasively that those designations are at best misleading. I sometimes include pertinent glosses in brackets either from LV or EV. For the Vulgate text and the Glossa ordinaria | have used the recent four-volume facsimile edition Biblia Latina cum Glossa ordinaria (1480-81), cited by volume and page number with column designation (A or B); I also include citations from the inferior, but widely available, Migne edition in parentheses. (The pagination I refer

to in the fifteenth-century Glossa has been added by a modern hand and is sometimes faint or illegible in the facsimile edition.) I have consulted both the original French edition and the abridged translation/edition of M.-D. Chenu’s La théologie au douziéme siecle (translated as Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century). I also use the following abbreviations in the notes:

CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum EL XIll Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford, 1932) HP XIV & XV Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York, 1959)

IMEV Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, eds., The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943)

MED Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn, et al. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1952-

MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica

PG Patrologia cursus completus: Series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 162 vols. (Paris, 1857-66)

PIA Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, eds., A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas, 1: Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore,

Md., 1935) |

ix

x ABBREVIATIONS AND EDITIONS PIMA George Boas, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, Md., 1948)

PL Patrologia cursus completus: Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64)

RL XIV Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, 2nd ed. rev. by G. V. Smithers (Oxford, 1952)

RL XV Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939)

Illustrations

Figures

1. Adam and Eve Cycle (London, British Library, MS 24 Add. 105,46, fol. 5v)

MS 2, fol. 232v) |

2. . Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (Ghent, University Library, 28 3. Table of the Six World Ages (London, British Library, 30 MS Yates Thompson 31, fol. 76r)

4. Water Jars (Six World Ages) and the Ages of Man 33 (London, British Library, MS Harley 1527, fol. 23r)

5. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream Image in Gower’s Confessio 256 amantis (San Marino, Calif., Huntington Library, MS EL 26A 17, fol. rr) Tables

1. Hrabanus Maurus, De computo, on the Six World Ages 47 (“iuxta Septuaginta”) and the Three Temporal Eras

2. Primitive Genealogy and the World’s Decline 130

xi

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Introduction

The World Grown Old and the History of Ideas

Antiquitas saeculi, juventus mundi (Francis Bacon)

1. Definitions My aim in this study is to demonstrate the significance of the medieval idea of the world grown old, often termed senectus (or senium) mundi, to the structures and themes of late-medieval literature. According to this theory, the physical earth had deteriorated over the course of time and humanity had become increasingly corrupt and evil; consequently the world requires divine intervention to purge and renew it. During the period from Jean de Meun to Geoffrey Chaucer, roughly 1260 to 1400, French, Italian, and especially English writers resurrected this venerable (yet still powerful) biblical and patristic doctrine and gave it new meaning. They used it to express a new sensibility, or rather an old sensibility reformulated: a nostalgia for ancient biblical and early Christian times coupled with a feeling that the present day was inferior because of a decline in virtue. Senium mundi was a favorite topic for medieval satirists, moralists, and sermonizers, including John Wyclif and the Lollards; for chroniclers and historians, such as Ranulf Higden and those concerned with the periodization or allegorization of history; and for eschatological authors. It should be regarded, along with some other important concepts that originated in rhetorical topics, as a governing trope of late-medieval literature, even as a worldview. In the age of the so-called Augustinian revival,’ the four-

1 See Courtenay, ““The Augustinian Revival,” in Schools and Scholars, chap. 10. He also isolates important new trends (‘the new Augustinianism”), including “‘a more precise, source-critical approach to the writings of Augustine” as well as “‘a strong, antiI

2 THE WORLD GROWN OLD teenth century, poets exploited the idea as a framework for their explorations of the past, which they saw as both connected with and distinct from the present—connected because of the continuous process of moral and physical degeneration, distinct because of the greater piety of the past and its proximity to Creation and divinity itself. Historians and poets alike tried to understand the past, to locate where and why the world began to decay, and to identify their own place in history. The idea of the world grown old helps to account for what some have seen as the distinctive pessimism of fourteenth-century literature. This book attempts to demonstrate how a particular rhetorical topic helped shape attitudes and perceptions insofar as these can be determined from literary writings and treatises that are often colored by political and ideological controversy. What does senescit mundus mean in a medieval text? It means various things at different times during the Middle Ages, often depending on the

context. At the root of the expression is the conviction that time has wrought vast changes on the earth, changes that medieval writers and readers experienced as historical decline (there are no St. Cecilias, St. Augustines, or King Arthurs left in this world) and as institutional decay (great Rome and the church have become Babylon). The defining element of senium mundi that persisted throughout the Middle Ages regardless of the particular formulation is that mankind’s moral failings have both brought about and perpetuated the decline, the aging process. The world grown old is not an impersonal ecological disaster but a direct result of human sin; it represents a continuing estrangement from divinity. This intertwining of moral and physical categories in medieval literature is sometimes explicit, as when a Middle English homilist proclaims that no one in his time can “play the saint” in life’s “anterlude” because the saints are all gone, and sometimes implicit, as when a historian invokes the six (or seven) world ages, whose theoretical underpinnings reveal a metaphor of biological maturation and decay based upon a downward moral progression from Eden, the original garden, to the city, allegorically realized as Babylon, the “region of unlikeness.”? The world grown old includes the Fall of Adam and Eve as a terminus a quo, but it is not identical with the Fall. Senectus mundi is a temporal concept, an idea of historical change, connected with the sense that human experience has become, over time, mediated, vitiated, compromised. It is the

~ medieval version of alienation from God and from the world, too; the institutions and people that should bring comfort and peace—the church, Pelagian position on the issue of grace and justification” and emphasis on the “lordship (dominium) of grace” (pp. 308-9). See also Trapp, ‘Augustinian Theology.” ? For a discussion of Augustine’s concept in medieval literature see Dahlberg, Literature of Uniikeness.

INTRODUCTION 3

dislocation. |

the papacy, kingship—instead summon up complaint, anger, anxiety, and

The above summary, brief though it is, points up the metaphorical language of this idea as well as its twofold application in literature: as a statement, often a lament, about the difference between past and present, and as an organizing principle used to divide history into six or seven periods. These themes were related in medieval literature, particularly after St. Augustine suggested a parallel between a man’s aging process and

that of the world, a parallel based on the theoretical correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. But the two themes have different origins, a fact that helps account for the ambiguity of senectus mundi in me- dieval literature. From classical sources, especially the myth of the golden age as found in Hesiod, Virgil, Ovid, and others, came the sense of lament, the Jacrimae rerum, and the strong distinction between a past of gold and a present age of iron. From biblical sources—the Psalms and Old and New Testament apocalyptic writings—came the tendency to identify historical periods, to warn against sin, to stress contempt of the world, and to draw

_ moral-religious conclusions (Ps. 101.26-27; Dan. 2; 4 Esd. 14.10; Matt. 24; Heb. 1.10—-11).? Some classical writers also described periods of history or races of men, while biblical writers often glorified the past; and medieval

authors sometimes harmonized classical and Judeo-Christian sources. It is possible to express the idea of the world grown old as a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Although no medieval writers constructed the story in quite that way, they did elaborate various aspects of it throughout the Middle Ages. The basic story runs as follows: God created the world and humans good. The earth thrived; and Adam and Eve obeyed the Lord. But when the first pair ate the forbidden fruit, they brought about a deterioration not only for themselves (in the penalties of Adam) but also for the entire earth. Nonetheless, the world was still “youthful,” and humans before the Flood were vegetarians because of the earth’s abundance. The human condition took a turn for the worse when Cain murdered his brother and was exiled from the fellowship of Adam. He built the first city, and his posterity invented the implements of civili- | zation (the city of man). When the kin of Cain and of Seth reunited, they engendered such monstrous folk that God sent the Flood to cleanse the world. After the Flood humans became carnivores rather than vegetarians, and their stature declined along with their life spans. Nimrod, a giant from 3 See also the Apocalypse of Baruch or 2 Bar. 85.10, in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,

ed. Charles, 2:525. Miccoli, in his important study of eleventh-century clerical reform,

and drawing on the work of Franz Cumont, traces the origins of senium mundi to classical literature (p. 301). See ““Excursus: ‘Mundus Senescens,’” in his Chiesa gregoriana, pp. 301-3, with bibliography.

4 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Ham’s line who was a hunter of men, founded imperial dynasties, invented fire worship, and constructed the Tower of Babel, which resulted in the division of languages along with divisive differences among peoples. Because of human sin, then, the world continued to decline after the Flood. Many righteous people lived in the first five world ages of the world, including Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and the prophets—

but the moral degeneration was clear enough in the historical record. Christ inaugurated the sixth and last world age; but although he brought about the possibility of salvation and inspired the Christian saints, the moral climate declined from the era of primitive Christianity, and the world continued to degenerate. Deterioration is especially evident in the church

despite attempts to reform it from within. Moderns may know more about scientific or philosophical issues, yet morally they are like dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants, the ancients who lived in earlier, simpler times, for the virtuous pagans rebuke their modern Christian counterparts. The decline is especially visible with respect to love, for moderns do not exhibit

the more virtuous ardor of earlier peoples: there is in fact a cooling of charity in the modern era as neighbor quarrels with neighbor, and Christian

charity has degenerated into naked cupidity. Once there were many ex-

amples of virtuous women, but in the modern age there are few or none. | Kingdoms have declined, and learning has been transferred from Babylon to Persia to Greece to Rome and finally to France and Germany. Although the ruins of great earlier civilizations can still be seen, moderns no longer possess the skill or knowledge to construct such monuments. The evidence is ubiquitous that a crisis has been reached. Pseudoapostles and false prophets have arisen along with new orders of Christians—the friars and heretics—while the church has attained new depths of corruption. Soon Christ will come to do away with the old, degenerate earth and to renew it in a cataclysmic renovation for the better, which will bring about a new heaven

and a new earth. |

Several aspects of the world grown old have been analyzed in earlier studies, chief among them the documentary histories of Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas on classical and medieval primitivisms, that is, interpretations of mankind’s early history. The early history of humans is crucial to the medieval idea of the world grown old because it was the theater both of man’s innocent beginnings and of his downfall. In that time and place the pattern of moral degeneration followed by physical deterioration was first established: when Adam and Eve fell, says Milton (versifying Cyprian and others), “Earth felt the wound.” In Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity Lovejoy and Boas categorize various kinds of primitivism,

drawing a basic distinction between “soft” or Ovidian and “hard” or Juvenalian primitivism. In both primitivisms early humans were happy and

INTRODUCTION 5 fortunate. But in Ovidian primitivism their lives were abundant and easy whereas in Juvenalian primitivism their lives were austere and meager, yet free from anxieties. When the world grew old, the Ovidian first race of men lost its earthly abundance, while in Juvenal the earliest humans abandoned their carefree, just existence when morals declined (Satire 6). In the same study Lovejoy and Boas identified various schemes of historical chro-

nology, including the concept of the world grown old, which in their classification falls under the ““Theory of Progressive Degeneration” (PIA,

pp. 2-3).* In Boas’s later book, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in , the Middle Ages, he outlined both the varieties of medieval primitivism and the persistence of the six-ages scheme throughout the Middle Ages. One of the foundational works for the current critical notions of the idea of the world grown old is Johan Huizinga’s Waning of the Middle Ages, first published (in Dutch) in 1919. In his second chapter—‘‘Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life’’—he described the zeitgeist that many con-

tinue to see as informing for the late Middle Ages: a mood of gloom and contemptus mundi coupled with a passion for chivalric grandeur and pomp. If Huizinga’s belletristic discussions of the “medieval mind” are unfash-

ionable today, his focus on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French literary culture continues to have value, particularly as a record of earlytwentieth-century cultural criticism. Huizinga characterizes court poets and lay chroniclers as sounding a ‘“‘note of despair and profound dejection”: “Possessing only a slight intellectual and moral culture, being for the most part strangers to study and learning, and of only a feebly religious temper, they were incapable of finding consolation or hope in the spectacle

of universal misery and decay, and could only bewail the decline of the world and despair of justice and of peace.”’> Ignoring the possible rhetorical, conventional aspects of this literature

of complaint, Huizinga cites the writers Eustache Deschamps (“Tout va mal’’), Jean Meschinot, and others as possessing lugubrious temperaments,

men affected, if not overwhelmed, by the sadness and despair of their times. He even goes so far as to say, of Deschamps’s writings de senectute munai: ‘“‘Pessimism of this kind has hardly anything to do with religion. Deschamps only gives an off-hand pious purport to his reflections. Despondency and spleen are at the bottom of them, not piety. A contempt +The “Theory of Progressive Degeneration” is a branch of the “Theory of Decline,” which is an offshoot of “Bilateral finitist theories.” Although PIA was issued as __ volume 1 of a series, no other volumes appeared except for Boas’s abbreviated history of medieval primitivism, which has a different format (see PIMA, preface). For pagan notions of earthly degeneration, see PIA, pp. 98-102, and Rose, Latin Literature, pp. 127 (on Lucretius) and 479 n. 26. > Waning of the Middle Ages, pp. 32-33. Huizinga’s study of fifteenth-century French poetry—its idealism and its pessimism—continues to be highly influential.

6 THE WORLD GROWN OLD of the world, which is dominated by fear of weariness and of sorrow, of disease and of old age, is but an asceticism of the blasé, born of disillusion and of satiety. It has nothing in common with religion but its terminology.” 6

It is not difficult to identify the shortcomings of Huizinga’s approach, since he first posits a monolithic spirit of the age and then presumes to read its collective mind. But his innovative study of late-medieval culture and literature, imitated and partly reproduced in Barbara Tuchman’s popular study of the fourteenth century, remains a monument in the sociology of knowledge. He taught generations of readers to interpret medieval literary works against a backdrop of the culture, and vice versa. Yet in the wake of deconstruction, and with our understanding of the intentional fallacy, Huizinga’s meta-psychological arguments cannot be sustained. We know too much about what other poets and preachers were writing both before and during the age of Deschamps. Moreover, we tend to reject as a simplification the organic metaphor embedded in Huizinga’s term

“waning” (Herfstti), more literally rendered into English as “autumn tide,” with its implication that historical periods mature, progress, come to fruition, and die. In the past forty years Roderich Schmidt, a German historian, and Auguste Luneau, a French authority on doctrinal issues, have published well-documented studies of the medieval world ages.’ Luneau placed the world ages in the context of early patristic salvation history, and Schmidt argued that the six-ages doctrine provided the organizing principle—the Gliederungsprinzip—for medieval historiography. These studies have added significantly to our understanding of the origins and pervasiveness of the doctrine in monastic culture, although Schmidt and Luneau focused exclusively on patristic or historical writings to the exclusion of other kinds of literature, including poetry. Along with Gerhart Ladner’s study of the idea of reform among the early church fathers and M.-D. Chenv’s analysis of twelfth-century intellectual contexts,* the work of Luneau and Schmidt has demonstrated that the doctrine of world ages was central to Christian dogma as it developed in the patristic period and also in the Middle Ages. 6 Thid., pp. 36-37.

7 Luneau builds upon the work of Lubac (Catholicisme, pp. 117-24), who calls the world ages “les étapes, essentiellement collectives, du salut” (p. 117). 8 Ladner has written the most authoritative study of the world ages in the works of the early church fathers (see esp. The Idea of Reform, pp. 222-38); and he has written on reform and renewal in the later Middle Ages as well (“Gregory the Great”; ““Terms and Ideas’’). For the world ages in the later medieval period, see Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, esp. pp. 177-93. For an overview of the question of periodization in history, and as part of the history of ideas, see Boas, ““Ages and Times—Periodization,” in his History of Ideas, pp. 117-45.

INTRODUCTION 7 A question that arises from the work of Schmidt and Luneau is whether the doctrine of six world ages is part of a more general idea of the world grown old or whether it has an entirely independent existence. ‘The question is complicated, but I shall argue here that the idea of the world ages is one aspect of the larger idea of the world grown old. The six ages provide a historical and allegorical frame of reference, an intellectual context, for other statements de senectute mundi. When the world is described as debased, we may regard the concept of world ages as an assumption underlying the author’s words. Take, for example, Chaucer’s Clerk in The Canterbury Tales: “This world is nat so strong, it is no nay, / As it hath been

in olde tymes yoore” (IV 1139-40). The Clerk, or Chaucer, is not necessarily alluding to the doctrine of ages, but the sentiments he expresses would have been understood in Chaucer’s day as part of a fully articulated

and coherent set of ideas about past and present times. The monastic concept of the world ages constituted a nearly universal medieval doctrine of time and history, familiar to any clerically trained writer. It lends depth and resonance to general statements such as the Clerk’s on the theme of the world grown old. The problems inherent in discussing historical concepts such as the six ages or the world grown old in a literary context have not been adequately addressed except by some scholars concerned with the relationship be-

tween patristics and Old English poetry. Those scholars limited themselves to demonstrating that certain patristic themes, including senectus mundi, did in fact appear in Old English poetry. They made this argument because other scholars denied or doubted such influence.’ The question is no longer whether patristic themes influenced Old English nonecclesiastical writings—they clearly did—but what that influence means. Medievalists and general readers are familiar with the idea of the world

grown old chiefly through the work of Ernst Robert Curtius, the great German philologist, who identified the senectus trope as a prime example

of a rhetorical topic (topos), a literary commonplace first developed in classical writings and used thereafter throughout the Christian Middle Ages and often well beyond. As Curtius says in his chapter entitled “The Latin Middle Ages”’: “If, in a seventh-century chronicle, we find the statement, “The world is in gray old age’ (die Welt steht im Greisenalter), we must not make the psychological inference that the period ‘has a feeling of advancing age’ (ein Vergreisungsgefiibl) but see a reference to Augustine’s

parallel between the (Roman) end phase of world history and human old ° See esp. Forster, ‘““Uber die Quellen” and “Die Weltzeitalter bei den Angelsachsen”; Smithers, “The Seafarer and The Wanderer’; Cross, “Microcosm and Macrocosm.” See also Cross’s “On the Allegory in The Seafarer’ and “On the Genre of The Wanderer.”

8 THE WORLD GROWN OLD age.” !0 Through this example and many others, Curtius has shown that medieval writers often constructed phrases, passages, and entire literary works around topics handed down through centuries and sometimes codified in rhetorical handbooks (“historical topics,” “topics of the exordium,” “topics of the conclusion’). The senectus topos, to my knowledge, does not appear in the handbooks, nor should it be associated with a particular section of a literary work, although it could and did appear often

: as a sermon protheme, that is, a topic for the beginning of a sermon (delivered while people were taking their seats)."! _ Medieval authors frequently invoked this topic in commonplace ways,

as in the seventh-century chronicler Pseudo-Fredegarius, who uses the senectus topos to advance another topic, ‘affected modesty.” !? PseudoFredegarius turns naturally and easily to the topic senium mundi to explain why he along with his age lacks classical eloquence. He says: “Mundus iam seniscit, ideoque prudenciae agumen in nobis tepiscit, ne quisquam

potest huius tempore nec presumit oratoribus precedentes esse consimilis” !? (“The world now grows old, and therefore the keenness of prudence grows cold in us, with the result that no one in this time can be or presumes to be like those orators who came before”). As Curtius ob-

, served, Pseudo-Fredegarius invokes the commonplace in an offhand manner and not to underscore some particular feeling of aging. The anonymous chronicler states what he believes to be a historical fact—that the world has grown old morally and physically since Creation and in preparation for Antichrist’s time, when “the charite of manye schal wexe coold” (Matt. 24.12)—rather than a psychological feeling. He does not elaborate the topic since it is so well known. His real point is that learning and eloquence have become debased, which is (arguably) accurate with respect to the seventh century, and not that Pseudo-Fredegarius mystically or even empirically apprehends that the world is growing old as a man ages from youth. Nor is he a medieval Wordsworth grieving for the loss of childhood’s “celestial light.” Rather, like Hrabanus Maurus, he is a compiler of old sentiments and proverbial topics. Gregory of ‘Tours, the 10 Curtius, European Literature, p. 28 (German original, p. 38). For an appraisal of Curtius’s critical work, see Gelley, “Curtius.”

1 For the definition of “protheme” and its appearance in sermons, see Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric, pp. 68 (definition) and 206—7. Richard and

Mary Rouse discern a close connection between the development of distinctiones and the thematic sermon (“‘Statim invenire,” pp. 216-18). 12 Curtius, European Literature, pp. 83-85. | 13 Pseudo-Fredegarius, Chronicon, prologue to book 4, p. 123 (here and elsewhere I have refrained from inserting “sic” into quoted matter). On the identity or identities of Pseudo-Fredegarius, see Goffart, ““The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered.”

INTRODUCTION 9 Frankish historian whose History Pseudo-Fredegarius continued, says something very similar, in comparable language, about his times and his own lack of abilities.'* Although the senectus topos appears in medieval writings most often as a rhetorical topic, it may also be considered—and I have already so termed it—an idea in the history of ideas. By “idea” I mean a concept larger and more inclusive than a rhetorical topic but less inclusive than a science or

a philosophy (to adopt Boas’s terms).'’ A rhetorical commonplace is a cliché (Curtius) adapted to a particular literary context, although a commonplace in the hands of a great literary artist, as C. S. Lewis reminds us,

will lose its trite characteristics: “The grandeur which this image [the wheel of Fortune] takes on in the Inferno (VII, 73 seq.) is a reminder how entirely it depends on individual genius whether a /ocus communis shall or shall not be what we call ‘commonplace.’ ”'!° A commonplace sometimes vaguely resembles a learned proverb, as in the puer senex motif (the child was wise like an old man) or the theme of inexpressibility (who could praise him sufficiently?), but topoi most often appear as catchphrases and onedimensional concepts easily identified by a tag in a manuscript’s margin (ubi sunt?). An idea, by contrast, transcends mere slogans or tags, and it changes over time, as do, for example, the ideas of vox populi, the sublime, or the great chain of being. As with the senectus topos, these latter ideas have been expressed as clichés, but they have larger applications and meanings as well. The great chain of being presupposes, first, a Platonic separation of spirit and matter and yet a connectedness between the divine and human spheres, and second, a plenitude of beings distributed horizontally along the chain. Moreover, there is a difference between the inexpressi-

| bility topic and the idea of what Lovejoy has called “the pathos of sheer obscurity, the loveliness of the incomprehensible,” !’ although the topic is clearly related to the later idea and the fascination with what is difficult. An idea in this sense is a core mental construct that can be elaborated by writers and identified by later readers. It has affinities with a picture or image, on the one hand, and with a theme, on the other hand, especially when the idea occurs in a work of literature. As picture or image, the idea is a cliché, something seen before, hence like a rhetorical topic. As theme,

the idea is a principle that can bring organization, structure, and even coherence to a literary work. An idea as it appears in literature should not ‘4 Historiae, prologue, 1:1. For other expressions de senectute mundi in Gregory’s history, see 9.39 and 42, 2:461 and 471 respectively (in letters). \5 History of Ideas, p. 12.

16 Discarded Image, p. 82. Curtius calls rhetorical commonplaces, as used in the Mid-

dle Ages, “clichés” on p. 70, where he defines the word “topos.” For a similar view, see Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 103. 1? Great Chain of Being, p. 11.

IO THE WORLD GROWN OLD be considered identical with the work’s meaning, and I make no such claims in this essay. My argument is that the concept of the world grown old is better understood as an idea than as a rhetorical commonplace, that the idea provided the organizing principle for important literary works of the later Middle Ages, and that an analysis of it in those writings helps us understand the uniqueness of the authors who used it.

2. The Study of Ideas If this study were a traditional analysis in the history of ideas, I would need to document each stage in the development of the medieval idea and provide numerous, if not exhaustive, examples for each. But I do not conceive of this book as a traditional history-of-ideas study, for two reasons. First, many sources and examples have been adduced in previous studies, especially those I have cited on the doctrine of ages and on the Old English writers (see also Chapter 1 below). Second, and more important, the history of ideas as a critical methodology finally says more about the idea under study than it does about the works in which the idea appears, with

the result that in the older history of ideas, texts and authors become ancillary to the idea. As René Wellek and Austin Warren declare in their much-criticized but still useful Theory of Literature: “Of course it is as one-

sided to study unit ideas to the exclusion of systems as it would be to restrict literary history to the history of versification or diction or imagery,

| neglecting the study of those coherent wholes, specific works of art. “History of Ideas’ is simply a specific approach to the general history of thought, using literature only as document and illustration. This assumption is obvious when Lovejoy calls ideas in serious reflective literature in | great part ‘philosophical ideas in dilution.’ ”!® The unique contributions of individual authors tend to become eclipsed in the history of ideas, since the task is usually to demonstrate the persistence of the idea through his-

tory—the great chain of being from Plato to Schelling, for example— rather than the special or poetic role of Alexander Pope within that tradition. Doubtless this is because the history of ideas began and developed more as a philosophical than a literary discipline, although a discipline always with close ties to literature and one by which its practitioners hoped to transcend the old, restrictive categories. \8 Theory of Literature, p. 111. Trilling attacks Wellek and Warren for trying to segregate literature and ideas (or ideology), or ideas and feelings. See ““The Meaning of a Literary Idea,” in The Liberal Imagination, esp. pp. 286-91. For recent critiques of Lovejoy, see Mahoney, “Lovejoy and the Hierarchy of Being,” and Oakley, “Lovejoy’s Unexplored Option.” Wilson, “Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being after Fifty Years,” defends Lovejoy.

, INTRODUCTION II The special danger of history of ideas as an aid to literary studies is that it may trivialize the literature by reducing it to commonplace formulas or sentiments. The idea of the world grown old as “thought” may be reduced

to “the good old days” and to the ideology of conservatism. In a recent | article on the true context of the alleged Middle English lyric “(How Christ Shall Come,” Siegfried Wenzel has made the point well. Speaking of lyr-

ics—though the argument could be extended to medieval literature generally—Wenzel says: ‘evaluative analysis of medieval lyrics must be pri-

marily concerned, not with thought or thought structures, but with language, with the verbal expression of thought or emotion, for the former is, at least in most medieval short lyrics, utterly conventional.” He adds that “matter,” “material,” or “argument” can be substituted for “thought”’

and “thought structures.” '° I take him to refer to ideas in the history of ideas as well as to “thought” and “matter”; and I agree that ideas qua ideas have only a limited usefulness or interest when one analyzes poetry. Medieval scholars concern themselves these days with originality and individuality in medieval authorship, as valuable studies by Walter Ullmann, Peter Dronke, Colin Morris, Robert Hanning, Anne Middleton, and Lee Patterson attest.2° We are now more interested in how authors and poems are different than in how they are alike, and we are more concerned with

how Chrétien’s Gawain differs from Malory’s than with how both are examples of the hero with a thousand faces. History of ideas as a critical approach to literature has suffered, along with philology and historicism generally, a decline in our poststructuralist

age, although the two latter have been revived somewhat in the “new philology” and the “new historicism.” Theorists, invoking the hermeneutic circle, will explain that when we read a medieval text we bring our own concerns and predispositions to that text, and that far from our finding in it any meaning intended by the author, the text interprets us and exposes our own presuppositions, ideological positions, and angles of vision. In an essay that anticipates these postmodern critical concerns, W. K. Wimsatt (citing Croce) acknowledges that we cannot simply do away with our prejudices and carefully trained modes of thought: “We are bound to have a point of view in literary criticism, and that point of view, though it may have been shaped by a tradition, is bound to be our own. Points of view cannot be slipped in and out of our minds like lantern slides. Our judgments of the past cannot be discontinuous with our own experience or 19 “Poets, Preachers, and the Plight of Literary Critics,” p. 351 and n. 25. The alleged lyric is not a poem at all “but the formal division of a Latin sermon put into English rhyming lines” (p. 345). 20 See also Benton, ‘“Consciousness of Self,’ and the other studies mentioned there and in Hanning, Twelfth-Century Romance. For a searching critique of Curtius’s Toposforschung, see Dronke’s Poetic Individuality, pp. 11-22.

12 THE WORLD GROWN OLD insulated from it.” He goes on to say something that contemporary theorists might deny but that many medievalists believe is at least possible: “To evaluate the past we have to penetrate it with our own intelligence.” The dilemma arises with respect to penetrating, especially when the alleged penetration is applied in an absolute sense. Wimsatt thinks that there is a way into past artifacts through intelligence and the history of ideas, although he also believes that the history of ideas “means ideas taken as events which have occurred in time—waxing and waning—not as references to a world of experience, more or less correct.”?! Others will point out that ideas, as mental constructs or essences, arise from Enlightenment ideology, Geistesgeschichte, and historical positivism and that they refer only

to themselves as critical objects rather than to anything actually experi-

enced or intended in the past writings. Karl Mannheim criticizes history | of ideas in relation to chiliasm for substituting “the history of frames of reference which have already been emptied of content” and for providing only “the history of mere Chiliastic ideas as such,” while Frank Lentric| chia, speaking of the notion of mise en abyme, observes that for the deconstructive critics “reading is no mimesis but a violence of mastery and substitution, and that history, in the models of Lovejoy and Abrams, is a

chimera.”?2

These methodological critiques are important and necessary for the critical enterprise. If historical criticism is impossible—if we cannot grasp another time’s values and goals as expressed in and through its literature— then we need to know that. Even if we become convinced that there can be no truth claims in historical criticism, we would still want to find means of reading and understanding medieval works (or any works of the past) in some way that corresponds to the author’s own experience in writing or to that of his audience in reading; and we would still need to assume,

as most people probably do, that medieval writers thought and felt and ‘‘spedde,” in Chaucer’s words, “‘as wel in love as men now do.” Either we

are hopelessly trapped in our presuppositions and ideological angles of , vision, and reading and interpreting works of the past (not to mention the present) are impossible enterprises, which I doubt; or we can, in some measure, identify and understand past works despite their otherness, their alterity. At the same time we produce a history through reading and interpreting and define the parameters of alterity and otherness as we do so. 21 “Flistory and Criticism,” in The Verbal Icon, pp. 258, 255. For a similar view, see Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 345 (on the “recovery of function” of criticism). 22 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 214; Lentricchia, After the New Criticism, p. 179. For changes in sentiment on critical issues including history and philology, see Lindenberger, “Literary Study”; White, Tropics of Discourse; Foucault, Archaeology of

Knowledge; and Hartman, “Culture of Criticism.” For a contrary view, see Hirsch, “Back to History.”

INTRODUCTION 13 A good start in reappraising historicism for medieval literature has been made by Lee Patterson (following Jauss, Zumthor, and Jameson) in his recent study Negotiating the Past. Patterson argues that our quest for his-

torical understanding involves constant reevaluations, adjustment, and recognition of paradox—his word is “negotiations”: “In attempting to understand the past, we inevitably enter into elaborate and endless negotiations, struggles between desire and knowledge that can never be granted closure. But negotiations can take place only between two equal and independent parties, and this fiction—a fiction because the past can never exist independently of our memory of it—must be consciously and painfully maintained.”’?? In other words we must strive to read as medievals did while recognizing that we read not to become them but to better understand ourselves and our past. We should attempt to adopt archaeological and anthropological perspectives into our historicism rather than,

say, the perspectives of a Tory historian or archdeacon. Stull, as we look , into our Homer or Dante or Chaucer, we will invariably—and quite rightly—find ourselves, our concerns and interests, just as surely as Keats

looking into Chapman’s Homer found “stout Cortez” (rather than the historical Balboa) gazing “with eagle eyes” at the Pacific Ocean. One significant way of looking into medieval writings (or any writings from the past) is to study rhetorical topics and ideas, for these modes of writing were sanctioned by handbooks and taught in the schools. Medieval writers learned their craft by codified instruction and by imitation. Despite the apparent critical shortcomings of Lovejoy’s method strictly applied,

there remains an important function for the history of ideas in literary studies of medieval writings. Medieval authors themselves made good use

of topics, formulas, proverbs, sententiae, traditional lore, and ideas (“thought structures’’), even as the best of authors, especially in the later Middle Ages, sought an individual or individualizing voice within their narrative poetic traditions. Poets such as Jean de Meun, Dante, and Chaucer imitated classical and subsequent sources while adapting those sources for their own purposes, which were sometimes moral, sometimes doctrinal, and sometimes aesthetic. As practiced by Johan Huizinga, Erich Auer-

bach, Leo Spitzer, D. C. Allen, Gerhart Ladner, and more recently by Morton Bloomfield, F. L. Utley, D. W. Robertson, Talbot Donaldson, Stephen Nichols, Larry Benson, Siegfried Wenzel, Robert Hanning, Jill Mann, Mary Carruthers, Anne Middleton, and Lee Patterson, the history of ideas clarifies the use of poetic motifs. Combined with formalist readings and comparative stylistics, it helps answer some of the significant 23 Negotiating the Past, pp. 72-73. For a history and critique of closure in historical criticism with reference to Tolkien and Robertson, see Rubey, “Identity and Alterity.”

14 THE WORLD GROWN OLD questions asked of medieval texts, including the originality or conventionality of a literary passage, its exact sources and possible analogues, the context for a passage or a literary work, and its intellectual background and affiliations—what Paul Strohm has recently termed the “textual environment” (Hochon’s Arrow).

Patterson has shown that a fifteenth-century reader interpreted a passage from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde topically and rhetorically. The

: significance of this method of interpretation is that it reveals a medieval reader applying the history of ideas—to be sure, a medieval version of the history of ideas. The fifteenth-century reader “proceeds . . . not by allegorical exegesis but by what we might call rhetorical or even topical rec-

| ognition. The act our reader performs is in essence an exercise in literary identification: he surveys the available topoi and aligns the matching pair [amor and amicitia). This self-reflexive literariness is both characteristically medieval (the best gloss on a text is always another text) and appreciative in a way that matches our reader’s appreciation of more obviously literary values. Moral interpretation, in other words, comes in the form of literary appreciation. There is no sharp distinction between a moral and a rhetorical reading, and if the didactic and the aesthetic responses are simultaneous, they are doubtlessly felt as synonymous.” *4

The anonymous fifteenth-century reader and translator of David of Augsburg’s handbook for nuns, De exterioris et interioris hominis compositione, situates the Troilus passage in the first of “seven tokens” for distinguishing “‘flesshly love” (amor) from “love spiritual’’ (amicitia). Such distinctions are important because “‘flesshly love” —as in Troius—subverts

amicitia. The late-medieval reader had an idea of the Troilus stanza as belonging in the literature of amor and amicitia, and he enlists Chaucer, whom he cites only as “‘a noper poete,” as witness to David of Augsburg’s first ‘‘token,” much as Chaucer himself adduces other writers for his own

topics or exempla. That the fifteenth-century reader did not simply dismiss “‘flesshly love” may be seen, as Patterson shows, in his grasp of the language and conventions of fin amour; hence there is some ambiguity in the citation and its contexts. But what is most important here is the medieval reader’s interest in topics and in contexts—and in no simple or

single-minded fashion.

An example of the use—and necessity—of the history of ideas has occurred with respect to senectus mundi in a posthumously published work of the eminent art historian Henri Focillon. In the first chapter of L’an mil Focillon treats what he calls ‘““The Problem of the Terrors,” by which he means the alleged fear of the millennial year experienced by European peoples. He relies chiefly on the testimonies of Raoul Glaber, a Cluniac 24 Negotiating the Past, p. 150.

INTRODUCTION 15 monk; of Abbot Adso of Montier-en-Der, who wrote a famous treatise on Antichrist (954); and of some formulaic witnesses to the effect that the world had grown old in preparation for the year 1000, when, Focillon argues, many felt God would come to judge the world. Focillon cites the “conviction,” expressed by, among others, the monk Markulf (seventh century), that the “world is like a living being which, having passed its maturity, has entered upon old age and, as the Apostle foretold it, must now die.” Three documents in particular—Markulf’s formulation and two documents of the mid-tenth century—express the notion that the world was preparing for the end. In Markulf’s words: “Mundi terminum ruinis crescentibus approprinquantem indicia certa manifestant”*> (“Obvious signs, with increasing destruction, show that the end of the world is near’’). This language derives from Gregory the Great’s Homilia 1 in Evangelia and ultimately from Cyprian’s Ad Demetrianum, and the formula was very common in Latin and vernacular texts of the Old English period. Focillon was aware that the language he adduced is formulaic, but he nonetheless

argued—from those texts—that people around the year 1000, if not actually in that very year, feared the world was growing old, Antichrist was coming, and the world was about to end. This argument led another prominent French scholar, Henri de Lubac, to caution against a too facile psychologizing of the medieval texts: ““We are less impressed than this last author [Focillon] by the ‘terrible words’ of an annalist of the barbarian age, ‘inspired by an emotion that caused disheartenment until the revival of the West,’ or by some other ‘brief and terrible expression’ of a Merovingian writer—because we already find these formulas in Christian an-

tiquity.”’¢ |

Lubac’s point closely resembles Curtius’s argument about Pseudo-Fredegarius: we should not invest too much emotion in statements (such as senescit mundus) that may have been entirely commonplace and handed down from generation to generation. In the case of Lubac versus Focillon, the issue comes down to a disagreement about how to evaluate the primary sources. Focillon knew that the eschatological language and the phrase de senectute mundi are not wholly original with the historical writers and trea-

tises he focused on; nevertheless, he believed that such language is suggestive of feeling, if not of entirely spontaneous emotion. Focillon perhaps dramatized the statements beyond what the discursive language will support, and he might have been more persuasive if he had cited Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos or Secundum Marcum. In any case, Focillon concluded

that about forty years before the millennial year, and again shortly after that year, certain writers, fearing Doomsday, thought Antichrist would 25 [he Year 1000, p. 53. 76 Hxégese médiévale, 1/2:529 Nn. 4.

16 THE WORLD GROWN OLD | come soon or had already come. Lubac, confronted with the same evidence, found no hard evidence of such expectations. The history of ideas, older or newer, tells us that senectus mundi in the

- tenth-century writings cited by Focillon is by no means a new expression and probably should not be attributed much significance. ‘The years 1033 and 1065 also attracted considerable eschatological speculation.” It is true

that throughout the Middle Ages writers adapted the idea of the world grown old for particular, specific contexts—political or satirical contexts, for example. Such formulations, however, were not the result of observation and conclusion; rather, they represent conventional wisdom, anecdotal evidence of clerical provenance, and an affirmation of the assumed

nature of things. The charters and formularies cited by Focillon as evidence of the “conviction” that Doomsday was near suggest not so much | a terror of the end as an understanding of, and a witness to, the world’s transience. These formulas were a monastic form of speaking and were similar to many statements de contemptu mundi; however, all applications of senectus mundi should not be dismissed as merely formulaic or merely rhetorical, as I hope to demonstrate in this study. The history of senectus mundi—its often conventional language coupled with its pervasiveness— should caution us against embracing Focillon’s thesis, his “conviction,”

that mid-tenth-century writers thought the world was degenerating in preparation for Doomsday. Some people may have believed that, of course. Norman Cohn’s study of popular millenarian ferment has shown that such fears were widespread in many periods; evidence from the four surviving codices of Old English poetry (which date from about the year 1000) suggests that eschatology was a chief purpose in their organization;

and Georges Duby and Daniel Callahan agree with Focillon that apocalyptic expectations were strong around the year 1000.”® Perhaps it is best simply to say that the tenth and eleventh centuries—when one might expect to find eschatological speculation based on the computation of world

ages—witnessed an unusual number of apocalyptic writings, especially in England and France, but that the writings were often couched in traditional formulas. _ *? Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, pp. 278-79.

28 See also Lerner, “Refreshment of the Saints,” who reopens the question, and Fried, ““Endzeiterwartung um die Jahrtausendwende,” who argues against eschatological speculation around the millennial year. Szittya (“Domesday Bokes’’) tackles the issue of eschatological speculation in Anglo-Saxon writings: “Even if the poems within them [Exeter Book, Vercelli codex, Junius manuscript, and Cotton Vitellius A XV] are not of the century, these codices reflect the anxieties of tenth-century culture and are not neutral repositories of unconnected, earlier texts. The Vercelli codex as a whole, for one example, clearly shares the dominant tenth-century interest in eschatology”

(p. 380). |

INTRODUCTION 17 The above remarks constitute negative applications of the history of ideas. I want to avoid overstating the claims for conventional language, as Curtius and Lubac both advise. There are, however, positive applications for studying the history of ideas. A study of ideas provides insights into the culture under consideration by showing the relationships among different areas of inquiry and ways of knowing. For the study of senectus mundi it is important to understand that the idea has theological and scientific as well as historical and literary ramifications. Such a realization will not necessarily change a particular literary interpretation or insight, but it will assure literary critics that a poem organized around the idea of the world grown old expresses a fundamental cultural idea—in Lovejoy’s phrase, a significant “habit of mind.” The study of ideas also helps to demonstrate how beliefs and sentiments alter through history. The idea of the world grown old changed from the earlier allegorical and historical applications to the later political and literary uses. In the later Middle Ages, when historians and poets had a more developed sense of history, writers looked to the past with considerable nostalgia, though that word was unknown to medieval authors. The difference between the views de senectute mundi of writers on the contempt of the world and of some later authors, such as Jean de Meun or Chaucer,

provides a gauge of the sentiments of the respective eras and possible | “horizons of the expectable”’ (Jauss: Erwartungshorizont). Another positive application for the history of ideas is to clarify other ideas and topics. One idea may well throw another into relief, thereby revealing the contours of each. The idea of the world grown old, specifically the doctrine of ages, helps illuminate the celebrated doctrine of the fortunate Fall, or felix culpa, which states that Adam’s Fall was a boon for

humans since it brought about the necessity for Christ. In “Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” a seminal essay first published in 1937, Lovejoy demonstrated that Adam’s sin was the sine qua non that allowed for a greater increase of good in the world than could have been achieved if Adam and Eve had remained in a state of innocence.’? A well-known

Middle English lyric of the fifteenth century, “Adam lay I-bowndyn,” preserved only in London, British Library, MS Sloane 2593, offers a variant of the old patristic doctrine that perhaps was first articulated by St. Ambrose:

29 Lovejoy traces this motif to Ambrose, Augustine, Leo I, and Gregory the Great: see esp. pp. 287-95. See also his discussion of Piers Plowman, John Wyclif, and “Adam lay I-bowndyn,” pp. 291-93. In his discussion of world ages and the divine economy (“Poeuvre divine’’), Lubac finds a providential design in the fallen world based on Rom. 8.19—-23 and 1 Cor. 5.19: “Quelle que soit sa fragilité et son état présent de misére, ce

monde est bon, et il sera sauvé” (Catholicisme, p. 121 and n. 3). |

18 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Adam lay I-bowndyn, bowndyn in a bond, , fowre bowsand wynter bowt he not to long;

, And al was for an appil, an appil pat he tok, | As clerkis fyndyn wretyn in here book. Ne hadde pe appil take ben, be appil taken ben, ne hadde neuer our lady a ben heuene qwen; Blyssid be pe tyme pat appil take was, per-fore we mown syngyn, “deo gracias!” *°

The reference to Adam’s four-thousand-year bondage alludes to the patristic computation of years from the world’s (and Adam’s) creation to the

Incarnation. This scheme of years derives from the notion that one day | of creation, a day of the Lord, is as a thousand years for humans. Many . early Christian exegetes before, and occasionally after, the Venerable Bede reckoned each world age as about one thousand years in duration: the world should end, according to this line of thought, on or about the sixthousandth year. Most chronologists, including Augustine, determined that Christ came into the world in about anno mundi 5000 or 5500; with poetic license the author of “Adam lay I-bowndyn” rounds off the figure to “fowre bowsand wynter,” since Adam lived for almost a thousand years

(Gen. 5.5). In this phrase the poet alludes to the doctrine of ages and perhaps, as Edmund Reiss has suggested, to the “four weeks of Advent

before the birth of Christ.” 3!

There is in fact a close relation between the doctrine of the fortunate Fall and the idea of the world grown old. The paradoxical force of the felix culpa depends on the idea of the world grown old—on Adam’s sin and its universal consequences. Ironically, the stages of the world’s aging also are stages in the history of redemption and-.salvation, especially when sin and evil are explained by the Augustinian argument of the privation of good. Even as the world grows old and increases in viciousness, it also historically moves toward the Virgin Mary (as in the Middle English lyric), Christ, and salvation. Those who lived in the five ages before Christ existed in the old Adam (or vetus homo), and they were, according to strictest doctrine, damned for eternity except for those whom Christ (homo novus) rescued at the harrowing of hell, including Adam and Eve. The first five ages constitute the history of the Jews, the Old Testament, or what Augustine calls the “old song.”” According to another popular medieval moralized chronology, the ages from Adam to Christ divide into two temporal eras: before the written law, or Decalogue, that is, the era of the natural law (ante legem); and under the Mosaic law (sub lege). The third temporal

, 30 RE XV, p. 120; IMEV 117. 31 Middle English Lyric, p. 140.

INTRODUCTION 1g era, sub gratia, coincides with the sixth world age, a time when Christ brought the possibility of salvation to men and women, a temporal coincidence that Gregory the Great and others make explicit in their glosses on the three vigils of Luke 12.35-q0: the first vigil, ante legem, is the “primeval time,” or boyhood; the second vigil, sub lege, is the time of adolescence or youth; the third vigil, sub gratia, is the time of old age or senectus.>* As the Edinburgh manuscript of Cursor mundi puts it: “Sex eldis [ages] haue we bro3te in place / be sexte es calde be time of grace” (21847-

48).>3 Men and women of the sixth world age have a greater opportunity for good than people of earlier ages. Although the evil in the world increases when, knowing of Christ, they commit evil and reject him, the good in the world increases when of their free choice they elect to behave morally and reject the third stage of sin: consent.*+ Viewed in this way, the sixth world age is one of choice, of the potential for salvation or damnation. The world continues to decline physically and morally in the sixth age even as it had in the first five, so that the written law becomes necessary to correct a people who no longer followed the natural law. When Christ came into the world, he embodied the values and ethics of the Decalogue and of grace—in Pauline and allegorical terms, the New Law, the New Testament, the New Man, the New Song—so that spiritually, as opposed to physically, the world’s condition may be said to improve. In the sixth age, sinners become more evil, while the saints, especially those who suffer persecution, demonstrate a goodness that transcends even the original innocence of Adam because, knowing evil and experience, they yet choose the good. The doctrine of the fortunate Fall, then, helps to clarify the idea of the

world grown old and to temper its characterization as medieval (and Renaissance) pessimism. It would not be accurate, of course, to represent senectus mundi as an aspect of medieval optimism; nor is it specifically

32 Gregory, Homiliae in Evangelia 1.13, col. 1125. For similar glosses on these vigils, see Liber de promissionibus, wrongly attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, cols. 734-35; Bede, In Lucae Evangelium expositio 4, ed. Hurst, p. 257; Glossa ordinaria, 4:187B (PL 114:298); and Honorius Augustodunensis, Speculum Ecclesiae, cols. 1079-80, on four vigils, four temporal eras. See also Luneau, L’histoire du salut, p. 35 n. 4; Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, p. 182; Sporl, Grundformen hochmittelalterlicher Geschichtsanschauung,

pp. 120-21; and Roderich Schmidt, “Aetates mundi,” p. 300. Table 1 (below, p. 47) depicts the chronological schemes described here. 33 Fd. Morris, 5:1608. All subsequent references to Cursor mundi refer to this edition

| by line numbers. The final section of Cursor mundi is witnessed only in the Edinburgh manuscript. Quotations from other parts of the poem are taken from London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A III, unless otherwise noted. 34 See Howard, The Three Temptations, chap. 2. For the increase of good in the world,

see Lovejoy, “Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” p. 291. Ambrose places the paradox in the context of mankind’s renovatio in melius (Lovejoy, pp. 287-88).

20 THE WORLD GROWN OLD linked in medieval texts with the doctrine of the fortunate Fall except in rare instances, such as “Adam lay I-bowndyn.” Exegetical allegories of the

six ages are less an expression of the sense of declining ages than a roll call of patriarchs and events, such as the Babylonian Captivity. This is perhaps because the concept of six world ages developed in exegesis only partly as an indictment of human wickedness; it was also employed as a mnemonic aid for biblical study in monastic culture and as a simple affirmation of the elegance of Judeo-Christian typological history. For mnemonic and typological reasons the authors of mystery plays in the later Middle Ages, as V. A. Kolve has shown, composed their dramatic cycles around the world ages.* “Adam lay I-bowndyn,” then, is constructed around the two apparently opposed doctrines of the fortunate Fall and the world grown old. These two concepts are played off against each other: ‘“fowre bowsand wynter powt he not to long” in the first quatrain versus “Blyssid be pe tyme pat appil take was” in the second. The tone of the lyric is light and musical (“Adam lay I-bowndyn, bowndyn in a bond”), and perhaps at one time it had accompanying music. Through prosodic variations and what Reiss has termed the lyric’s important “‘audial’’ qualities, the poet reduces the tragedy of pre-Christian peoples—the old Adam—to a comic song leading to the inevitable triumph and celebration of the Virgin Mary, who takes her rightful place as heaven’s queen after Adam’s long bondage has been suspended. The poet resolves the tension between the ostensibly pessimistic doctrine of ages, with its underlying metaphor of the world grown old, and the joyous felix culpa through an arch view of Adam’s bondage. It might be most accurate to say that in this lyric the doctrine of the fortunate Fall simply overwhelms the clerical doctrine of ages and the world grown old in the same way that the New Testament, the New Man, and the New

Song supplant the Old Testament, the vetus homo, and the Old Song. There is no overt denunciation of the sixth world age here, not even an implicit attack on the saeculum. This, then, is not a lyric de contemptu mundi:

as the poem is conceived, Christ and the Virgin Mary redeem the present time along with the past. An important point for the historian of ideas is that the two doctrines—of ages and of the fortunate Fall—are not really in opposition: they harmonize in the triune mysteries of the Fall, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. But such a harmonization does not resolve

| the problem of senectus mundi for medieval thought any more than Augustine resolved the problem of evil through the Plotinian doctrine of

| privatio boni.

_ The relation of the fortunate Fall to the world grown old raises an even larger issue: that of the world grown old versus the goodness of the created 35 The Play Called Corpus Christi, esp. pp. 89-100. See also Woolf, English Mystery Plays, pp. 64-65.

INTRODUCTION 21 world. How could God allow his creation, which he originally proclaimed

“good” and “‘very good,” to become corrupt and degenerate, as in the

days of Noah or in the sixth world age? Here, too, the tension between ideas helps to clarify two ostensibly competing views of the world. There is no question but that the world’s essential goodness and God’s benignity were standard concepts throughout the Middle Ages. God created the world good, and he maintains a strong and continuing interest in his finite creation. He made Adam “to oure ymage and liknesse” (Gen. 1.26), on the sixth day, as the perfection of his work of creation before he rested on the seventh day. In his well-known essay on the idea of perfection Morton Bloomfield observes that “the goodness of the created world is Hebraic rather than Greek,” that Philo of Alexandria and later Pseudo-Dionysius upheld that goodness, and that a belief in the world’s goodness generally prevailed in the Middle Ages. But sometimes, Bloomfield adds, ‘‘a more purely Pla-

tonic view would dominate,” and certain writers would highlight the world’s iniquity. Bloomfield regards the latter view as “erratic and unusual, even though it is sometimes strongly emphasized for pastoral reasons.” *¢ Some sects, such as the Cathars, posited a radical disjunction between flesh

and materiality on the one hand and spirituality on the other. Yet even

| orthodox writers on the contempt of the world, including the strongwilled but traditionalist Innocent III, castigated materiality in all its forms. : Innocent and others seeking to reform the church consciously wrote in the genre de contemptu mundi for pastoral reasons, though many of those same authors, even Peter Damian, would concede that God still takes an active, paternal interest in his world, his creation, despite human wick-

edness and the world’s degeneracy: “For God louede so the world ...” (John 3.16).

The world considered solely as a theological construct, a concept or

idea, had two seemingly irreconcilable significations in medieval thought—or rather it had at least two significations. The first signification

is the ordered world held together, as in Dante or Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, by a Boethian “faire cheyne of love.” ‘This ordered world is a cosmos

or ornamentum, a beautifully strung necklace or a book through which, according to St. Ambrose, God’s wisdom is shown and upon which, according to Hugh of St.-Victor, God writes his signs with his finger.?’ The second signification of “world” in medieval writings—and probably the more standard one—is that of a chaotic and sinful place, to be distin36 “The Medieval Idea of Perfection,” p. 45; see also Spitzer, “Milieu and Ambiance,” pp. 198-99. 37 Ambrose, Hexaemeron 1.5, cols. 130-31; Hugh of St.-Victor, De tribus diebus, col. 814. Migne prints De tribus diebus as book 7 of the Didascalicon, but it is a separate work.

22 THE WORLD GROWN OLD guished from heaven, as in “‘the world, the flesh, and the devil” or “Nyle 3e loue the world” (1 John 2.15), that is, as the depths, or a flood, or the place that is, ironically, unclean. The last concept gave rise in medieval Latin to paranomasia on mundus as “world” and mundus as “clean” (“O munde immunde’’).*8 Yet these two worlds are the same, just perceived in a different way. In a work devoted to salvation, De arca Noe morali, Hugh of St.-Victor explains the relation between the transitory world and the

ordered world of the ark (= the Church = salvation) as a problem in spiritual epistemology: ““This world [the ark] is in that world, and that other world is inferior to this, because the former contains him whom the other cannot.” *? They are the same place—yet how different to devout medieval Christians.

3. The World Grown Old in Medieval Art The idea of the world grown old is, for the most part, a temporal and historical concept rather than a spatial one. Nonetheless, there were a number of medieval attempts to depict senectus mundi, and these deserve mention here since they help to show both the nature of the idea and its visual limitations. I would distinguish seven categories of illustration: (1) Adam’s digging in the postlapsarian soil; (2) the Plinian races, or what John Friedman has called ‘‘the monstrous races” and ‘“‘Cain’s kin’; (3) the statue of different metals based on Dan. 2; (4) the wheel or rota scheme of ages; (5) the typological figures (ages of the world, ages of man); (6) the 38 For the world as the devil’s habitation, see Alan of Lille, Distinctiones, s.v. mundus

[in malo], cols. 866-67. For the world as the depths and as a flood, see Hugh of St.Victor, De vanitate mundi 2, col. 715. For the play on words, see Walther, Proverbia 11547a, and the opening of De vanitate mundi: “O munde immunde, o munde immunde, quare sic dileximus te?” (col. 703); Fasciculus morum, ed. Wenzel, p. 376; Bultot,

“La Chartula,” pp. 795-96 and n. 44, 799; and Costello, ““O munde immunde.” In the

: prologue of Gower’s Confessio amantis the headnote to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (after line 584) contains this paranomasia. For general discussions of “world,” see C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words, pp. 214-68, and Howard, The Three Temptations, pp. 65-67. The editors of the Wycliffite Bible print a gloss to 1 John 2.15 in the margin: “Nile 3e loue the world; that is, men seekinge vnduely the delitable thingis of the world; thouz3 the kinde of hem is worthi to be loued, natheles the synne is worthi to be hatid and fled.” 39 De arca Noe morali 4.9, col. 680, glossing the “figura hujus mundi” of 1 Cor. 7.31. Hugh exposes the epistemological problem—the problem of seeing or vision—most fully in De vanitate mundi, a companion piece to the De arca. See also Bruno Astensis, Sententiae 3.1, cols. 943-44; and Otto of Freising, Chronica 5, prologue: “Non enim, quamvis electi et reprobi in una sint domo [the Church], has civitates, ut supra, duas dixerim, sed proprie unam, sed permixtam tanquam grana cum paleis” (ed. Hofmeister, p. 228). (“For although the elect and the reprobate are in one household, yet I cannot

call these cities two as I did above; I must call them properly but one—composite, however, as the grain is mixed with the chaff,” trans. Mierow, p. 324.)

INTRODUCTION 23 life stages of humans as world historical eras; and (7) the destruction at Doomsday. An important iconographic tradition de senectute mundi may be found in Adam’s working the soil of the newly fallen world as part of his “penalties” (hence an iconographic tradition illustrating the first stage of the world’s decline). In medieval cycle paintings Adam often appears in rough clothing, usually barefoot, bending to his new task amid scruffy, unpromising vegetation. Adam’s penalty is rendered this way in two Adam-andEve cycles, both in tenth-century Bibles: the Moutier-Grandval Bible (Fig. - 1) and the Bible of Charles the Bald.* In both illustrations Eve sits to Adam’s right with the newborn Cain. In the Grandval Bible the world appears bright even as the angel is expelling the pair from Eden, but to their left, where Adam tills the ground, the world has been plunged into darkness. A similar design may be seen on a thirteenth-century mosaic at St. Mark’s, Venice, as the last panel in a counterclockwise cycle from Adam’s creation through the Fall to the expulsion and penalties. ‘There, too, Adam wields a hoe while Eve dandles Cain in her lap.*! Adam hard at work appears also in stained-glass narrative cycles. In the north clerestory at Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury, a grim, bearded Adam, clad in animal skins, uses a spade in stony soil. Of Eve’s absence from this scene Madeline Caviness says: ‘““The originality of the Canterbury figure lies in its isolation from a narrative context, and the exclusion of Eve, so that the spade becomes an attribute. The Adam among the Six Ages of the World

in the north choir aisle, who is seated with a pick or hoe as an attribute, belongs to a different iconographic tradition.” Adam as homo faber was a powerful symbol of the human condition, of mankind’s early postlapsarian estate, and of the world grown old. Cain, patriarch of the city of man, is said to have spawned an evil line, a race of monsters and wicked folk that contrasts with the saints (the city of God) and Christian folk generally. Although it would be improper to 40 Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, MS lat. 1, fol. rov, reproduced in Braunfels-Esche, Adam und Eva, fig. 7. See also the Bible of St. Calixtus (about 870), in Every, Christian Mythology, p. 32; The Bedford Hours (about 1423): London, British Library, MS Add. 18850, fol. 14r; a cycle from the Bamberg Bible, Tours, ninth century (in Beckwith, Early Medieval Art, fig. 50); and Réau, Iconographie de l'art chrétien, 1:91-93. “| Braunfels-Esche, Adam und Eva, fig. 10; see also Tikkanen, “Le rappresentazioni delle Genesi in S. Marco.” ® Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, p. 113. For Adam and the scene from /Elfric’s Pentateuch, see plates 6 and 7. Caviness speculates that the Methuselah Master of Christ Church derived his iconography from the illustrator of the Cotton manuscript of A’lfric’s Pentateuch (pp. 112-15). Although she does not rule out the likelihood of borrowings from other sources for the Canterbury windows, she argues: “There is still a strong case for supposing that the St. Augustine’s #lfric is the actual iconographical guide used, perhaps a little before 1180, for the clerestory windows” (p. 112).

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INTRODUCTION 29 1310.*? This wheel shows ten stages of maturation and decline in a wheelof-fortune design but with Christ rather than Dame Fortune in the wheel’s hub. The De Lisle rota pattern, as in later Middle English lyrics, features

a speaking subject, an “I,” who proclaims that he begins as an infant at seven o’clock on the ten-spoked wheel, progresses to become a king at the noon position (“Rex sum”), and declines, through sickness (“Infirmitati deditus, incipio deesse’’), to the grave at the six o’clock position, with the penitential last thought: “Vita me decepit” (“Life has deceived me’’). The rota pattern is itself circumscribed by a tetradic pattern of infancy, youth, old age (senectus), and decrepitude (decrepitus), at about seven, eleven, one, and five o’clock respectively.

In similar fashion a Catalan illustrator of the late fourteenth century tried to depict the six world ages (Fig. 3). This artist, too, draws upon the wheel of fortune or rota scheme: instead of blind Fortune turning her wheel, an alert angel moves the wheel of God’s history. This wheel, which moves counterclockwise, starts with the first Adam’s Fall and ends with the second Adam’s birth and its celebration in the mass. A caption in the upper left proclaims: ‘“Taula de les .vi. edats del mondo” (“table of the six world ages’’). Within the six spokelike frames the artist depicts prominent scenes from the world ages. In the first frame, at nine o’clock, Adam and Eve don fig leaves in their expulsion from Eden. In the second frame, at

seven o’clock, a laborer (Ham?) carries grapes and a dead bird. These symbolize the new human estate, when mankind drank wine rather than water and became carnivorous rather than vegetarian. So far the frames reproduce the familiar ages sequence: Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham. The third frame, however, at five o’clock, shows Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac but being halted by the angel, and the caption indicates the

- age as from Abraham to Moses rather than to David. The fourth frame, which portrays Moses and the Ten Commandments, represents Moses through Solomon. In the fifth frame, which encompasses the age from Solomon to the Madonna, Solomon holds an emperor’s orb in one hand and points with his other to the birth of Christ in an ox’s stall. Finally, in the sixth frame, Mary holds the Christ Child on her knees while a priest elevates the host at communion. A related schematic representation of world ages occurs in the Genesis initial of the twelfth-century Winchester Bible.*° In this remarkable illumination the Genesis Master depicts scenes from the world ages in seven

roundels that descend vertically down the left-hand margin. In the first 4 Sears, The Ages of Man, fig. 87; Burrow, The Ages of Man, fig. 7; Dove, The Perfect Age of Man’s Life, fig. 5.

50 Winchester Bible, vol. 1, fol. 5r, reproduced in Oakeshott, The Two Winchester Bibles, plate II.

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INTRODUCTION 31 roundel God creates Eve from Adam’s side (first age: Adam to Noah); in the second, Noah appears in the ark releasing a dove (second age: Noah to Abraham); in the third, the angel stays Abraham’s sword as he is about to sacrifice Isaac (third age: Abraham to Moses); in the fourth, Moses on Sinai receives the Ten Commandments from God (fourth age: Moses to David); in the fifth, David is anointed king (fifth age: David to Christ); in the sixth, the infant Jesus, Mary, and Joseph appear in a Bethlehem stable

(sixth age: Christ to the end of the world); in the seventh, Christ judges souls at Doomsday. Such wheel patterns, whether of human ages or world ages, would have suggested to medieval viewers a Boethian point about human mortality and the world’s transience: human life and world history move according

to the same basic design, and there is a penitential lesson, or perhaps lessons, embodied in each revolution. Each individual, like the greater world, the macrocosm, must be renewed in and through Christ. A fifth genus of representations de senectute mundi involves typology and the ages of man, which were harmonized with the world ages on the microcosm/macrocosm theory of correspondences. There were in fact many illustrations of the six ages of man—or the four, five, seven, or twelve ages of man (see Sears)—and these reveal a consistent iconography, especially for the sixth age (usually senectus but sometimes decrepitus). ‘The old man illustrating senectus almost always supports himself on a crutch or staff, as in illustrations to Hrabanus Maurus’s De naturis rerum: for example, in an eleventh-century codex, Montecassino, MS 132, p. 150, and in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 291, fol. 68r.°! The Middle English “Of pre messagers of deeth” from the Vernon Manuscript depicts old age, one of the three messengers, leaning upon a crutch: And he [Elde] leonneb vppon his Crucche, Whon dep him beknep, comen he mot; Hit helpep nou3t pauh he grucche, He schal wip-stonde neuer a fot.*

In the Montecassino illustration mentioned above, infancy is depicted as a swaddled baby, while a beard distinguishes the middle-aged man from the youth. The artist of the Vatican manuscript represents youth as an armed warrior holding a halberd. Of greatest significance are those illustrations that explicitly link ages of man and world ages. The linkage occurs most persistently in the great 51 Sears, The Ages of Man, fig. 14; Dove, The Perfect Age of Man’s Life, fig. 2.

52 “Of pre messagers of deeth,” lines 113-16, in The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, ed. Furnivall, 2:446. The Middle English poem is a version of The Sayings of St. Bernard.

32 THE WORLD GROWN OLD typological windows at Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury, executed about 1180. Originally in the fourth window of the northeast transept, the window depicting the ages of man and world ages is now in the cathedral’s

north choir aisle.** In one semicircular panel, on the right, the stainedglass artist portrays the sex aetates hominis, with “senectus as a bearded, balding figure with a T-shaped crutch.” °* The world ages are illustrated in two ways: by patriarchs and by water jars (the six water jars at the Cana wedding feast [John 2.1-10] were regularly glossed as the six world ages). To the left of this panel is a corresponding semicircular panel, illustrating sex etates sunt mundi (“there are six ages of the world”’) through patriarchs

(with attributes) and Christ: Adam (with a hoe), Noah (ark), Abraham (flame and knife), David (“crowned and holding a harp”), Jechonias (crown and scepter), and Christ (“cross-nimbed, holding an open book’’).* Here the artist depicts the sixth world age as the era sub gratia, the plenitudo temporis (“plenitude or fulfillment of time”). Around this scene originally was the inscription “Ydria metretas capiens est quelibet etas; limpha dat

| historiam, vinum notat allegoriam.” As translated by Sears: ‘The hydria [water jar] holding measures represents any one age; the water gives the

| historical sense, the wine signifies the allegory.’’* | Such typological connections occur in manuscript illuminations as well as in stained glass. Sears reproduces similar illuminations from three versions of the Bible moralisée, all executed after 1220: Toledo Cathedral (no shelfmark), vol. 3, fol. 21r (fig. 20); London, British Library, MS Harley

, 1527, fol. 23r (fig. 21, and Fig. 4 of this study); and Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 167, fol. 251r (fig. 22). In each picture an upper and lower circle provide typological commentary on one another. In the upper circle Christ directs an assistant (or two) to “Fille 3e the pottis with watir”’ (john 2.7). An inscription to the left explains the allegory of water jars: “Hoc significat quod scriptura legis data fuit hominibus .vi. etatum sed

dum in eo Christus latuit quasi aqua fuit insipida” (“This signifies that the scripture of the Law was given to men of six ages, but at that time Christ lay hidden in it, just as the water was insipid’’).*” In the lower circles are represented the six ages of man, including, in the Toledo book, senectus 53 Caviness, Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, fig. 11; Windows of Christ Church Cathedral, plates 82, 83, figs. 185a, 186a. 54 Sears, The Ages of Man, p. 73 and fig. 19. 55 See Burrow, The Ages of Man, pp. 90-92; Sears, The Ages of Man, p. 73; Sterling, “The Wedding at Cana in Western Art”; and Réau, Iconographie de l'art chrétien, 2/ 2:362-66. Jechonias (= Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim and father, nephew, or brother of Zedekiah) was king when Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews captive to Babylon 597 B.c. (fifth world age). 56 Sears, The Ages of Man, p. 73. 57 Thid., p. 182 n. go; trans. p. 75.

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34 THE WORLD GROWN OLD with a T-form crutch sucking milk from the breast of a young woman and, in the Harley and Bibliothéque Nationale versions, senectus with a knobbed stick and closest to Christ in the line of human ages from left to right. In another illustration from the Harley manuscript (Sears, fig. 23), Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, holds a distaff, iconographic emblem of postlapsarian womanhood, while Zacharias, her dispirited, mute husband, rests his head on his hand and holds an open (Hebrew) book on his lap. The text for this scene reads: ““Concepit elisabet et occultabat se men-

sibus quinque [Luke 1.24]. Hoc significat quod spiritualis doctrina legis gravida in promissis in quinque etatibus seculi et quinque libris moysi latuit” (“This signifies that the spiritual teaching of the Law pregnant in promises lay hidden in five ages of the saeculum and in the five books of Moses’’).°* In this spiritual gloss, the author of the Bible moralisée follows the Venerable Bede and the Glossa ordinaria (or its source, Ambrose), who

interpret the five months of Elizabeth’s seclusion as the first five world ages. In the illustration, which provides its own manner of commentary, Zacharias represents the old law that must be replaced by the new, even as the sweetness of the wine replaces the water in the six water jars at the Cana marriage. A sixth category of illustration is the ages of man depicted not as individual stages in human life but as historical ages in the world’s development from primitivism to civilization. Erwin Panofsky has treated this subject well in an essay entitled ““The Early History of Man in Two Cycles

of Paintings by Piero di Cosimo.” In the illustration of Piero di Cosimo (who lived in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and thus later than the emphasis of this book) it is possible to discern something like an idea of progress, since Vulcan is seen to improve the human condition by introducing fire and arts such as metallurgy. In this presentation, which differs substantially from the standard view de senectute mundi, humans in the earliest ages led primitive, crude lives in mean shelters such as caves

or huts. This alternative understanding of primitivism—a hard, “stone, age” primitivism (or antiprimitivism)—owes much to a passage in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (15.2.5), to Giovanni Boccaccio’s story of the discovery of fire in his Genealogia, and to Vitruvius’s De architectura. From his examinations of the cycles of paintings by Piero di Cosimo, Panofsky 38 Thid., p. 182 n. 93; trans. p. 76. °° Bede, In Lucae Evangelium expositio, ed. Hurst, pp. 29-30; Christianus Druthmarus

(early-ninth-century Benedictine monk), Expositio brevis in Lucam; Pseudo-Jerome (Walafrid Strabo?), Expositio quatuor Evangeliorum, col. 568; Glossa ordinaria, 4:141A (PL 114:246), attributed to Ambrose. On the authorship of the Expositio quatuor Evangeliorum see Glorieux, Pour revaloriser Migne, p. 57. 6° Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, pp. 38-39.

INTRODUCTION 35 coins the phrases the era ante Vulcanum, an age of savage hunting before the discovery of fire (Panofsky, figs. 27-29); the era sub Vulcano (figs. 17, 18); and the era sub Prometheo, an age of civilization that includes punish-

ments for crimes (fig. 33). |

The earliest illustration of “stone-age”’ primitivism that I know is a four-panel sequence attributed to Jean Bourdichon illustrating “the four ages of human history,” or “les quatre états de la société.”’*! In this re_ markable sequence from about 1500, the artist depicts the development of human industry from the earliest age, when men and women lived in caves, through a “hut” phase of rude poverty, to stages of technological improvement and prosperity. The faces of husband and wife appear to be the same in the four panels. In the first picture (“état de sauvage’) a shaggy

couple, apparently modeled upon figures of “wild men,” appear outside their caves. The golden-haired woman, seated, suckles their infant while the man stands guard with a huge club near their pleasant spring. They seem content with their lot. A castle, perhaps suggesting warfare and greed to come, rises in the background. In the second panel an infirm man and praying woman are revealed in their ramshackle cottage. They appear wretched and desperate. The third panel portrays homo faber—the prosperous-looking husband with his woodworking tools, the wife with her distaff, the child with his basket. Their brick house seems comfortable and sturdy. The final panel displays a noble family of four enjoying their wealth and leisure. A cabinet or hutch on the rear wall displays their richly decorated crockery. These four panels exhibit an ideology of progress quite different from the usual medieval view of primitivism and development,

| although the contented early humans depict a type well known to medieval | Christian writers on the golden age. A seventh and final important category of illustrations de senectute mundi occurs in artists’ renderings of the Apocalypse. Here medieval artists could become vivid in their depictions of destruction, especially the collapse of Babylon (or the city of man), and of mankind’s terror in the face of uni-

versal doom. In the Angers Apocalypse tapestry, for example, mortals | vainly flee to the mountains as their city, Babylon, crumbles to the ground:

: “Greet Babiloyn felde doun, felde doun, and is maad the habitacioun of deuelis .. .” (Apoc. 18.2). Hideous devils rise up from the city’s fissures while St. John, in a left-side frame, serves as witness to the devastation.” This tapestry could as well illustrate day seven of the fifteen signs of the Last Judgment from the Middle English lyric that begins “Pe first day of pas fiften days’’: “Pe sevent day byggyngs [buildings] doun sal falle / And gret castels and tours with alle.”’® In another tapestry frame from Angers 6 Husband, Wild Man, color plate IV and figs. 80-82. 62 See Lejard, Les tapisseries de ’Apocalypse, plate 64.

6 Krochalis and Peters, eds., The World of Piers Plowman, p. 264.

36 THE WORLD GROWN OLD an angel visits fire and brimstone-like destruction upon a flattened city as

St. John looks on and Christ presides in eternity. This illustrates the dramatic Apocalypse text: ‘And the greet citee was maad [EV: is brokun] in to thre parties, and the citees of hethene men felden doun .. .” (Apoc.

16.19). A fresco of about 1370 in the castle of Karlstein, near Prague, illustrates the same theme. Finally, a thirteenth-century English Apocalypse illustration portrays confusion and destruction in the middle portion and, to the lower left, Noah’s ark with dead animals and humans floating

on the waters.® This illustration underscores the close connection between the Flood and Doomsday as understood by many medieval thinkers, according to the formula “Sicut in diebus Noe” (Matt. 24.37). Another kind of apocalyptic or eschatological rendering may be found in a well-known woodcut from Hartman Schedel’s Liber chronicarum, published at Augsburg in 1497. In this illustration, which the woodcut maker has labeled Das sibena alter (the seventh age), Antichrist persecutes the righteous just before the end of the world. This seventh age might be said to depict the world’s moral decrepitude; a bird-headed demon whispers

in the ear of a preacher, while in another part of the picture Enoch and Elijah preach to an assembled group. Adam working the soil in a dark land, Plinian monsters, statues of metals, human ages, patriarchs, water jars, apocalyptic destruction—all these point, in figure, to the ages of the world and, obliquely, to the idea of the world grown old. Such illustrations bespeak a world that has declined from the pristine theater of Adam’s creation and the original garden in which all things were orderly and new. The closest we come to pictures of the world grown old is an old man with a crutch labeled senectus or an earthquake at the end of time. Still, such illustrations helped define the human condition in relation to time and eternity for men and women of the later Middle Ages; and they help us visualize what medieval artists saw in their mind’s eye as they read the literature de senectute mundi.

64 Lejard, Les tapisseries de l’Apocalypse, plate 61.

° For the Prague fresco, see Duby, Medieval Art, 3:82. For the English Apocalypse illustration, see Paul Olson, The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, fig. 16. 66 Reproduced in Ozment’s Age of Reform, p. 111.

I A Morphology of Subtopics De Senectute Mundi

The charite of manye schal wexe coold (Matt. 24.12)

‘THE CONCEPT OF THE WORLD grown old changed over time from its begin-

nings in biblical and classical writings to the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when reactionary theologians, invoking Genesis, attempted to refute geologists who claimed that the earth was millions of years old. Medieval thinkers used the concept in a variety of ways, and the goal of this chapter is to define the medieval notion by tracing its scope and significance and considering related motifs. With such a definition as a goal, I wish to offer here, in approximately chronological outline, a morphology of subtopics or related ideas. By morphology I do not mean an evolution or progression, since the idea retained

its basic character as an indictment of human nature throughout the Mid- , dle Ages without achieving higher or more complex forms. Often what may appear to be a new direction for the idea is actually a restatement of an older theme. Moreover, the subtopics de senectute mundi overlap to a considerable extent. Throughout its history, the idea of the world grown old was informed by two things in particular: a sense of loss and a sense of doom. In the

| various subtopics of the morphology below we hear how the world has declined from its former strength and glory and how it has grown so old, sick, and morally corrupt that God must destroy it to reform it. The first is expressed as a lament or nostalgia for the past; the other as a warning

or threat. Both kinds of expression may be seen in Christ’s words in Matt. 24: But as it was in the daies of Noe, so schal be the comyng of mannus sone. For as in the daies bifore the greet flood, thei weren etynge and drynkynge, 37

38 THE WORLD GROWN OLD weddynge and takynge to weddyng, to that dai, that Noe entride in to the schippe; and thei knewen not, til the greet flood cam, and took alle men, so schal be the comyng of mannus sone. Thanne tweyne schulen be in o feeld, oon schal be takun, and another left; twey wymmen schulen be gryn-

| dynge in o queerne, oon schal be takun, and the tother left; tweyn in a bedde, the toon schal be takun, and the tother left. (37-41)

Both kinds of expression occur, too, in Apoc. 18.10-11 in the lament for Babylon: “Wo! wo! wo! thilke greet citee Babiloyn, and thilke stronge citee; for in oon our thi dom cometh. And marchauntis of the erthe schulen wepe on it, and morne, for no man schal bie more the marchaundise of hem.” A similar sentiment may be inferred from the proverbial refrain in a thirteenth-century penitential sermon lyric: “al to late, al to late, wanne pe bere ys ate gate.” While the latter is a monitory lyric on the signs of death rather than on the threat of Doomsday, it expresses the idea of the world grown old on a microcosmic level. ‘The warning is of death; the repetition, “‘al to late, al to late,” carries the burden of regret. The subtopics of the morphology below are various and interrelated. It is often difficult, and perhaps wrongheaded, to separate moral topics from literary topics. I offer the list merely as a heuristic, a point of departure. My goal is not to close off debate but to open it up. For purposes of exposition the topics may be said to break down into the following broad and narrow categories:

1. Historical-doctrinal topics a. The six world ages b. The six thousand years from creation 2. Apologetics, divine retribution, and the world grown old 3. Moral topics a. Homiletic exhortation b. Contempt of the world and clerical satire c. The world upside-down d. Figurative expressions [1] The disease of the world [2] The twilight of the world [3] The cooling of charity [4] Nowadays

e. The ancients-versus-moderns controversy (giants and dwarfs) f. The allegorical interpretation of Genesis g. Polemical eschatology 4. Scientific topics a. The consequences of the Flood

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 39 b. The renovation of the elements c. The eternity of the world 5. Literary topics a. The golden age

b. Vestiges of paradise | c. The decline of love d. Nobility of soul e. The wasteland

f. Nostalgia g. Political and occasional applications

h. The translation of empire Taken as a whole, these subtopics form a remarkably cohesive portrait of senectus mundi as an idea and help to explain the affiliations between and among various aspects of the idea as well as its perseverance throughout the Middle Ages.

Morphology of Subtopics 1. Historical-doctrinal topics

a. The six world ages. The idea of the world grown old began as an adjunct of biblical eschatology and of classical primitivism. Early Christian writers, influenced by Eastern thought, speculated on the world’s duration

and allegorized the periods of history around the number of perfection: six.! The letter of Pseudo-Barnabas and the Contra haereses of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, both from the second century, argue that a “day” for God is as a thousand years (Ps. 89.4, 2 Peter 3.8) and that the world would last for as many world ages as the days of creation, hence about six ages or six thousand years.” Among early Christian writers (and later writers as 1 See the standard study of this subject by Cumont, “La fin du monde,” esp. p. 58; Babylonian Talmud, citing Ps. 89 (Roderich Schmidt, “‘Aetates mundi,” p. 299). W. M. Green has argued that the author of The Book of Fubilees (second century) first drew the parallel between day and millennium of Ps. 89, and that The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, at the beginning of the Christian era, ‘arrived at the notion of a world week of seven thousand years” (Augustine on the Teaching of History, p. 322). There is some material in Frank Robbins, Hexaemeral Literature. ? Epistle of Barnabas, p. 395. For Irenaeus, see Contra haereses 5.28.3, cols. 1200— 1201. For discussions of the early development of the ages, see Luneau, L’bistoire du salut, p. 84; Gatz, Weltalter, goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte Vorstellungen; Ladner, The Idea of Reform, p. 68; Charles Jones, ““Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,” pp. 191-08, esp. pp. 193-94; and Schwarte, Die Vorgeschichte der augustinischen Weltalterlebre, pp. 86-105 (Pseudo-Barnabas), 105-18 (Irenaeus). Schwarte’s book contains a useful bibliography, mostly of Continental material, on pp. x-xvi. For the ages in later medieval periods, see Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, esp. pp. 179-82.

40 THE WORLD GROWN OLD well), history came to be regarded as a vast work of God: six great ages and a seventh or Sabbath “age” when God will rest from his labor. Taking over the allegorical historical scheme devised by Irenaeus, Hilary of Poitiers, Lactantius, Ambrose, and others, St. Augustine of Hippo established the world ages as a central feature of his historiography and his exegesis. Drawing upon prominent events in the Old Testament and upon the genealogy of Christ at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, he assigned specific durations to the ages: Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham,

Abraham to David, David to the Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, the , Captivity to Christ, and Christ to the end of the world. As he attempted to explain the historical process in biological terms (the implicit metaphor of the world grown old), he formulated characteristics of the ages: the first age was the world’s infancy; the second, boyhood; the third, adolescence;

| the fourth, youth; the fifth, older age (senior aetas); and the sixth, senescence.’ The number or division of ages will occasionally vary among medieval writers, but by and large later medieval chronologists, historians, and theologians remained faithful to the scheme Augustine had devised for understanding the broad movement of time in human terms, a scheme that helped to explain the relation of the Old to the New Testaments and the struggle between sinners and saints.

In Augustine the idea of the world grown old appears far more allegorical than empirical, as it had in the writings of St. Cyprian (see 2 below); Augustine was far less concerned with Doomsday than with Christian instruction. At the same time, Augustine’s treatment of the doctrine of ages,

as Erich Auerbach has noted in an influential essay, was more historical than allegorical. The structure of ages undergirds his great work on the theology of history, The City of God, which explains the sweep of human history from a perspective of physical decay and spiritual maturation: the earth declines through six ages while the humble and oppressed—the city of God—gain the possibility of salvation (see the “Argument” and 22.30). Speaking of the opposed doctrinal applications of history and allegory, as embodied in Tertullian versus Origen, Auerbach writes, “St. Augustine played a leading part in the compromise between the two doctrines. On the whole he favored a living, figural interpretation, for his thinking was

3 Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 22.39, ed. Bauer, 2:125—26. See also Augustine’s formulation in De Genesi contra Manichaeos 1.23, cols. 190-93 (trans. in PIMA, pp. 17780), and in Contra Faustum 12.8, 1:336-37. For Augustine’s development of the six ages, see Folliet, “La. typologie du sabbat chez saint Augustin,” pp. 371-90; Ladner, The Idea of Reform, pp. 222-38; and Markus, Saeculum, pp. 17-21. Some theologians distinguished between senectus (old age) and senium (extreme old age). See Augustine, De Genest contra Manichaeos 1.23.39, col. 191; Pseudo-Alcuin, Disputatio puerorum 5, col. 1112 (trans. in PIMA, p. 180); Isidore of Seville, Differentiae 1.531, s.vv. senecta et —— -senium, col. 63.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 41 far too concrete and historical to content itself with pure abstract allegory.” + Augustine’s characterization of history de senectute mundi is above

all a justification of the ways of God to mortals. Classical authors usually regarded history and the past as a repository of moral examples and rhetorical topics. “Plena exemplorum est historia,”

wrote Cicero. The classical rhetor taught history—knowledge of the past—as an adjunct of grammar and oratory; and classical writers produced historical epitomes drawn from Sallust and Livy for educational purposes. Augustine learned history in similar fashion in the secular schools, and he instructed Christian catechumens in Christian history, including “the dividing points (grticuli) which marked off the epochs of history,” especially the six world ages.° The Old Testament, Augustine explains in De catechizandis rudibus, is filled with lessons for Christians. The scheme of ages after Augustine never lost its heuristic, propaedeutic functions. They were foundational for the exegetical enterprises of the Middle Ages and beyond. In his authoritative seventh-century encyclopedia, Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville helped transmit Augustine’s scheme of ages to later generations. In book 5 (on various issues of time), chapters 38-39, he divides aetas into human ages and world ages, and he then provides the

years from Adam of all the significant Old Testament personalities and events. Isidore concludes his chronicle of the second world age thus: ““Thara ann. LXX genuit Abraham. Zoroastres magicam repperit”’ (39).

Exegetical writers after Augustine—the Venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, the authors of the Glossa ordinaria, to name a few—often glossed biblical sixes as the six world ages. Why was Noah six hundred years old when God sent the Flood (Gen. 7.6)? Because there are six world ages, and at the end of the sixth age God will destroy the world by fire, just as

earlier he had destroyed it by water. Why did Jacob at his birth thrust forth his hand with its five fingers from the womb before his head emerged

(Gen. 25.26)? Because his fingers prefigure the five ages before Christ, and his head prefigures the world’s head (i.e., the Lord) and the sixth age. Why did Christ change the water into wine from six water pots at the Cana wedding feast, site of his first miracle John 2.6)? “Sex ydrie: sex etates.” Or why did he take his disciples onto a mountain “after sixe daies”’ before appearing to them transfigured (Matt. 17.1)? Because just as Christ displayed his heavenly raiment to his disciples after six days, so the honor

of the heavenly kingdom will be revealed to mankind after six ages.°

+ Auerbach, “Figura,” p. 37. : 5 W. M. Green, Augustine on the Teaching of History, esp. pp. 316-17, 320. 6 For Noah’s age (six hundred years) at the time of the Flood, see Irenaeus, Contra haereses 5.29.2, cols. 1202-3, which concerns Nebuchadnezzar’s statue from Dan. 2; Origen, In Leviticum homilia to, cols. 525-26; Bede, In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, pp. 11415; Hrabanus Maurus, Commentaritus in Genesim 2.8, col. 522; Glossa ordinaria, 1:37B

42 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Charles Jones quotes a Carolingian writer of Vatican MS Urb. Lat. 290, fol. 43r, who devises a fanciful etymology for saeculum linking that word

with the six ages of the world: “What is the saeculum? It is a name put together from the word sex and another word cultus, from which it is called saeculum from seno cultu because human life is cultivated (colitur) through six ages of the world.”’ The six (sometimes seven) sins of Adam, as outlined by Pseudo-Bede, are probably based on a formula originally devised by Augustine. The sins are superbia, sacrilegium, homicidium (because he killed himself through sin), fornicatio (in a spiritual sense, because he cor-

rupted the soundness or innocence of his mind), furtum (because he touched the forbidden food), and guda.* Adam’s six (or seven) sins were sometimes harmonized with the six ages of man, as if the sins brought on (PL 113:107); and Luneau, L’histoire du salut, p. 119. For Jacob’s fingers and head, see Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 125-26. For Christ’s miracle of turning the water into wine in six water pots, see the exegetical commentaries of Jerome; Augustine; Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 167, ed. Morin, pp. 682-87; Eusebius “Gallicanus,” Homulia 5, ed. Glorie, pp. 57-61; Bede; Walafrid Strabo; Glossa ordinaria, 4:228A; Honorius Augustodunensis; Richard of St.-Victor, Allegoriae in foannem 1.2 (printed as an appendix to the works of Hugh of St.-Victor [col. 754]); and Rupert of Deutz, In Evangelium Iobannis 2, ed. Haacke, pp. 109-18. For Christ’s transfiguration after six days, see the exegeses of Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Jerome, Walafrid Strabo, Paschasius Radbertus, and a twelfth-century homiletic writer who wrote that after the sixth age is fulfilled, the saints will behold Christ and rejoice forever in eternity: Homily 11 in Twelfth-Century Homilies, ed. Belfour, p. 112. The allegory of the water pots found its way into a Middle English treatise: see R. H. Bowers, ““T'reatise on Hermeneutics,” pp. 597-98. See also Robertson’s discussion of the significance of the water pots, Preface to Chaucer, p. 320. 7 “Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,” p. 194 n. 221. 8 See Marchand, ‘“‘foca Monachorum,” p. 120, who traces passages in the Icelandic text. The term joca monachorum refers to “an open-ended and amorphous set of questions and answers mostly on the Old Testament and on the salvation of man” (p. 107).

This genre produced The Prose Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus in Old En- 7 glish literature and the so-called Maister of Oxford’s Catechism in Middle English. For the latter see Horstmann’s edition of Questiones by-twene the Maister of Oxenford and his Clerke. Some of the questions begin, in the Latin texts, “Dic mihi.” A typical example of these simple monastic riddles: “Quis est mortus et non est natus? Adam” (“Who died yet was not born? Adam”). Marchand sets the passage from Pseudo-Bede and Augustine (Enchiridion) in a context of numerological correspondences. Adam’s sins in Icelandic are ofmetnopr, ohlupne, agirne, stulpr andlegr, hordomr, and mandrap (p. 120). For another version of Adam’s six sins, see the beginning of the Balliol College MS 228 version, as transcribed in Mozley’s edition of the Vita Adae, p. 148: “Sex peccata habuit Adam, superbiam quoniam in sua potestate uoluit esse et non Dei, sacrilegium quia non credidit deum ubique esse, homicidium quia se ipsum et nos precipitauit in mortem, fornicacio quia serpentina suasione corruptus est, furtum quia cibum uetitum usurpauit, auariciam quia plus quam illi sufficere debuit appeciit. Per hec sex peccata diabolus omnes homines in potestate habuisset nisi Christus uenisset nec aliquis regnum Dei introisset.”’

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 43 the aging process: Adam—mankind—sinned so his physical condition ever after would progress through stages and eventually decline. Of central importance in the exegetical development of senectus mundi

was the commentary on Matt. 20.1-16, Christ’s parable of the vineyard, a scriptural passage that receives attention in Piers Plowman and Pearl. A ‘“housbonde man” sends workers “in to his vynezerd” in the morning, again “aboute the thridde our [hour]”’ (nine o’clock, or prime), “aboute | the sixte our [noon], and the nynthe [three o’clock],” and finally “aboute the elleuenthe our” (four or five o’clock). At the end of the day, all of the workers are given the same wage. When those who have toiled longest complain that they deserve more than those who entered the vineyard late, the husbandman denies the claim and reminds them that they have each received the amount they agreed to. Christ concludes that the kingdom of heaven is like the vineyard: “So the laste schulen be the firste, and the firste the laste; for many ben clepid, but fewe ben chosun.” As early as Origen’s Commentary on Matthew (early third century), exegetes glossed

the vineyard as the Church and the hours of the day as world ages: the morning hour, Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; the sixth hour, Abraham to Moses; the ninth hour, Moses to Christ’s first advent; the eleventh hour, Christ’s advent to the end of the world. An impressive number of commentators discuss the implications of the vineyard parable, including Hilary of Poitiers, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, the authors of the Glossa ordinaria, Paul the Deacon, Haymo of Auxerre, Honorius Augustodunensis, and Ordericus Vitalis.? Hrabanus, who is typical of mainstream exegesis before the lemmatic technique associated with Anselm of Laon, explains the earlier ages, up to the appearance of the apostles in the eleventh hour, as the time of the Hebrew people, who worshiped God with a true faith (‘‘recta fide”): the patriarchs, doctors of the Law, and prophets. He further glosses the ages as phases in a historical matu-

ration process: morning corresponds to boyhood, third hour to adolescence, sixth hour to youth, ninth hour to old age (senectus), and eleventh hour to very old age (aetas decrepita).!° All the hours signify the various ° See Origen, Commentaria in Matthaeum 15.32, cols. 1344, 1348; Hilary of Poitiers, Commentarius in Matthaeum 20.6, cols. 1029-30; Bede, In Matthaei Evangelium expositio

3, cols. 87-88; Glossa ordinaria, 4:63B (“Nona senectus: quando sol id est calor aetatis descendit’’). Discussions in Wailes, fesus’ Parables, pp. 137-44; Luneau, L’histoire du

salut, p. 111; Carleton Brown, “The Author of The Pearl,” pp. 137-39; Roderich Schmidt, ‘“Aetates mundi,” pp. 303, 313; Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi, p. 91. The exegetical writers most likely to write about the world ages and senectus mundi were Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, the compilers of the Glossa ordinaria, and Honorius Augustodunensis. 10 Hrabanus Maurus, Commentarius in Matthaeum 6, cols. 1026-27. Hrabanus, a

44 THE WORLD GROWN OLD times when people have been called into the church. Those who enter the church even at the eleventh hour, in the last world age (or on their deathbeds), receive the same reward: the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, the eleventh hour was regularly explained as the novisstma hora, the last hour of 1 John 2.18: “My litle sones, the laste our [hour] is; and as 3e han herd, that antecrist cometh, now many antecristis ben maad; wherfor we witen, that it is the laste our.” !! This twofold gloss of the eleventh hour—as the last world age and as the time of Antichrist—helped to link the symbolic idea of the world grown old with eschatology and contempt of the world: 1 John 2.15—16 was the scriptural locus classicus for later writers on contempt of the world (see below, 3a and 3b), and verse 18 was glossed as the eleventh hour of the vineyard parable. The vineyard parable provides the framing context for a famous “textual” or “modern” sermon ad status in Middle English delivered at Paul’s Cross, London, by Thomas Wimbledon in the late 1380s. The sermon’s theme is “Redde racionem villicacionis tue” (“3elde reckynyng of thi baili” from Luke 16.2), but the protheme—the material that precedes and often anticipates the introduction of the theme and its division—is a gloss on the parable of the vineyard. After he retells the parable in his opening remarks, Wimbledon goes on to explain the “spiritual vndirstondyng”’ of the vineyard hours: To spiritual vndirstondyng, pis housholdere is oure lord Ihesu Crist pat is heed of be houshold of holichirche [Col. 1.18]. And pus he clepip men in diuerse houris of be day, pat is diuerse ages of be world: as in tyme of lawe of kynde he clepide by enspirynge Abel, Ennok, Noo, and Abraham; in tyme of pe Olde Lawe, Moyses, Dauid, Ysaye, and Jeremie; and in tyme of grace, apostelis, martiris, and confessoures, and virgines. Also he clepep men in diuerse agis: summe in childhod as Jon Baptist; summe on stat of wexenge as Jon be Euangelist; summe in stat of manhod as Peter and Andrew; and summe in old age as Gamaliel and Josep of Aramathie. And alle bese he clepip to trauayle / on his vyne pat is pe chirche, and pat on diuerse

maneres.!? (7-16)

student of Alcuin’s, was elected abbot of Tours in 822 and was appointed archbishop of Mainz in 847. He died in 856. He composed exhaustive summaries of the exegetical writings of Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Isidore, and the Venerable Bede; and his work provides an important witness to exegesis de senectute mundi. '1 See, for example, Bede, In epistolas septem catholicas 2.18, ed. Hurst, p. 295: ““Nouis-

simam horam nouissimum saeculi tempus quod nunc agitur dicit iuxta illam domini parabolam ubi operarios in uineam a prima hora, a tertia, a sexta, a nona, et ab undecima, narrat esse conductos.”’ 2 From the edition of Owen, p. 178. All subsequent quotations from Wimbledon’s sermon are taken from this edition, which is based on Corpus Christi College, Cam-

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 45 Wimbledon’s elucidation of his protheme exploits the most traditional exegesis of the vineyard parable while at the same time enhancing his sermon theme of “3elde reckynyng of thi baili” (“give an account of your stewardship”). He amplifies the protheme by explaining that the vineyard/ church requires various kinds of work: cutting away dead branches, making supports for the vines, and digging the soil. For this work the church has ordained three estates of society: “presthod, kny3thod, and laboreris”’ (24).

Human society needs the full participation of the three estates to fulfill God’s purposes, says Wimbledon: And o pyng y dar wel seye: pat he pat is neiper traueylynge in pis world on prayeris and prechynge for helpe of be puple as it fallip to prestis, neiber in fy3tinge a3enis tyrauntis and enemyes as it fallip to kny3tis, neiper trauaylynge on pe erpe as it fallib to laboreris. Whanne pe day of his reke[n]yng comep, pat is be ende of pis lif, ry3t as he lyuede here wipoutyn trauayle so he shal pere lacke pe reward of be peny pat is pe endeles ioye of Heuene. (55-60)

_ Wimbledon here links his protheme of the world ages (which he has in turn connected with the ages of man and then with the three estates) with his sermon theme of “3elde reckynyng of thi baili.” At the end of the six ages—at the world’s consummation and Judgment Day—mortals of what-

ever estate must give an account of their work in the “vineyard,” the church. The three estates provide a natural division of the sermon theme, and the division is followed by a subdivision of three questions for the estates: “How hast bou entred?” “How hast bou reulid?” and “How hast pou lyuyd?” Wimbledon’s sermon theme and its divisions are not only reminiscent of Langland’s Piers Plowman—with its tripartite divisions, focus on estates, emphasis on forms of living (Dowel, Dobet, Dobest), and concording phrases such as “‘Redde quod debes”’ and “Ite vos in vineam meam”’—they also seem to anticipate important aspects of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Chaucer was beginning work on the idea of the Tales at about the time Wimbledon was delivering his famous sermon at Paul’s Cross. The above passages constitute only a sample of the many allegorical explanations de senectute mundi of biblical passages put forward by the great

synthesizing exegetes of monastic culture and of what Beryl Smalley has bridge, MS 357, fols. 270r—282v, with line numbers in parentheses in the text. I have silently removed Owen’s brackets. According to Knight, Wimbledon’s sermon “‘is ex-

tant in thirteen English and two Latin manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century” (Wimbledon’s Sermon, p. 1). Knight also reports that Foxe printed it in Actes and Monuments (1562) and quotes Millar Maclure as calling it “the most famous sermon

ever delivered at Paul’s Cross” (Knight, p. 1). For a discussion of the sermon in the context of Langland’s Piers Plowman, see Bloomfield, Piers Plowman, pp. 87-89.

46 THE WORLD GROWN OLD characterized as “the Philo tradition.”’ Often the masters of the /ectio divina

regarded the number six in Scripture as a miniature allegory of the ages and as evidence that God implanted his plan of salvation, his sign of the world ages, in the book of his Word. But there were other, less abstract, uses of the idea of the world grown old in medieval thought and letters. b. The six thousand years from creation. The concept of six world ages gave rise to another important medieval historical tradition: calculating the years from creation. Medieval chroniclers and writers on time assigned specific years to the generations within the world ages, years based in part on the life spans of patriarchs mentioned in the Bible. Adam is said to have lived for 930 years, Seth for 807, and so forth. The most authoritative early patristic chronicler was Eusebius of Caesarea (fourth century). St. Jerome took over and recast the computations of Eusebius in his own Chronicon (known as Eusebius-Jerome). They cod-

ified the years from Adam to the Incarnation as 5,199; and most other chroniclers, influenced by Eusebius-Jerome, came up with similar figures: 4,994 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), 5,211 (Isidore of Seville); and 5,330 (Hrabanus Maurus in De computo. See Table 1, which summarizes Hrabanus’s calculations of the world ages and temporal eras according to the Septuagint version of the Bible.) Many people believed that the annus mundi—

the world’s era—would end on or near the six-thousandth year, even though the individual ages were not of one thousand years’ duration. But the Venerable Bede, who thoroughly recalculated the annus mundi in his extensive reflections on Easter, time, and history, formulated two chief objections to the traditional notions. First, in De tempore (703), he computed the years from creation according to the Hebrew Bible (‘“‘iuxta hebraicam veritatem’’) rather than the Septuagint because he felt that the Hebrew reckoning of years was more accurate than the Greek version. He concluded, ‘““The Lord was born 3,852 years after Adam.” !? Second, Bede ridiculed the idea that the world would end in the six-thousandth year. In De temporum ratione (725) he observed that according to traditional calculations the six-thousandth year had already come and gone sometime around a.p. 670. (Bede was born in 673.) He did adhere to the six world ages framework generally, as a symbolic pattern of history; but he declined to speculate on the exact date of the world’s consummation: 13 Bedae opera de temporibus, p. 134. In this volume, see De temporibus liber 16 (“De mundi aetatibus”), p. 303, and Epistola ad Pleguinam. The letter to the monk Plegwin was written in 708 to refute charges by an unidentified “David” that Bede had deviated from traditional computations of years from Adam. See Jones’s discussion, Bedae opera de temporibus, pp. 132-35. See also Ray, ““Bede, the Exegete,” esp. p. 130, and Siniscalco, ‘‘Le eta del mondo in Beda.” Note that elsewhere in Hrabanus’s De computo he, too,

used the Hebrew reckoning and determined that Christ was born 3,952 years after Adam.

ee

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 47

TABLE 1. Hrabanus Maurus, De computo, on the Six World Ages (“tuxta Septu-

aginta”’) and the Three Temporal Eras ,

2,242 | 1,072 | 942 | 485 | 589 |

Adam —Noah Noah-Abraham Abraham-—David David -Captivity Captivity- Christ Christ — end of world

Infancy Boyhood Adolescence Youth “Middle Age” Senescence 5,330

Adam — Moses Moses - Christ Christ — end of world

ante legem sub lege sub gratia

For in no way are those to be heeded who believe the state of this world was limited from the beginning by six thousand years, and who, lest they seem to contradict the Lord’s teaching, add that mortals do not know in what year of the sixth millennium the day of judgment shall come but that

its advent should be expected especially around the end of the sixthousandth year. When you ask them where they read these things that should be thought or believed, they soon become grumpy because they have nothing to reply. “Have you not read in Genesis,” they say, “that God made the world in six days?” From which we should believe that the end of the world is appointed in about six thousand years."

Despite Bede’s arch arguments and common sense, the six-thousandyear tradition (sometimes updated to the seven-thousand-year tradition) continued into the later Middle Ages, probably because of the importance of Jerome and Isidore. Cursor mundi speaks of the years from Adam to Christ’s harrowing of hell as “four thusand yeir in wa, / Thre hundret and four yeir al sua” (1443-44). Thomas Wimbledon, in the Paul’s Cross sermon quoted above, cites Hildegard of Bingen as witness to the seven-

_ thousand-year duration of the world: “Ry3t as on pe seuenbe day God maad be world, so in be seuene pousand 3eer pe world schal passe; and ry3t as in be sixte day man was maad and formed, ry3t so in pe sixe bousand

| of 3eris he was bout a3en and reformed” (555-—58).'* As influential as was the six- or seven-thousand year tradition throughout the Middle Ages, the symbolic interpretations were even more influential in medieval thought generally. \4 Bede, De temporum ratione 67, col. 572. See also Augustine, City of God 22.30, and

Ambrose on Luke, ed. Adriaen, p. 238 (and Lerner, “The Medieval Return,” pp. 5253). [he view is also found in Isidore of Seville and Hrabanus Maurus. 5 A reference to Hildegard’s Scivias 3, vision 11.17. See the edition of Fiihrkotter, p- 585. See also Knight, Wimbledon’s Sermon, note to lines 841-51, p. 134; and Emmerson, “The Apocalypse in Medieval Culture,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages,

ed. Emmerson and McGinn, pp. 298-99.

48 THE WORLD GROWN OLD 2. Apologetics, divine retribution, and the world grown old Some other early Christian writers, notably St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in the mid-third century and St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, adapted biblical eschatology for specific purposes: to support Christians in their persecutions and to refute those pagans who blamed Christianity for the decline of the Roman Empire. Some medieval writers also attributed contemporary conditions to the Lord’s wrath at human sin.

Cyprian directed his rhetorical attack against an outspoken pagan named Demetrianus, who denounced Christians as the cause of the natural disasters and political cataclysms of his day. As to these cosmic disruptions, Cyprian avers, Since you are ignorant of divine knowledge, and a stranger to the truth, you must in the first place know this, that the world has now grown old, and does not abide in that strength in which it formerly stood; nor has it that vigour and force (uigore et robore) which it formerly possessed. ‘Thus, even were we silent, and if we alleged no proofs from the sacred Scriptures and from the divine declarations, the world itself is now announcing, and bearing witness to its decline (occasum sui) by the testimony of its failing estate.!©

The common ground (although only Cyprian’s argument has survived) seems to have been that both disputants regarded the world as having grown old and sick. This is a particularly empirical use of the idea of the world grown old— more so than many later medieval applications, which sometimes were highly symbolic, as we have already seen. When Cyprian says that the world has now grown old (“‘senuisse iam mundum’’), he speaks metaphorically to a certain extent; but he also means that wars, famine, floods, plagues, and a decline in the earth’s fertility all offer evidence that the world has become worn out in the way that organic things decay and eventually die, even as Christ had warned in Matt. 24.!? He argues, polemically, that such degeneration is in the nature of things and a part of God’s plan, that these kinds of disruptions should be expected in the last days, and that pagan infidelity and not Christian impiety is to blame for the evident decay: 16 Ad Demetrianum 3, ed. Simonetti, p. 36; trans. Wallis, Writings of Cyprian, p. 425. '7 In his polemics Cyprian alleges that boys have gray hair (the puer-senex motif: see

below, pp. 57-58). For a standard reading of Cyprian in relation to the later history of senectus mundi and millenarianism, see Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, esp. ““The Sor-

rows of St. Cyprian,” pp. 22-70. For an attempted link between Cyprian’s view of the world’s old age and a classical view, see Pascal, “Lucrezio e Cipriano.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 49 Moreover, that wars continue frequently to prevail, that death (sterilitas) and famine accumulate anxiety, that health is shattered by raging diseases, that the human race is wasted by the desolation of pestilence, know that this was foretold; that evils should be multiplied in the last times, and that misfortunes should be varied; and that as the day of judgment is now draw-

ing nigh, the censure of an indignant God should be more and more aroused for the scourging of the human race. For these things happen not, as your false complaining and ignorant inexperience of the truth asserts and repeats, because your gods are not worshipped by us, but because God is not worshipped by you.!®

Cyprian goes on to suggest that the evils of the present time, although common to pagans and Christians, are punishments against a godless people. Senectus mundi thus became a topic of debate in early Christian apologetics and later provided the point of departure for Augustine’s reflections on the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity in The City of God. Cyprian’s rhetorical discourse also provided language for later homiletic and eschatological writers. St. Augustine wrote arguably his greatest work, The City of God, to explain why Rome—impervious to foreign invasion for a thousand years—

had been conquered by Alaric and the Goths. Augustine undertook the project, begun in 413 and completed in 426, to refute those who blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome; and to do that, he investigated world history from the Fall of Adam and Eve through the early history of humans

and the Jews to the sixth age of the world. Drawing upon the arguments of Cyprian and Ambrose, he testifies that the whole course of history has been a struggle between the city of God (the saints: the line from Seth, including Noah, Abraham, David, and Christ) and the city of man (the

sinners: the line from Cain, including Ham, Ishmael, Nimrod, and Judas). Earthly cities, Rome and even Jerusalem, are not places to be cherished or embraced: humans are pilgrim wanderers in the world, the saeculum; and the downfall of Rome, cataclysmic as it may appear to fifth-century Romans, is part of a providential design leading to the end of the age. Two generations after Isidore of Seville, Julian (d. 690), archbishop of Toledo, adapted the six ages of the world to his brand of Christian polemic against the Jews. In De comprobatione sextae aetatis, Julian—of Jewish descent but born of Christian parents—argued against the claims of Spanish

Jews that the sixth age of the world had not yet arrived, since (said the Jews) the requisite number of years for the fifth age had not yet been fulfilled. The Jews, that is, expected Christ in a.m. 5000 according to ex'8 Ad Demetrianum 5, ed. Simonetti, p. 37; trans. Wallis in Writings of Cyprian, p. 427:

50 THE WORLD GROWN OLD egesis on Ps. 89.4 and 2 Peter 3.8 (“For a thousynde 3eer ben bifore thin izen; as 3istirdai, which is passid”; ‘‘o dai anentis God is as a thousynde 3eeris, and a thousynde 3eeris ben as o dai’). Julian denounces this reasoning with considerable anti-Semitic zeal, setting out to refute the “rabid barkings of Jews” (“rabidis Iudaeorum latratibus”).!? He works from the Septuagint accounts of generations (as opposed to Bede, who used Hebrew reckonings); and he maintains that the six days/six ages analogy refers to ages and generations within the six ages rather than to specific numbers of years (1.4—6, 3.1-2). Adducing prophetic signs and typological readings of the Old Testament, Julian argued that the Messiah, Jesus Christ, had already arrived, in the sixth world age. Book 3 of his De comprobatione is devoted to a detailed discussion of the ages and the generations according to Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine, and Isidore. In Julian we witness the kind of polemic—also prominent in Peter the Venerable’s twelfth-century Adversus Iudaeorum inveteratam duritiem—that occurred in medieval discussions of Scripture when the Jewish faith was considered.”° There was a tendency throughout the Middle Ages to discern God’s wrath in contemporary disasters. In part this resulted from Christ’s words in Matt. 24.7 concerning signs of the end—‘“Folk schal rise togidere a3ens folc, and rewme azens rewme, and pestilences, and hungris, and the erthemouynges schulen be bi placis.”’ Since there was no lack of civil unrest, wars, plagues, famines, or earthquakes in the Middle Ages, medieval moralists kept active interpreting current conditions as signs of the end. Archbishop Wulfstan of York in his eschatological homilies regularly explained Danish persecutions as God’s judgments against the lax morals of the

English people. |

Perhaps the most famous representations in medieval letters of divine vengeance on a sinning people are those in Boccaccio’s Decameron, in Petrarch’s letters on the plague and the Avignon papacy, and in Savonarola’s sermons. Although Boccaccio does not dwell on the causes of the Black Death of 1348, he does mention that “Some say that it descended upon the human race through the influence of the heavenly bodies, others that it was a punishment signifying God’s righteous anger at our iniquitous '° De comprobatione sextae aetatis 1.1, ed. Hillgarth, p. 149. He also mentions—among many other vilifications—that they dispute in ‘“cancerosis sermonibus” (1.1) and that

their arguments issue “de antro malitiae suae” (1.2). He calls the Jews “impietatis operarii” and “filii scelerati” (1.3). It is always “‘fides nostra” but “‘perfidia uestra” (1.5). For Julian’s life and career, see Hillgarth’s introduction, pp. viii-xxi and lxv—Ixvi, and Murphy, “Julian of Toledo,” pp. 1, 5-7. Hillgarth knows of only three manuscripts of De comprobatione, so it is unlikely that Bede was acquainted with it. See also Charles Jones, “Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,” p. 194. 20 See Peter’s scorn for the ‘Talmud and Jewish legends in Adversus Iudaeorum duritiem 5, “De ridiculis et stultissimis fabulis Iudeorum.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 51 way of life.”” He goes on to describe in lurid detail the ravages of the plague

in Florence. In a famous letter concerning the Avignon curia, Petrarch describes conditions in “the Babylon of the West.” Thomas Brinton, bishop of Rochester, in his sermon 44 on “Simul in unum diues et pauper” (Ps. 49.2: “togidere the riche man and the pore in to oon”), composed in

1377, speaks of adversities that can befall a people: “times of peace [change] to times of war, fertile earth to sterile earth, if animals die, bodies sicken, and spirits decline (anime multipliciter periclitantur), let these and

other like things be attributed to the dominance of Saturn or some other planets by some; I, however, impute these totally to our sins, for according to the scripture, ‘Skilfuli we suffren these things’ ” (Gen. 42.21).?!

3. Moral topics a. Homiletic exhortation. After Augustine’s exegetical historiography had established the idea of the world grown old as an informing principle of Christian dogma, later writers, inspired by Pope Gregory the Great (died 604), turned to sentum mundi for purposes of moral suasion. In the first of his homilies on the Gospels, preached to clerics and the Roman people, Gregory urged Christians to consider their lives from the perspective of the world’s old age and the threat of Doomsday. Explaining Luke 21.25-33, on Christ’s second advent, the fig tree, and the passing

away of heaven and earth, Gregory declares that Christ wished to denounce the aging world (“senescentem mundum’”’) so that “he might restrain us in his love.” In language that may have been derived from Cyprian and that influenced later homiletic writers, Gregory testifies that the end is near: “appropinquantem ejus terminum” or “appropinquante ejus termino....”’ Rather than cowering in fear at this threat, we should scorn the world and rejoice in the nearness of Doomsday, when evil will cease

and the reign of the saints will begin, though not on earth: “Qui ergo appropinquante mundi fine non gaudet . . .” (“Whoever does not rejoice in the approaching end of the world ...”). The world, says Gregory, is like rotten fruit, as we can see all around us: “Novis quotidie et crebrescentibus malis mundus urgetur”’ (“The world is afflicted daily with new and growing evils’). Like Cyprian some two and a half centuries before him, Gregory believed that natural and man-made disasters, in his case 21 Decameron, First Day, trans. McWilliam, p. 50. For Petrarch’s letter see Letter 8 (to Idebrandino Cont, bishop of Padua), in Babylon on the Rhone, trans. Coogan, pp. 64-65. The Latin of Brinton’s sermon 44 is from Sister Devlin’s edition, p. 198; translation in The World of Piers Plowman, ed. Krochalis and Peters, p. 122.

52 THE WORLD GROWN OLD the Lombard invasions, foreshadowed the world’s end, its ruin. But the world’s sickness was its salvation.” Gregory’s homiletic thought and his wording exerted a great influence on the next generations of writers de senectute mundi: the Venerable Bede

(673-735) and the Old English homilists and poets. Bede was, after Augustine, the premier medieval writer on time, especially on the dating of Easter and on historical periods. In the Ecclesiastical History 1.32 he includes a letter of Gregory the Great to King Ethelbert that echoes Gregory’s first homily: ‘“Adpropinquante autem eodem mundi termino. .. .” This and similar phrases appear in English homilies of the Anglo-Saxon period—in the vernacular eschatology of the Blickling Homilies (c. 971), the Vespasian Homilies, and the homilies of Wulfstan, archbishop of York. The phrasing from Wulfstan’s famous Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (c. 1014)

ultimately derives from Gregory (or Gregory by way of Bede): Deos worold is on ofste, & hit nealecd pam ende, py hit is on worolde aa swa leng swa wyrse; & swa hit sceal nyde for folces synnan zr Antecristes tocyme yfelian swype, & huru hit wyrd penne egeslic & grimlic wide on worolde.?3

(This world hastens onward, and it nears the end; and thus it 1s in the world— the longer it endures the worse. And so it must needs deteriorate greatly before the coming of Antichrist because of the sins of the people, and indeed it becomes consequently dreadful and terrible over all the world.)

The phrasing might also have come from Blickling Homily 5: “Pes middangeard daga gehwylce feallep and to ende efstep.”?* The point is not 22 Homiliae in Evangelia 1.1.1-5, cols. 1077-81. See also Moralia in fob (Epistola ad Leandrum) 1, p. 2: “Quia enim mundi iam tempora malis crebrescentibus termino adpropinquante turbata sunt ...’’ (“because now the times of the world, with the burgeoning iniquities in the world’s approaching end, have become thrown into confusion”’); the Gregorian summary of Christ’s parable of the fig tree in the Glossa ordinaria, 4:211B (PL 114:335-36); Chenu, La théologie au douzieme siécle, p. 87 (Ordericus Vitalis),

and McGinn, Visions of the End, pp. 62-65 and 299 n. 2 John the Deacon’s appraisal of Gregory on the end of the world). See also Wenzel’s analysis of the appropinquabit finis mundi formula (Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric, p. 201 and n. 9g), and the phrasing of the Vulgate text of 1 Cor. 10.11 as analyzed by Curtius, European Literature, p. 28. 23 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, p. 267. I quote from Bethurum’s composite edition of Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 113, and British Library, MS Cotton Nero A I. 24 Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, p. 59. See also Secundum Marcum (so titled by Be-

thurum), which draws upon material from /Elfric, Adso (author of Libellus de Antichristo), and the Bible to depict the evils of his own time and the iniquities yet to come. See Homily 5 in Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, pp. 136-37. See also Cross, ““Gregory, Blickling Homily X and AElfric’s Passio S. Mauricit.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 53 actual derivation but a common homiletic rhetoric de senectute mundi—a “textual environment,” as Paul Strohm terms it—in a specifically eschatological context, a context of worldly degeneration leading to apocalyptic destruction, with an urgent appeal for repentance. The eschatological sentiments in the Anglo-Saxon homilies were not new; they are at least as old as Christianity. But Wulfstan stresses the sins of his people, the magnitude

of evils, and the proximity of Doomsday rather than the millennium or the approaching joys of heaven. The Anglo-Saxon homilist envisioned a

crisis atmosphere for his congregation in order that they might purge themselves of sin on both a personal and a collective level. There is here no evolution of thought de senectute mundi, for either the Old English homilists or the poets. The homilists recognized in the idea of the world grown old an opportunity for exhortation; the poets, considering the same concept two centuries before Wulfstan’s homilies, apparently saw in the idea a context for their reflections on mutability and loss. The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Guthlac A, and The Ruin, all from the Exeter

Book, evoke images of transience, mutability, and the decay of human institutions. The poet or poets of these “elegiac” lyrics provide a personal—and hence unique—view of the world’s decline (and of other traditional rhetorical topics, including the man-as-wanderer and whi sunt? motifs). The narrator of The Wanderer, in mid-poem, declares, Swa bes middangeard

ealra dogra gehwam __ dreosed ond feallep, forpon ne meg weorpan wis __ wer, er he age wintra del in woruldrice.”° (So this middle-earth each day decays and falls; therefore a man cannot grow wise until he experiences his share of worldly winters.)

The Seafarer poet speaks of the weakening of the human race over time, a

theme that Joseph Trahern traces to Cyprian but that is implicit in the metaphor of the world grown old; and the poet of Guthlac A proclaims 25 The best dates for poems such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin relate to the execution of the Exeter Book—g50-1000—rather than their date of composition, which may be eighth (George K. Anderson, Literature of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 160) or ninth century (Pearsall, English Poetry, p. 292). Greenfield and Calder say “from the seventh to the tenth” centuries (New Critical History, p. 130). There has been considerable speculation about the dates, but it is safe to say that they precede Wulfstan and the Blickling Homilies. 6 The Exeter Book 62-65, ed. Krapp and Dobbie. Of these lines Burrow observes: ‘‘Perhaps the idea is a learned and subtle one that since the world itself is in its last age, the senectus mundi, only men who are themselves old can really understand it”: The Ages of Man, p. 107. See also p. 83 (on The Seafarer).

54 THE WORLD GROWN OLD that the earth’s prosperity and glory—its bled—have degenerated because of a cooling of charity, “colap Cristes lufu” (see below, 3d[3]). The Ruin contains powerful images of a civilization in decay—cities reared by “giants” (“enta geweorc’’) who are not around to build them up again. The

usual explanation for the special tone of the elegiac lyrics is that their Christian authors used traditional heroic motifs to describe a universal condition. As Derek Pearsall has written, ““What The Wanderer and The Seafarer do is to embody the predicament of mortality in the imagery of secular and heroic life and then out of loss and destitution to generate the need for the Christian consolation, which is stated in the closing lines.” ”’

It is clear that Old English poets incorporated Gregorian homiletic phrases in their elegiac verses. More than that, they discerned in personal exile, loss, ruin, and mutability the outlines or foreshadowings of a greater loss and a “sinking down” and “falling” (“dreosed ond feallep’’) of the world itself. ““Ealdad eorpan bled,” says the poet of Guthlac: the earth’s glory grows old. The idea of the world grown old in Anglo-Saxon elegiac poetry finally cannot be disentangled from a vision of personal doom. To this extent the idea in the early English poets is different from, though couched in almost the same language as, the idea in the homiletic and patristic authors. The ancient patristic trope is transformed in the poetic environment.

b. Contempt of the world and clerical satire. We can discern a new moral phase in the development of senectus mundi—again, not an evolu-

| tionary step—in the writings of eleventh- and twelfth-century writers on the contempt of the world, including Peter Damian, Bernard of Cluny, Benzo of Alba, Serlo of Wilton, and Hugh of St.-Victor. These writers, who exposed human sins on an epic scale and sometimes in lurid language, | wrote of the world’s senescence to explain why the world should be held in contempt. They developed the thought of Gregory and his homiletic imitators but turned that thought inward and against mankind, scorning the flesh and human weakness with considerable rhetorical flourish. As Cardinal Lotario dei Segni, later Pope Innocent III, explained the case, the greater world degenerates because of the moral failings of men and women, and mankind falls further because of the world’s general viciousness.”8 The great eleventh- and twelfth-century writers de contemptu mundi

27 Pearsall, English Poetry, p. 52. For an amplified discussion of this Anglo-Saxon material in its relation to the world grown old and eschatology, see Trahern, “‘Fatalism and the Millennium,” esp. pp. 165-68. For further remarks (on transience rather than on senium mundi specifically), see Fell, “Perceptions of Transience.” Swanton offers a survey of the urban ruins topic: English Literature before Chaucer, pp. 126-27. 28 Innocent III, De miseria condicionis humane 1.25; see also Gregory’s Moralia in Fob

6.16. William Matthews has noted how “two rival themes began to dominate the world

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 55 generally professed an interest in monastic reform; in this way the idea of

the world grown old became part of the Investiture Controversy and also | appeared in the clerical satires of the so-called goliardic poets, who denounced the papal curia, money, wealthy prelates—indeed, all aspects of the unreformed church. A poet such as Walter of Chatillon, writing in the time of the English King Henry II and Thomas Becket, described his own declining fortunes against a backdrop of a venal ecclesiastical hierarchy and of a world hastening to its end. In his well-known poem “‘Licet eger cum egrotis,” Walter writes of clerical decay in the traditional way and points especially to confusions of age and youth: In diebus iuventutis timent annos senectutis, ne fortuna destitutis desit eis splendor cutis, et dum querunt medium, vergunt in contrarium; fallit enim vitium specie virtutis.

Ut iam loquar inamenum, sanctum chrisma datur venum, juvenantur corda senum, nec refrenant motus renum. Senes et decipiti, quasi modo geniti, nectaris illiciti hauriunt venenum.’° of ideas and books” in the twelfth century: “contempt of the world in devotional and ascetic writings, adulation of youth and a springtime world in the literature of romance.” And again: “Romantic love and contempt of the world, adulation of youth and denigration of age, are dawn and dusk of the same medieval day.” See ‘““The Wife of Bath,” pp. 415 and 417. 29 Die Lieder, p. 46. For other examples of Walter’s verses de senectute mundi, see his “Felix erat studium,” which laments the decline of scholarship, and ‘“‘Versa est in luctum,” which contains the lines, referring to judges of the church, “quorum status hodie / peior est quam heri” (both lyrics in Moralisch-satirische Gedichte, pp. 145 and 97). See also “Florebat olim studium,” a lyric de senectute mundi from the thirteenth-century Benediktbeuern manuscript, in Carmina Burana 1.1, ed. Hilka and Schumann, pp. 78; and various lyrics on the world’s senescence in goliardic measure and formerly attributed to Walter Map, including those beginning “Ecce mundus moritur vitio sepultus; / ordo rerum vertitur, cessat Christi cultus”; “Missus sum in vineam circa horam nonam,” attributed to Walter of Chatillon; and ““Cum declinent homines a tenore veri, / quorum status hodie pejor est quam heri”: in Wright, ed., Latin Poems, pp. 149-50,

56 THE WORLD GROWN OLD (In days of youth [the young] fear the years of old age, lest when they lose their good fortune, the beauty of their flesh may fail them. And while they seek the middle course, they diverge into the contrary way; for vice

. deceives in the appearance of virtue. Now I speak in bitterness, since holy oil 1s sold. The hearts of old men are rejuvenated, and they do not restrain their lustful urgings. Old and decrepit men, as if just born, drink in the

poison of forbidden nectar.) | In this typical lyric Walter brings together images of old age, youth and its beauty, and corrupted holy oil to create a powerful moral indictment of the church. It is a world out of control (Curtius would say a “world upside-down”) but a saeculum frequently depicted in Latin and goliardic venality satire.

| An eleventh-century lyric beginning ‘‘Ad occasum cuncta ruunt,” on the world upside-down and the untoward strength of “Sir Penny” (num-

| mus), depicts the world growing old through clerical depravity. “Totus mundus in errorum / voluitur caligine,” says the anonymous poet. The -_-very earth brings forth weaker and depraved human specimens: Totus iam mundus senescens malos edit homines,

et in bonis imbecilles, oe et etate fragiles.*°

(Now the entire world, growing old, produces wicked, morally weak men, , men frail with age.)

This lyric denounces nummus as the ruler of everything: Nummus erit imperator, nummum colunt principes, nummus regit, nummus regnat nummus et iustificat. 152-59, and 163-66. See also Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, pp. 317-19; Raby, “The Songs of Walter of Chatillon” and “Poems of the School of Walter of Chatillon,” in Secular Latin Poetry, 2:190-204 and 204-14; and Mann, “Satiric Subject.” 30 Entitled ““Gedicht tiber das Sittenverderbniss der Zeit” by Sudendorf, in Registrum, 2:3. A twelfth-century lyric de contemptu mundi, which has been attributed to Alan

of Lille and which may be the original version of the well-known Cur mundus militat, begins: “Mundus deciduus et homo fragilis, / Totus in dubio, totus instabilis, / Tam cito labitur ut aqua labilis.”” See Benton, “Mundus deciduus.” Joseph Keller (among others) has argued that when specific events occasioned complaint in medieval Latin verse poetry “against the times,” the complaints tended to be general and conventional rather than pointed or specific; see “The Triumph of Vice.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 57 Latin and vernacular poems on abuses of nmummus became an important subgenre of lyrics de contemptu mundi and de senectute mundi, as John Yunck

and others have demonstrated. The false coin as a metaphor for human debasement would become prominent in late-fourteenth-century English poetry.

In clerical satire and complaint the motif of the world upside-down appears often in conjunction with the motif of the world grown old. The world has been turned on its head because it has grown old; or, conversely,

the world has grown old because the old ethics and values have been overturned, with the result that absurdities and atrocities have occurred on earth. Curtius has traced this motif to classical literature: “stringing together impossibilities.” Of these absurdities, none was more frequently invoked than the child wise beyond his years, or the “little wise ass,” a variant of the puer senilis or puer senex commonplace.*! The little wise ass also appears in “Florebat olim studium,” a lyric de senectute mundi from the Carmina Burana (Benediktbeuern manuscript), in which young boys scorn learning and teachers in favor of seeming wisdom: Iam pueris astutia Contingit ante tempora, Qui per malevolentiam

| Excludunt sapientiam.* (Now boys’ mental faculties are attained before their time, and they reject wisdom through sheer spite.)

Boys of ten, according to the clerical author, even call themselves “masters.” In another lyric, “Contra avaros,” a boy similarly rejects the old ways, which causes the author to exclaim, “(Omnis ad hoc hominum animus senescit” (“In this respect the whole mind of men grows old”’).3 31 Curtius, European Literature, pp. 98-101; impossibilia, p. 95. Curtius terms the puer senilis trope “‘a hagiographic cliché” (p. 100). For extended treatment of the ‘“‘aged boy”

motif in Middle English literature and art, see Burrow, The Ages of Man, chap. 3. The correlative to the little wise ass is the foolish old man, alluded to in the above lyric of Walter of Chatillon. Crowther quotes a Middle English sermon that discusses “the three fathers that man has (God, his priest, and men of age).”’ But the preacher laments: ‘The ij fadur pat we shall worshippe is man of age—but not oonly for is age, but for is vertewes lyvynge. But now-adaies old men ben full of vices, and so pei be but children. And per-for cursed is pe child of an hundrep 3ere old” (“Now-Adaies,” p. 276). The italics are in Crowther’s article, which is on the topological properties of the word “nowadays.” The counterpart in bono of the puer senex is the wise and virtuous young woman: puella senex, like Petrarch’s Grisilde. See Burrow, The Ages of Man, pp. 122-23. 32 Curtius, European Literature, p. 94. 33 Wright, ed., Latin Poems, p. 155.

58 THE WORLD GROWN OLD The little-wise-ass trope (of the world-upside-down motif) survives in English medieval poetry as well. In the mid-fourteenth-century alliterative

| debate poem Wynnere and Wastoure, which contains an attack on friars along with a dialogue about work and the common profit, the anonymous author envisions a society in disarray, a vision that derives from the Latin moral-satiric tradition: Forthi sayde was a sawe of Salomon the wyse, It hyeghte harde appone honde, hope I no noper, When wawes waxen schall wilde and walles bene doun And hares appon herthe-stones schall hurcle in hire fourme And eke boyes of blode with boste and with pryde Schall wedde ladyes in londe and lede hem at will, Thene dredfull domesdaye it draweth neghe aftir. Bot whoso sadly will see and the sothe telle Say it newely will neghe or es neghe here. Whylome were lordes in londe pat loued in thaire hertis To here makers of myrthes bat matirs couthe fynde And now es no frenchipe in fere bot fayntnesse of hert,

| Wyse wordes withinn pat wroghte were neuer Ne redde in no romance pat ever renke herde. Bot now a childe appon chere withowtten chin-wedys Pat never wroghte burgh witt thies wordes togedire Fro he can jangle als a jaye and japes telle __ He schall be lenede and louede and lett of a while Wele more pan be man that made it hymseluen.**

The poet weaves together prophecies of Doomsday (from Geoffrey of Monmouth and a type of lyric) with a lament for noble patronage and an

| attack on a new class of minstrels, whom he scornfully characterizes as jangling, beardless boys. This is a skillful rewriting of the Latin little wise ass in an original context, and to that extent it is reminiscent of Chaucer’s

setting of the estates-satire tradition in his General Prologue to The Can- , terbury Tales. An enormous number of clerical lyrics de senectute mundi have survived,

and most of these make good use of rhetorical conventions and classical

| motifs. Some modern observers might claim that these poets exploited thoroughly conventional themes, which is true to a certain extent. But the popularity of the satirical themes, including that of the world grown old, 34 Ed. Trigg, lines 10-28. Thorlac Turville-Petre argues that Wynnere and Wastoure concerns “how far society has degenerated in consequence of the decline in moral values” (“The Prologue of Wynnere and Wastoure,” p. 27).

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 59 provides evidence of a persistent concern. The way to treat clerical abuses was to set them in a context of the world’s degeneration in its latter days; and writers returned to the theme again and again because they believed it was accurate and fitting as a characterization of their worldly estate. On occasion, writers combined the periodization of history with hom-

ily, contempt of the world, and dire predictions of the second Coming. An example of such a manipulation of schemes occurs in De guatuor vigilia noctis (On the Four Night Watches) of Gerhoh, provost of Reichersberg in Bavaria (died 1169) and author of a treatise on Antichrist. A conservative

thinker who detested what he called the “novelties” of his era, Gerhoh characterized his own time as the fourth “watch” (an allusion to the moment when Jesus walked on the water [Matt. 14, Mark 6]) and as a time of moral corruption and terror after the era sub gratia.>> He believed that the fourth watch began with Pope Gregory VII and that only a few righteous men, the “poor men of Christ,” could serve as watchmen until the Last Judgment. Gerhoh in this work enlists historiography in the service of penitential thought and of contempt of the world; he uses similar arguments from corruption to denounce “novelties.” 6 Nor was Gerhoh by any means unique in his speculative historical schemes, as the works of Hildegard of Bingen, Otto of Freising, and Joachim of Fiore attest.

c. The world upside-down. Curtius identified this motif as a commonplace: the whole world has been turned on its head; nothing is as it was originally ordained.?’ He traces the motif from Archilochus and Virgil | through the Carolingian poet Theodulf and Walafrid Strabo to Chrétien de Troyes, Arnaut Daniel, and Breughel. He cites and analyzes ‘‘Florebat olim studium” from the Carmina Burana with its “stringing together impossibilities” (adynata), including the little-wise-ass trope, already mentioned above (3b). As with so many of these subtopics, this commonplace has both topical and larger thematic applications. Much of the literature de contemptu mundi is predicated on a world upside-down, with the natural order inverted because of human sin. John Gower’s Mirour de l’omme and Vox clamantis both posit a topsy-turvy world.

d. Figurative expressions. Reflections on the world’s old age and on contempt of the world generated additional figurative expressions. Four especially prominent tropes were [1] the disease of the world, [2] the twilight of the world, [3] the cooling of charity, and [4] nowadays. These expressions 35 On traditional interpretations of the vigiliae in Gregory the Great and the Glossa ordinaria, see Robertson and Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition, p. 149, and (in relation to Piers Plowman) Burrow, “Langland Nel Mezzo del Cammin,” pp. 22-23. 36 Gerhoh, Liber de novitatibus, as quoted in Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, p. 321; and Spérl, Grundformen hochmittelalterlicher Geschichtsanschauung, p. 121. 37 European Literature, pp. 94-98.

60 THE WORLD GROWN OLD in earlier literature denoted specific and empirically verifiable conditions,

as early Christians believed, but in the later Middle Ages the turns of phrase lost their literal character and became part of the general rhetoric de contemptu mundi and de senectute mundi.

[1] The disease of the world. Cyprian speaks of a worldly condition of disease in Ad Demetrianum and also in De mortalitate, a tract written to

fortify Christians whose faith was shaken by persecutions and by the plague. They did not understand why the pestilence should strike equally at nonbelievers and believers, to which Cyprian answered that the world itself—before humans exchange corruption for incorruptibility and eternity at the end of time—is subject to disease and old age. And we, he says, should regard death as a release and not an affliction. Ambrose too, glossing Luke 21.9 and observing that “we are in the world’s twilight,” points out that wars and other calamities provide evidence of the world’s imminent ruin—“et nondum est finis” (‘and the end is not yet”). He adduces ‘“quaedam aegritudines mundi” (“certain diseases of the world’’): the world’s disease is hunger; the world’s disease is plague; the world’s disease is persecution.*® Ambrose is concerned that Christ’s words should be understood as having a direct and immediate, as opposed to a merely metaphorical, value. This is exegesis by appeal to experience. But later on, the disease metaphor would come to have poetic and rhetorical value—in the “‘mislice adla” (various diseases) of the eschatological tenth Blickling Homily (4.p. 971), in Damian’s figure of rotten fruit falling before its time (De contemptu saeculi 33, derived from Gregory on the fig tree), or in Innocent III’s declaration that man and world are both sick and that their

sickness reinforces and infects one another.*? ,

[2] The twilight of the world. An even more popular expression, which, like the phrase “the eleventh hour,” has become part of a universal figurative idiom, is the “twilight of the world” as a trope for the world’s old age and its impending end (“night coming on”). Although it is impossible 38 Ambrose, Expositio Euangelit secundum Lucam 10.10, ed. Adriaen, p. 348. See also

Eucherius of Lyons, De contemptu mundi: ““Postrema mundi aetas referta est malis tamquam morbis senectus” (col. 722). (“The final world age is filled with evils just as old age is filled with diseases.”’) , 3° Blickling Homilies, p. 107; Damian, Apologeticum de contemptu saecult, col. 289; Innocent, De miseria condicionis humane 1.25. See also the poem beginning “Praesta, Jhesu, quod postulo” (Against the Lollards, 1381), which calls England “pestifera” because of the Lollards; another poem, beginning “Heu! quanta desolatio Angliae praestatur” (On the Council of London, 1382), which contains the line “In nos pestilentia saeva jam crescit” (“among us a dire plague now grows”); and a third poem, beginning ‘“‘Ecce dolet Anglia luctibus imbuta” (On the Pestilence), which depicts a world turned to wickedness because of the plague: “Heu! jam totus vertitur mundus in malignum.” See Wright, ed., Political Poems, 1:233, 253, and 279. * On “night coming on,” see Curtius, European Literature, pp. go-91.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 61 to trace the exact origin of this archetypal expression, two likely candidates are the concepts of the eleventh hour and the Augustinian “twilights”’ of the individual world ages, especially of the sixth. In De Genesi contra Manichaeos Augustine discerns special beginnings and closures, mornings and evenings, for each world age on the model of God’s days of creation. The

“morning” of the second age, Noah to Abraham, is a second chance for the world, a new beginning after the oblivion of Noah’s Flood, which is the “evening” of the first age. The morning of the sixth age was Christ’s Incarnation, and the evening will be Christ’s second advent. Augustine’s metaphor, like so many of his formulations, is mystical, even rhapsodic, and certainly poetic.*! Later poets and other medieval writers speak of the world’s twilight in several contexts. An anonymous Latin lyric, which begins “Qui mihi ruricolas optavi carmine musas” and which was once attributed to Cyprian or Augustine, describes how “umbrato venienti vespere mundo” (“with the world cast into shadow by advancing evening’”’), the sun will fall and light will fail. Similarly Peter Damian, in his Hymnus Sanctae Mariae ad ves-

perum, tells how the entire world praises the Virgin, “Ex qua sub mundi uespere / Sol ortus est iustitiae” (“from whom in the world’s twilight has _ risen the sun of justice’’).? Alexander of Hales, a thirteenth-century Franciscan commentator on the Apocalypse, glossing Jer. 6.4 (“for shadewis ben maad lengere in the euentide’’), declares, “As if he might say: ‘In the world’s coming twilight’ (mundo advesperascente), that is, declining to its end, the shadows—namely, the darkness of sinners—shall be extended, that is, more prolonged in their effect.” * Alexander exercises the glosser’s prerogative of troping a trope, of glossing the gloss, in metaphoric, halting, figurative language, the poetry of enthusiastic Franciscan exegesis.

A final representative example of this metaphor, though others could be cited, occurs in the great compendium against witchcraft, Malleus maleficarum, the “Hammer of Witches,” compiled by Heinrich Institoris and +! For a discussion of the morning/evening motif in Augustine, see Schwarte, Die Vorgeschichte der augustinischen Weltalterlehre, pp. 40-43; and Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, p. 18 (table 1). On the relationship between Roman political events, The City of God, and the world grown old, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, chap. 25. ® For “Qui mihi ruricolas,” see Carmen de resurrectione mortuorum, col. 1056; for Peter Damian’s poem, see L’opera poetica di S. Pier Damiani, p. 124. 4 Alexander of Hales, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. Wachtel, p. 352. Alexander’s commentary is both historical and specific, glossing the New Jerusalem in Revelation as “a prediction of the Franciscan and Dominican orders” (Burr, ‘“Mendicant Readings of the Apocalypse,” p. 99). Barbara Nolan comments on Langland’s Will of Piers Plowman,

whom she describes as “a Christian living in the evening of the world” (The Gothic Visionary Perspective, p. 214). Nolan is echoing Vincent Ferrer, who characterized his own age as emerging in Aquarius, which “figures the eleventh state of this world after the death of Antichrist” (quoted on p. 210).

62 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Jacob Sprenger in 1486. They assert that witchcraft, the black arts, began with Zoroaster, whom the authors identify as Noah’s son Ham. In the earliest ages, they say, when mankind remembered God, idolatry did not exist. But with Ham-Zoroaster the evil arts increased, and especially so in the present day: “Sicut enim per incrementa temporum,” they conclude, “vt Gregorius in moralibus dicit, creuit scientia sanctorum ita et noxie artes demoniorum. Et sicut iam repleta est terra scientia domini ysaie. xi. ita iam mundi vespere ad occasum declinante et malicia hominum excrescente et caritate refrigescente superabundat omnis maleficorum iniqui-

tas.” The twilight of the world here is a metaphor for the time of the saeculum to which Christ alludes in his prophecies of the second advent and about which John wrote in his first epistle: the eleventh hour of many antichrists. [3] The cooling of charity. The quotation from the Malleus maleficarum

contains the expression “charity grows cold.” The phrase derives from _ Matt. 24.12, where Christ describes the world’s last days, and it appears frequently in moral-satiric writings, sometimes as an allusion to the time of many antichrists or the present (eleventh) hour.’ Wulfstan has recourse to this scriptural motif in his eschatological sermon Secundum Marcum, when he says (in a passage de senectute mund), And gecnawe se de cunne, nu is se tima pet deos woruld is gemencged mid menigfealdan mane & mid felafealdan facne, & dzs hit is be wyrse wide on worulde, ealswa pet godspel cwxd: Quoniam abundabit iniquitas refrigescet caritas multorum. Det is on Englisc, fordam pe unriht weaxed ealles to wide, so6 lufu colad.* (And know this for the truth: now is the time that this world is confused with various evils and with manifold deceits, and so it is the worse everywhere in the world, as the Gospel says: Quoniam abundabit iniquitas refrigescet caritas multorum. That is in English: because wickedness shall grow too widespread, love

shall grow cold.) 4 Malleus malefuarum 1.2. See also the anonymous De rectitudine catholicae conversationis tractatus, which Migne prints as an appendix to the works of Augustine (col. 1184): “Ecce paulatim deficit mundus, et cuncta quae videntur, velociter tanquam nebula aut tanquam vespertina umbra transeunt.” (“Behold, little by little the world fails,

and all things that are seen pass away as quickly as a cloud or as evening shadows.”) , 45 See, for example, Jerome, In Esaiam 6.13.12, ed. Adriaen, 1:231. Hugh of St.Victor uses the phrase to refer to the loosing of Satan for a period of persecution (De sacramentis 2.17.4, col. 598). See also Emmerson and Herzman, “Age of Hypocrisy,” p. 626 n. 34. 46 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, lines 23-29, pp. 135-36. See also Secundum Matheum, line 21, p. 119.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 63 In Heloise’s closely argued letter to Abelard asking for both a history of and a rule for women religious, she contends that women should have their own rule because of gender differences. She observes that men nowadays rush into holy orders before they are ready and then stumble under the strictures of their monastic rule. She adds, We see that the world has now grown old, and that with all other living creatures men too have lost their former natural vigour: and, in the words of the Truth, amongst many or indeed almost all men love itself has grown cold. And so it would seem necessary today to change or to modify those Rules which were written for men in accordance with men’s present nature.*’

In the twelfth-century lyric attributed to Walter of Chatillon beginning ‘“Missus sum in vineam circa horam nonam”—an allusion to the vineyard parable—we read, “‘ordo multis monachis vertitur in taedium, / et jam fere charitas refrigescit omnium” (‘“The order for many monks has become

- monotonous, and now the charity of almost all grows cold”). Similarly, the poem that begins ‘“‘Qui potest capere quod loquar capiat”—like “‘Missus sum” a denunciation of the saecu/um—contains the lines omnis ad munera manus est avide, frigescit charitas iccirco torpida, quod nemo “‘tibi do” dicit, sed ‘‘mihi da.”

} (Every hand is eager for reward, and charity, benumbed, grows cold: hence no one says “I give to you” but only “give to me.”’)

Eustache Deschamps, the fourteenth-century French writer who admired Chaucer, concludes a Latin poem de senectute mundi by observing that the 47 Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Radice, p. 167. The Latin of this passage reads:

“Senuisse iam mundum conspicimus hominesque ipsos cum ceteris quae mundi sunt pristinum naturae vigorem amisisse, et iuxta illud Veritatis ipsam caritatem non tam multorum quam fere omnium refriguisse ut iam videlicet pro qualitate hominum ipsas propter homines scriptas vel mutari vel temperari necesse sit Regulas” (ed. Muckle, p. 246).

\ f Wright, ed., Latin Poems, pp. 157 (lines 143-44) and 168 (lines 38—qo). See also a lyric, ““Frigescente caritatis,” by Philip the Chancellor, cited by Yunck, Lady Meed, p. 101; a poem beginning “Amaris stupens casibus,” in Carmina Burana 1.1, ed. Hilka and Schumann, p. 5 (‘‘frigescit ignis caritatis, / fides a cunctis exulat’’); and a poem that seems to combine the motifs of disease and the cooling of charity: ““Vulneratur karitas, amor aegrotatur: / Regnat et perfidia, livor generatur” (in Political Songs, ed. Wright,

p. 133). |

64 THE WORLD GROWN OLD consequence of the church schism is “Refrigescit hodie caritas.”*? The narrator, who calls himself “Frere Daw Topias,” begins his reply to “Jack Upland” with an apocalyptic opening: Who shal graunten to myn eyen a strong streme of teres

, To wailen & to wepyn be sorwyng of synne, For charite is chasid & flemed out of londe And euery state stakerp, unstable in him silfe. Now apperip be prophecie pat Seint Ioon seide _ ‘To joyne perto Iohel in his soth sawis.*°

The Lollard author of The Lanterne of Li3zt (1409-15) invokes the cooling of charity to characterize what he regards as the divisiveness of his own era, which has seen the confiscation of Lollard property and the burning

of Lollards: :

For now manye pat semeden to haue be stable in vertu fallen from her holi purpose, dredyng losse of worldli goodis & bodili peyne as Crist seith. Mat. xxiv’. Quoniam habundabit iniquitas, refrigescet caritas multorum. bat is to seie.

Pe greet plente and habundaunce of wickidnesse schal kele or make coolde the charite of many. For now pe deuel hap marrid pis world bi his leeftenaunt anticrist bat men ben born aboute in diuerse dou3tis, as wawis of be see, wrechidli diuidid in wonderful opyniouns, iche nei3bore wip opir.°*!

John Wyclif, citing Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana 1.37, inveighs against the decline in charity, which stemmed, he believed, from nominalism and the via moderna and the resulting lack of faith. Beryl Smalley has explained the fourteenth-century crisis as a realist’s dismay with the times: “The rot had set in with terminism, the casting of doubt on the reality of universals, and the use of God’s potentia absoluta to dissolve the

whole divine order. Now the sceptics had turned upon their own last refuge against anarchy, faith in the Scriptures. Who could question, as he

looked around him, that charity had weakened in consequence? The Church ... was coming under fire increasingly. Men were more critical and the intellectuals were naturally more vocal than others.” * Deschamps, (Euvres completes, ed. de Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Reynaud, 6:282. See also the discussion of Deschamps’s complaint lyric by Keller, ““The Triumph of Vice,” pp. 127-29. 50 Friar Daw’s Reply, lines 1-6, in fack Upland, ed. Heyworth, p. 73. 5! Lanterne of Li3zt, ed. Swinburn, p. 1.

52 See Smalley, “The Bible and Eternity: John Wyclif’s Dilemma” (1964), repr. in Studies in Medieval Thought, pp. 398-415, at p. gor. The passage from De doctrina Christiana, as quoted by Smalley, reads, “Faith will waver if the authority of holy Scrip- _ ture should fail. If faith wavers, then charity weakens. If a man falls away from the faith, then he needs must fall away from charity also. He cannot love that which he does not believe” (p. 401).

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 65 The cooling motif appears also in the Wycliffite Vae octoplex, an antifraternal and anticlerical sermon. The author decries “bese newe ordres,”’

which have promoted not a greater love for Christ and fellow religious but a greater contempt for religion: And panne, as per is o byleue, schulde ber ben o ordre, and charite schulde be norsched more pan hyt is now; sib we wyton wel by dede pat a man loueb more a man of his ordre ban he dop anobur man bat is of straunge

ordre. And so onhede in byleue, and onhede in ordre, schulde gendre kyndely charite among men. But charite is now cold, and deuydep pe chirche as deed body is deuydet for defaute of humour. Pis onheede pat Crist made is welny exilud and vnstablenesse of be chirche is turned into - grauel, and moste cause of pis bing is ypocrisie of men.*? Wimbledon devotes a section of his sermon Redde racionem villicactonis tue to the implications of Christ’s statement about the cooling of charity

in relation to judgment. He testifies that there are three things that proclaim the end of the world: De firste is be worldlis sykenesse; pe secunde is feblenesse; and be pridde is his ende. And pe sekenesse of be world pou schalt knowe by charites acoldyng; his elde and his feblenesse pou schalt knowe by tokenes fulfillynge; and his ende pou schalt knowe by Antecristis pursuynge. (507-10)

Wimbledon explains by analogy that since a body is sick when it experiences unnatural heat, and since all mankind is a single “body” whose heat _ is charity (‘‘pat is loue to oure God and to oure ney3ebore’”’), lustful love

for other creatures is a manifestation of unnnatural heat. The world’s sickness is revealed when humans’ love for God and their neighbors is “litle and feynt” and their love for worldly things and lusts of the flesh “is gret and feruent.” Then he alludes to Christ’s words in Matt. 24: Pat pis be a knoweleche of pis siknesse may I preue by auctorite of Crist, for he hymself 3af hem as a sygne of be drawynge to pe ende of be world: for pat wickednesse schal be in plente, charite schal acolde. berfore whanne pou seest charite bus litle in be world and wickednesse encresse, knowe wel pat bis world passip and his welbe [1 John 2.17], and pat pis somenour is come. (518-22) Wimbledon comes close to appealing to human experience in this passage: one knows the world is sick unto death when one perceives that people’s 533 Rd. Gradon, English Wycliffite Sermons, lines 232-41, p. 374.

66 THE WORLD GROWN OLD love for God and for others has waned. His exegesis manages to be both traditional and powerful, a summons to his listeners to change their ways before it is too late. The trope of the cooling of charity is very frequent in medieval literature. Its appearance does not always indicate a passage de senectute mundi,

but often it does; and it surfaces with some regularity in writings on the decline of love (see below, 5c). Closely related to both the cooling of charity and the disease of the world is the disease-of-love motif, which became a governing trope of courtly romance narratives. According to Andreas Capellanus, love is a sickness, “an inborn suffering which results from the sight of, and uncontrolled thinking about, the beauty of the other sex.” 5+ The pathology of earthly love, of fin amors, which is implicit in some writings of Chrétien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Malory, becomes explicit in Jean de Meun’s Roman, in Dante’s Inferno 5 (the Paolo and Francesca episode), and in John Gower’s Confessio amantis.

[4] Nowadays. ‘This word—newly coined in the late fourteenth century—appears in sermons and in other writings, often in contexts of the _ world grown old, to mark the difference between past and present. Once

things were better; “nowadays” things are much worse. J. D. W. Crowther, who has studied the use of the term in Middle English sermons (including Wimbledon’s great sermon of the late 1380s delivered at Paul’s Cross) and in Chaucer’s writings, calls it a “rhetorical topos.” “With few exceptions,” he says, “the formula is preceded by, or accompanied by, a

reference to history, sometimes to point a similarity, in which case the reference is to treachery, cupidity, violence, or some other particularly grave form of immoral conduct; sometimes to point a contrast, in which case the reference is to charity, humility, or some other Christian virtue. Where the expression ‘now-adaies’ occurs, it is almost invariably accompanied by deprecating comment on contemporary times; this consistency of use can be said to constitute a rhetorical topos.” » Among the many sermon passages Crowther cites, one ascribes strife among the three estates to a desire to avoid taking blame. In former times sinners would acknowledge to God that they were the cause: “Treuly it is not pus now-a-dayes, for ichon now-a-daies is besy to accuse opur in exscusyng of hem-selfe.” ** In language that seems to harmonize with sentiments of the Peasants’ Revolt and Chaucer’s Lak of Stedfastnesse, the Middle English preacher speaks of class conflict: 54 Andreas Capellanus on Love 1.1, ed. and trans. Walsh, p. 33. 55 Crowther, “Now-Adaies,” p. 270. 6 Crowther, “Now-Adaies,” p. 275 (Crowther’s italics). I have corrected Crowther’s transcription of “exscusyng”’ according to Ross’s text in Middle English Sermons, p. 310.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 67 Loke qwepir pe comon peple sey not oponly pat pe exstorcion and pe misgouernaunce of be lordes is cause of all pis werre and bis myschef pat is fallen in pis reme. On be opur side pe lordes and pe grette men seyn pat pe pride and pe nyse aray pat reyneb among commeners is cause of pis myschef. / Also pe lay man seb pat be couetize of men of holychurche is cause of pis. And pei sey pat pe wrathe and enuy pat reynep a-monge pe comon pepull vil be cause of pe confucion and destruccion of be world. So pat lordes accuseb pe commeners, and pei accusen holychurche, and pus ichon accusep opur.*”

The homilist regards human pride and arrogance as the true cause of the dissension, but it was not always thus, he believes. The world depicted in these sermons is in decline and at the furthest remove from the olden days of virtue and righteousness.

‘These figurative uses of language reveal the thematic applications of the idea of the world grown old. Even the contemptus mundi writers see poetic uses for the idea that can aid them in their pastoral responsibilities. The phrases and expressions cannot really be said to be visual, and they do not quite become metaphorical. They are ways of speaking, turns of

phrase, figurative language that had resonance in monastic and secular culture—a resonance strengthened by other formulations de senectute muna.

e. The ancients-versus-moderns controversy (giants and dwarfs). John of Salisbury, bishop of Chartres and humanist scholar, reports a new moral topic de senectute mundi in his Metalogicon 3.4 (written in 1159);°° more accurately, he cites a moral topic derived from the classical grammarian Priscian and refashioned into a striking metaphor adapted frequently by scholars and thinkers aware of their intellectual debts. This motif, known today as the ancients-versus-moderns controversy, became especially prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England. John announces the topic by citing the influential Bernard of Chartres, fons literarum in Gallia: Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora uidere, non utique proprii uisus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subuehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.°°

57 Crowther, ““Now-Adaies,” p. 275. , °8 For a discussion of John as a humanist with a ‘“‘pre-Gothic mind,” see Huizinga, ‘John of Salisbury.” *° John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 3.4, ed. Hall, p. 116. The designation of Bernard as fons literrarum in Gallia occurs in 1.24 (ed. Hall, p. 52). For discussions see Curtius,

68 THE WORLD GROWN OLD (Bernard of Chartres said that we are like dwarfs seated upon [or standing on] the shoulders of giants, since we are able to see more and farther than they, though certainly not because of our own sharpness of sight or largeness of body, but because we are supported and raised up through their colossal prominence.)

This topic, repeated by Alan of Lille, Peter of Blois, Alexander Neckham, Raoul de Longchamp (in a commentary on Anticlaudianus), Henri le Breton, and others, is somewhat ambiguous in that moderns (dwarfs) are characterized as lesser than their forebears yet able to see more because of their privileged vantage. The real point of the metaphor is that moderns need all the help they can derive from the past, since they are inferior to the ancients. As William of Conches put it in a gloss on Priscian some

| thirty years before John of Salisbury: ““moderni perspicaciores sunt quam antiqui, sed non sapientiores”® (“Moderns can see more clearly than the European Literature, pp. 251-55; Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, chap. 9; Jeauneau, “Nani gigantum humeris insidentes,” pp. 79-82; Stock, Myth and Science, pp. 6-10; Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex, pp. 88-89 and nn. 43-45. The locus classicus for modern discussions remains Klibansky’s “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” For the later history of the ancients-and-moderns controversy, see the primary texts of Donne, The First Anniversarie (1611-12), and of Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man (1616), which offer the “ancients’” position, and George Hakewill, An Apologie of the Power and Providence of God (1627), which attacks Goodman’s pessimism. See also the critical discussions by Richard Jones, esp. ““[he Decay of Nature,” in Ancients and Moderns, pp. 22-40; D. C. Allen, ‘““The Degeneration of Man and Renaissance Pessimism’’; Harris, All Coherence Gone, esp. pp. 68-158 (“Development of the Controversy’); Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance, pp. 525-44 (“Pessimism and the ‘Disappearance’ or Senescence of Nature’’); Nisbet, Idea of Progress, pp. 86-88 (“Dwarfs and Giants’’); and Merton in his revised or “Vicennial edition” of On the Shoulders of Giants. 6° As quoted in Jeauneau, “Nani gigantum humeris insidentes,” p. 84. For the relevant passage in Priscian, see the dedicatory letter to the consul Julianus, in Opera, p. 2 (quoted by Klibansky, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants,” p. 149). For a discussion of the issues, see Donovan, “Priscian,” pp. 75-80, and references to Marie de France (pp. 75-76), William of Conches (p. 77), Otto of Freising (pp. 77-78), Andrew of St.Victor (p. 78), and Henricus Brito (pp. 78-79); Beaujouan, “Transformation of the Quadrivium,” p. 485; and especially Jeauneau, “Nani gigantum humeris insidentes.” Jeauneau has edited the gloss in “Deux rédactions des gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur Priscien,” and his essay on the dwarfs and giants is particularly valuable because it contains discussions and accurate quotations from William of Conches (pp. 84-86), Alan of Lille (pp. 86-87), Raoul de Longchamp (p. 87), Henri le Breton (pp. 87-88), Longuel de Clairvaux (p. 88), Gilles de Corbeil (p. 88), Alexandre Ricart (pp. 89-90), Alexander Neckham (p. go), Raoul Ardent (p. go), Peter of Blois (pp. 91, 92), Girard d’Auvergne (pp. 91-92), a cleric from Troyes whose initial is B (pp. 94-95), and two twelfth-century commentaries (pp. 95-96). Speaking of Jean de Meun and the moral and poetic relationship between the pagan past and the Christian present, Fleming has

written, ‘That relationship as posited by the great Christian humanist poets of the Middle Ages, among whom in my opinion Jean deserves not merely a place but a place of pride, was a particularly complex one, involving on the one hand the sincere sub-

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 69 ancients, but they are not wiser”). Those who went before, including the Old Testament patriarchs, did not enjoy the same benefits as moderns, who (at Chartres, for example) studied the masterworks of Christian doctrine along with those of pagan antiquity. Yet in former days—the remote past—there were indeed giants, both physically and morally, according to many medieval writers. Physically men and women were larger and lived longer in primitive times, particularly before the Flood, as evidenced by the life spans of Adam and Methuselah (see below, 4a); morally they displayed greater natural piety than their educated modern counterparts. Al-

though Bernard’s aphorism about moderns and ancients has often been interpreted as a statement about progress, it refers equally to the world grown old.* Bernard, William of Conches (Bernard’s student), and John of Salisbury (William’s student) were referring to the abilities of moderns to add some new knowledge to the great storehouse of accumulated wisdom and the insights of scriptural writers. Four lancet windows in the south transept of Chartres cathedral, beneath the great rose window, enshrine Bernard’s dictum in what Emile Male has termed “audacious symbolism.” There we find, in stained glass executed about 1229, the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jeremiah supporting on their shoulders, respectively, Matthew, John, Mark, and Luke.® In each lancet window the evangelists, with halos, are

seated securely on the shoulders of the prophets, who grasp their legs to | bolster them, while the evangelists, who appear to be generally younger © than the prophets, steady themselves by gently resting a hand or hands on the prophets’ heads. These are typological images of mutual support: the Old Testament prepares the way for the New. This iconographic trope of “moderns” on the shoulders of the ancients is repeated in the baptismal font at Merseburg (end of twelfth century) and in the Prince’s Portal at Bamberg cathedral (1219-29).° At Bamberg

mission of the Christian poet before an artistic achievement he could hardly dream of rivaling and on the other an equally sincere moral superiority of the farther-seeing dwarf on the back of the giant” (‘Jean de Meun and the Ancient Poets,” p. 85). 6! For the interpretation of progress, see, for example, Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants, p. 195; and Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 12. For the equivocal nature of the statement, see Jeauneau, “Nani gigantum humeris insidentes,” pp. 80-82, g8—99. 6&2 Male, Gothic Image, pp. 8-9. The prophets and evangelists are reproduced in Duby, Medieval Art, 2:168-69; Male, Chartres, plate 119; and Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants (in line drawings on p. 184). Klibansky has adduced earlier representations of

, the prophets and apostles metaphor (“Standing on the Shoulders of Giants,” p. 148). I am indebted to James Marchand, Abigail Firey, and Al Shoaf, who helped me with the problem of the ancients and moderns and the symbolism of beards. 6 For the dating of the Bamberg statuary, see Valentiner, Bamberg Rider, p. 55. See also the good plates of the Prince’s Porch (Fiirstenportal) and the Merseburg baptismal font reproduced in Valentiner (plates XXTII-XXVII, fig. 12). Merton and others believe

70 : THE WORLD GROWN OLD twelve elongated apostles stand on the shoulders of twelve elongated, un_ identified prophets, whereas at Merseburg and at Chartres the evangelists sit—Bernard of Chartres’s aphorism can be interpreted as either sitting or standing, since his word “‘insidentes” can mean both. Alan of Lille takes the theme of ancients versus moderns further in his Anticlaudianus (1182 or 1183) when he alleges, citing Bernardus Silvestris, that his poetry constitutes a new poetics that demands that readers elevate themselves beyond sense to divine reason and ideas.“ An important variant of the ancients-versus-moderns debate occurs in Philobiblon, the remarkable humanistic treatise on books compiled by the bishop of Durham Richard of Bury (1287-1345). Philobibion is a praise of

books and learning, especially of the wisdom of the ancients, although Richard wrote the treatise in a “modern style,” which means that he strove for rhetorical elegance on classical models and that he freely mingled pagan with Christian authorities. Many chapters contain threnodies on the decline of learning, including attacks on clerics who scorn books. In chapter 9, in which he professes to admire both ancient and modern writings (but to prefer the ancient), he confronts the issue of differences between past and present writers. He acknowledges that he does not know whether

the ancients possessed greater intellects or whether they applied themselves to study more diligently; but “one thing we are perfectly clear about,” he says, “that their successors [the moderni] are barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners, and of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients (antiguz) dug out by difficult efforts of discovery.” He cites the testimony of books that the ancients “were of a ‘more excellent degree of bodily development than modern times are found to produce”’; hence “it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties (/uculentioribus sensibus),

seeing that in the labours they accomplished of both kinds they are in-

imitable by posterity.”° Before the Flood, he says, humans existed on : fruits, which afforded them greater robustness of body and greater nutri-

| tion; because of this, they lived lives of greater virtue and self-sacrifice than moderns can accomplish (chap. 20). Richard describes how modern clerics apply themselves to study with considerable zeal in youth only to burn out later on and how those who never learned what they should have that this ancients-and-moderns motif appears at Payerne and at other, earlier Romanesque sites (see Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants, pp. 187-92 and figs. 6 and 7). I find these claims doubtful at best. 6+ Curtius, European Literature, pp. 119-20. For an appraisal of Alan of Lille and his new ideas, see Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex, esp. pp. 11-12, 86-89. °° Philobiblon 9, ed. Maclagan, p. 99; translation by E. C. Thomas. All references to Philobiblon are to this edition (with chapter numbers cited in parentheses in the text)

, and to Thomas’s translation, unless otherwise stated.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 71 in youth are ashamed to study such things in later life. Still, he places himself among the moderns and claims for himself a certain authority, if only to denounce slothful scholars or those who have contempt for learning and wisdom. His view of learning—an academic view—is the gradual accumulation of knowledge through the “‘anxious investigations of a multitude of scholars” (chap. 10). Citing Aristotle, Virgil, Jerome, Augustine, and others, he testifies that even men of gigantic intellect needed the help of other scholars to write their own books. And he singles out “transcribers” or “antiquari’ for special praise, since they renew the ancient writings and put them in new volumes for fresh generations of readers (chap. 16). These new claims and new modes of literature, while owing something

to previous notions of the world grown old, represent a new departure. But as Ladner would remind us: “A consciousness of newness is not nec-

essarily the same as assertion of a renaissance.” In the last half or last quarter of the twelfth century, a metaphor fashioned by a highly influential Chartrian schoolmaster (reformulating a statement from Priscian) found a ready audience among Parisian and Chartrian intellectuals and later writers who concerned themselves with issues of modernity, antiquity, and the

general moral climate. Those who point out that Bernard of Chartres, John of Salisbury, Alan of Lille, Alexander Neckham, Peter of Blois, William of Conches, Richard of Bury, and others intended to emphasize the dwarfishness of moderns despite their elevated vision are doubtless correct. The world has grown old, and the moderns lack the stature—moral and otherwise—of their forebears despite their Christian advantages. Stull,

the metaphor itself must be explained; and the metaphor privileges, or seems to privilege, the modern position. This privileging does not obtain in the lancet windows at Chartres, where St. John, as “dwarf,” is hoisted on the broad and capable shoulders of Ezekiel, the “giant.” The terms antiqui and moderni achieved a particular status in the fourteenth century, especially after Ockhamist “‘terminist” logic began to influence scholars at the University of Paris about 1340. In the early fourteenth century these terms were relatively neutral as regards philosophical thought; but after Ockham challenged the realist (or “modist’’) logic, and particularly after Wyclif attacked terminist presuppositions, the term 7moderni acquired pejorative connotations.” In the early fifteenth century the approaches to truth associated with the Scholastic dialecticians, on the one

| hand, and the humanist rhetoricians, on the other, became linked with two (not always mutually exclusive) “ways”: the via antigua (including, among others, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, and Poggio Bracciolini) and the via moderna (including, among others, Ockham, 66 Ladner, ‘““Terms and Ideas,” pp. 7-10 and nn. 39-43, at p. 9. 67 See Courtenay, “Antigui and Moderni.”

72 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Jean Buridan, Lorenzo Valla, and Coluccio Salutati). The arguments between and among the various disputants were complex and often tangled, since the ancients might receive praise for their achievements in natural science and the liberal arts, while the moderns might be acknowledged for their revival of classical learning and their integration of classical philos-

ophy with Christian theology. (Sometimes the champions of the “ancients,” in their emphasis on the classical authors, could appear humanist and “modern.” The humanists conceived of the ancients as the classical writers of Greece and Rome rather than the church fathers.) At the root of the debate, however, were the issues of linguistic and cultural relativism, _

the alleged rhetorical nature of language, and “the proper use of ancient

culture.”

f. The allegorical interpretation of Genesis. An important moral topic—which provides the material for Chapter 2 of this study—concerns the traditional interpretation of Genesis as a scenario of decline. Exegetical

writers and those who retold the biblical stories bracketed the patriarchs and events with primitivistic morals: God rewarded human technological innovations with a worsening of the environment. The world declined inexorably from the original garden to the archetypal city: Babylon. In the later Middle Ages writers focused on the story of Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants to explore how and why the “youthful” world began to grow old. The short answer implicit in the Bible is human sin and disobedience. g. Polemical eschatology. A final moral topic of the world grown old concerns the end of things—finis mundi—brought on specifically by the world’s degeneration in the latter days, a deterioration sometimes linked to new ecclesiastical orders, especially the mendicants. This topic is often difficult to distinguish from eschatology generally (a vast medieval idea with its own four last things and fifteen signs before Doomsday) or from topics surrounding Antichrist.” Difficulties arise because eschatological 6% Trinkaus, ‘““Antiquitas versus Modernitas,” p. 21. For some important qualifications of the terms via antiqua and via moderna, see Oberman, “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna,”

pp. 23-25, and Gilbert, “Comment,” pp. 41-50. Gilbert’s ““Comment”’ is a summary account of and comment on the three articles, by Courtenay, Trinkaus, and Oberman, : in “Ancients and Moderns: A Symposium,” in Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987).

, Gilbert believes that the debate about the ‘“‘ways”’ finally was about attitude: “The most fundamental ethical issue involved in both debates—the Italian paragone and the German Wegestreit—was, in my opinion, the moral shortcoming of arrogance. This arrogance, whether displayed in the Humanists’ certamen famae or in the academic factionalism of the Ockhamists and their adversaries, could be construed as the price of cultural progress’’ (p. 49). 5° On these various issues see Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, and ‘““The Apocalypse in Medieval Culture,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Emmerson

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 73 considerations presuppose the world’s corruption and degeneration (Matt. 24) as well as the appearance of antichrists and pseudoapostles in the last days. Moreover, as we can learn from Wulfstan’s eschatological homilies, the pseudoapostles and antichrists of the last days should be expected to arise from within the church. Nonetheless, a world-grown-old subtopic

can and should, in certain specific moral and polemical contexts, be differentiated from simple eschatology and from topics surrounding Antichrist. Some specific polemical contexts include the writings of William of St.-Amour and the Parisian antifraternal polemicists and those of John Wyclif and the Lollards. Like many of his colleagues, Wyclif believed that the end of the world was very near, as evidenced by decay in the church, which he castigated with a violence that remains startling six centuries afterward. The polemical focus on decline helps distinguish this subtopic de senectute mundi from more general eschatological issues. The late-medieval church witnessed many disputes and controversies, but few were as rancorous as th2 quarrels between the newly emergent teaching friars (chiefly the Dominicans and Franciscans) and the secular masters at the University of Paris in the mid-thirteenth century. When the friars began to acquire teaching chairs in the theology faculty—many of the best teachers and most influential theologians of this time, including Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, were mendicants—and when they re-

fused to participate in the general strike of the university in March of 1253, the secular masters responded with heated attacks and manifestos. The turf war soon erupted into a pamphlet war, especially after the secular masters excommunicated and expelled the friars. The war of words was spearheaded by William of St.-Amour, leader of the secular party, who published De periculis novisstmorum temporum (1255), a postil on wellknown scriptural passages interpreted as referring to the rise of mendicant _orders. In this work William condemned claims by the Franciscan writer Gerard da Borgo San Donnino, and he discredited, through clever insinuation, friars as the predicted pseudoapostles and antichrists of Scripture.” In 1254 Gerard published Liber introductorius in Evangelium Aeternum, a Joachite work which has not survived and which was condemned by the pope in 1255. In that work Gerard is said to have asserted that the year

and McGinn, which makes important connections with medieval literature; McGinn, Visions of the End; Lerner, ‘Refreshment of the Saints”; and Heist, Fifteen Signs before Doomsday.

70 For an excellent overview of the personalities and events of the Parisian controversies, see Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, chaps. 1 and 2, to which I am much indebted in this section. For a bibliography, see Szittya’s p. 12 n. 3. For a bibliography of William _of St.-Amour’s writings, see p. 17 and n. 28. Szittya includes a detailed exposition of William’s writings in England on pp. 63-67 and nn. 3-11. See also Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism, pp. 32-46, 113-14.

74 THE WORLD GROWN OLD 1260 would inaugurate Joachim’s Third Age of the Holy Spirit, a notion that was not well received in official circles. And William, according to Penn Szittya, drew an “apocalyptic conclusion” concerning the Liber introductorius:

The perils of the Last Times, he says in chapter 8, are not far off. We know

that we are in the sixth and last age of the world (an orthodox idea); we know that all other ages have endured approximately a millennium; and we know that this age has already lasted for 1,255 years. Therefore it is clear that we are near the end of the world and nearer still to the periculis novissimorum temporum that will come before the advent of the Antichrist.”!

William goes on to identify three “signs” that point to his own age as the last times—signs that he derives from Gerard’s Liber introductorius. In another work, De Pharisaeo et publicano (1256), William connected the mendicant orders with the Pharisees—who would be rabbis (the magistri of

Matt. 23.7), who preach to strangers, and who inhabit the law courts. William speaks chiefly of biblical scenes and in scriptural language; but he establishes the method—so important in later antifraternal literature— of applying Scripture to his present times. Just as the Pharisees are friars who would join the consortium magisteriorum at Paris and elsewhere, so the

pseudoapostles are the mendicants, who claim to live the apostolic life. William finds forty-one signs by which one may expose the false prophets,

including some having to do with speech and preaching. Moreover, he believed that the many antichrists who immediately precede the great An-

tichrist were already loose in the world in the form of the mendicant orders. He cites 2 Tim. 3.1-8, which would become the classic text for antifraternal literature, especially the passages concerning the coming of proud men in the last days, their semblance of piety, and their penetration of houses and seducing of women. William links the penetrators of houses with the antichrists and pseudoapostles and the spiritual seductions with both preaching and sexual seductions. The friars themselves were famous interpreters of Revelation. As was

| traditional, mendicant commentators identified seven predicted status or periods of the church. Usually they located their own time as the fifth status, prior to the period of Antichrist, when the world would experience a decline but yet would be renewed by the friars. ““The result,” says David Burr, “is a grim picture of contemporary decadence in the secular and sacred spheres, but especially among the praelati.”” Peter John Olivi went

so far as to interpret the contemporary status of the church in such a way | 1 Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, p. 29.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 75

heretical.” | |

as to attack the pope. A commission of 1319 declared his reading to be William’s scripturally based allegations concerning the last times would

become staples of antifraternal literature in fourteenth-century England; and Wyclif and his followers would turn similar arguments against the pope and the church hierarchy as part of what Wendy Scase has termed ‘an anticlerical apocalypticism.”’ English antimendicancy received a strong boost from the archbishop of Armagh, Richard FitzRalph, author of a treatise known as Unusquisque (1350), which calls for the revocation of the friars’ privileges; De pauperie Salvatoris (1356), a theoretical tractate

, in seven books on Christ’s poverty, lordship, and dominion; and Defensio curatorum (1357), a proposition delivered at the Avignon curia against mendicant privileges.”> He came to prominence in England through a series of four lectures delivered in London during the winter of 1356-57. In these popular addresses FitzRalph challenged the ideological underpinnings of the fraternal orders by arguing that Christ did not beg voluntarily. His arguments so alarmed the principal orders that they convened to form a strategy against him, issuing an Appellacio accusing him of errors. FitzRalph responded by impeaching the friars in language and sentiments that owe much to William of St.-Amour. In Szittya’s summary: They cause dissensions and scandal; they serve not Christ but their own bellies; they are hypocrites, lying teachers, zagistri mendaces; they use religion for gain and deceive with feigned words (fictis verbis); they follow the errors of Balaam and the way of Cain; they are querulous murmurers; they

are the “lovers of self” predicted for the Last Days. (P. 129)

FitzRalph composed a Libellus against the friars (1357), and the friars in turn issued a Libellus against FitzRalph. These legal charges and countercharges would reverberate throughout the later English fourteenth century, as laymen, Wycliffites, and others drew up accusations against the fraternal orders and certain friars responded, and as Wyclif, Lollards, and others attacked the church hierarchy. Anticlerical charges and retorts appear often in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English writings. The paper trail created by FitzRalph and his detractors in the 1350s, by Uthred of Boldon and his opponents (including the Dominican William Jordan) in the 1360s, by Wyclif and his antagonists in the late 1370s and early 1380s, and by the many anonymous treatises and satirical poems beginning about 1390 and continuing at least 72 Burr, “Mendicant Readings of the Apocalypse,” pp. 96, 100. 3 In this paragraph I am indebted to Szittya’s chap. 3, “The Antifraternal Ecclesiology of Archbishop Richard FitzRalph.”

76 THE WORLD GROWN OLD through 1415 reveals a rhetorical atmosphere tainted by acrimony, crisis, and eschatological speculation. In addition, a large corpus of anonymous, undatable writings—sermons and treatises, in both Latin and English— emerged from the Lollard controversies. Wyclif himself set the tone for his later, less temperate followers when he consistently berated the modern church and its hierarchy for its alleged failure to uphold the values and traditions of the primitive church. For

Wyclif, as for so many of his contemporaries, the world had grown old; | and the friars were a manifest sign of its decay. Szittya summarizes from one of Wyclif’s Latin sermons: The world and the church . . . were old. This is the last age of the world, says Wyclif, in which things, as they do for old men, were “cooling down.”

But Wyclifs formulation of this commonplace is terribly pessimistic. Fleshly beauty and the flowers of the world seem less desirable than they did in prior ages. No one now is as able-bodied as our ancestors were;

| vigor, agility, beauty, longevity, all are not what they used to be. The earthly things that once served men have grown sterile. Incertitude is abroad because of wars, pestilence, and other things that destroy prosperity.

Neighbor deceives neighbor with malice. Faith, hope, and charity grow cold (refrigescunt, Matt. 24:12) in the old age, indeed the last age, of the world. (P. 161)

Wyclif, who became a formidable opponent of the mendicant orders after 1379, reflected on the millennial prophecy of Apoc. 20.7—‘“‘And whanne a thousynde 3eeris schulen be endid, Sathanas schal be vnboundun of his prisoun; and he schal go out, and schal disseyue folkis, that ben on foure corners of the erthe, Gog and Magog”—and he concluded, in De solutione Sathanae, that the thousand-year figure is not precise or specific but refers to the time when the friars penetrated the church: “the Holy Spirit meant by a thousand years not precisely a quantity of time... but the period up

, until Satan’s perverse ministers were noticeably introduced into the church, which without doubt occurred during those times in which the four false sects (i.e., the four orders of friars) stole into the church (guibus false secte quatuor subintrarunt)” (Szittya’s translation, p. 163). Wyclif ar-

gued that the decline of the church and the worsening of persecution foreshadowed the end of the world: “The approach of Judgment,” says Szittya, paraphrasing a passage from De solutione Sathanae, “is apparent from events of recent history that are predicted in the Bible: the English crusade against Flanders in 1383 resembles the wars Christ prophesied would appear ‘at the end of the world’ (am fine saeculi); the papal schism seems to signify the perilous times that according to the apostle, would come in the novissimis temporibus; the sects of friars have been introduced

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 77 into the church in fine temporum’ (p. 170). Szittya argues that Wyclif’s _ eschatological thought has not been fully appreciated, and he tries to correct previous notions; at the same time he makes a case for Wyclif as a -_- writer on the world’s old age. In the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century an anonymous writer who called himself “Jack Upland”—Jack the Rustic—composed a treatise attacking friars as the vanguard of Antichrist. The forces of Antichrist, he alleges, have infected the three estates of clerics, lords, and commoners: And pus bi Anticrist and hise clerkis ben uertues transposid to vicis: as _ mekenes to cowardise, felnes and pride to wisdom and talnes, wrappe to manhode, enuye to iustificacioun of wrong, sloupe to lordlynes, coueytis to wisdom & wise puruyaunce, glotonye to largynes, leccherie to kindeli solace, mildenes to schepisshenesse, holines to jpocrisie, heryse to pleyne sadnes of feyp and oolde vsage, and holy chirche to synagoge of Satanas.’*

The worst perpetrators—“pe fellist folk pat euer Antecrist foond”—are “pe flateringe freris of al be fyue ordris”: _ Pes ben cockers in couentis and coueitous in markettis, marrers of matrymonye & Caymes castel-makers, Pharesies fagynge be folk & profetis fals, vnsikir soudiouris sette al bifore, vayne men & voide in Antecristes vowarde—God scheeld vs from this capteyne and his oost. (Lines 83-89)

Most of Upland’s treatise consists of questions directed to an unidentified friar as to why friars behave as they do; and many of these questions are interrogatory forms of scripturally based charges first leveled by William of St.-Amour. He attacks friars for their clothing (Matt. 23.5): Frere, what bitokenep 3oure greet hood, 3o0ure scapalarie, & 30ure knottid girdel, & 30ure side & wide copis pat 3e maken 30u of so dere clobe, sip lesse clopis and of lesse prijs is more token of pouert? (Lines 140-43)

He maintains that they create ‘‘masters” for themselves out of measure (Matt. 23.7-8): Frere, whi make 3e so many maistris among 30u a3ens Cristis biddynge in be gospel, seiynge pat oon is maister oon is lord, & pis 3e contrarien bi many waste & costli meenes? (Lines 295-97) 74 Fack Upland, lines 46-53, ed. Heyworth, p. 56. Subsequent references are from this edition.

78 THE WORLD GROWN OLD He challenges fraternal claims to mendicant privileges: Frere, sip in Goddis lawe suche clamerous beggeynge is vttirli forfendid, on what lawe groundist pou pee bus for to begge, & nameli of porer pan pou art pi silf? For sop it is pat no man schulde pus begge; for if a man suffice to hym silf bi goodis or bi strengpe, he synnep for to begge. (Lines 275-79)

He decries their storytelling abilities: Frere, whi preche 3e fals fablis of freris & feined myraclys, and leuen pe gospel bat Crist bade preche & is moost holsum lore to bodi & to soule, & so also oure bileue bi whiche oonli we moste be saued? (Lines 233-36) Like the author of Piers the Plowman’s Crede, who lodges many of the same accusations, Upland deplores the wealth of convents: Whi make 3e so costli housis to dwelle ynne, sip Crist dide not so, ne hise apostlis, ne noon holi men pat 3e reden of. (Lines 168-69)

Upland attacks friars as ““Caymes castel-makers”’ (line 86), or property

managers of the city of man. This was one of the most frequent charges against the mendicant orders and a literary trope that harmonizes with the fourteenth-century interest in origins and originary myths. The author of Piers the Plowman’s Crede (between 1393 and 1401) says that the devil fashioned the friars from “‘be kynrede of Caym.””> The friars, that is, are the evil seed of the race that was originally segregated from the fellowship of Adam. The anonymous writer of Hou sathanas & his children, formerly attributed to Wyclif, describes how religious hypocrites, in the manner of Chaucer’s Friar, “visete oft riche men & wymmen & namely riche widewis

for to gete worldly muk by false disceitis & carien it home to Caymes castelis & Anticristis couent and sathanas children & marteris of glotonye.”° Similarly, a lyric beginning “Preste, ne monke, ne yit chanoun,”’ dated 1382, discovers a cryptogram of Cain (Kaim) in the first letters of

_ the four fraternal orders: Nou se be sobe whedre it be swa, pat frer carmes come of a k, ’> Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, ed. Skeat, line 486, p. 18. 76In English Works of Wyclif, ed. Matthew, p. 211; also in Religious Prose, ed. Blake, p-. 141.

: A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 79 be frer austynes come of a, _ frer Iacobynes of 1,

Of M comen pe frer menours. bus grounded caym thes four ordours, pat fillen be world ful of errours & of ypocrisy.”

Jack Upland was answered twice, once by the Franciscan William Woodford in his Responsiones ad quaestiones LXV (autumn 1395) and again

by the author who calls himself “Friar Daw” in the work known as Friar Daw’s Reply. In his Responsiones, which repeats the quaestiones raised by Upland (Gn Latin rather than in English), Woodford offers careful, pointby-point answers to Upland’s treatise, each section introduced by the for-

mulas “respondeo et dico” or “hic dico.”’ Subtopics within sections are introduced with “Item dico.”’ To Upland’s second question—“Frater, cuius ordinis es tu?”—Woodford replies that he belongs to a number of orders: he is part of the order of creation; he is a member of the order of Christians; he is a member of the priesthood; and he is a Franciscan friar.’ Woodford largely ignores the tone of Upland’s treatise and responds temperately to its content. In the English response, Daw as narrator also counters Upland in a point-for-point fashion, even claiming to be ignorant but honest—“‘as lewid as a leke”’”°—to answer Upland’s pose as an up-country husbandman. In his eschatological opening (quoted above, p. 64), Daw laments that charity has been “‘flemed” from the land, as evidenced in the uncharitable

attack on the mendicant orders in Jack Upland, and he cites Scripture to discredit his detractors, as did William of St.-Amour, Richard FitzRalph, and Jack Upland. Daw’s principal concerns seem to be the rise of Lollardy, its divisive effects on the church, and the growth of lay priests: But sip pat wickide worme—Wiclyf be his name— Began to sowe pe seed of cisme [schism] in pe erpe, Sorowe & shendship hab awaked wyde,

In lordship and prelacie hap growe be lasse grace. | (71-74) ” HP XIV & XV, p. 160. The lyric is extant in a unique copy in London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra B I, fols. 63v—65v, and has been printed several times. Margaret Aston (‘‘Caim’s Castles”) has emphasized Wyclif’s influence in the promulgation of Caim as an explanation of fraternal origins. 8 Doyle, ed., “William Woodford, O.F.M.,” p. 122 (quaestio 2). ”? Friar Daw’s Reply, line 45, in fack Upland, ed. Heyworth, p. 74. Subsequent quotations are from this edition.

80 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Daw says that the friars, rather than being the vanguard of Antichrist, are Antichrist’s victims, persecuted by “be disciplis of 3our [Upland’s] sory secte” (line 119), presumably the Lollards. An answer to Friar Daw’s Reply appears in the margins of the same manuscript—Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Digby 61. This purports to be by the author of Jack Upland, but it was probably written later, by a different author or authors (there are glosses in two different hands of the mid-fifteenth century). Upland’s Rejoinder, as it has been called by modern editors, revisits the antifraternal versus anti-Lollard debate with a virulence that often shades into ad hominem attacks. The author and interpolator of Upland’s Rejoinder make clear that the multiplication of friars—

an ancient charge harking back to 1 John 2—has ushered in the new, iniquitous times. Another notorious attack on friars occurs in the Lollard sermon known as Vae octoplex, on the eightfold woes of Matt. 23. The anonymous writer

seeks to expose as hypocrites “men of bese newe ordres, and moste pese frerys bat laste comen in, for be feend sutilep euere a3enes holy chirche.” ®° He includes all the clichés of antifraternal literature, including the charges that friars lead people astray with lies and fables and thus close off the way

to heaven (first woe); that they penetrate homes, deplete households of food (a double-edged accusation), and rob and cheat people “by cautelys of be feend”’ (line 44; second woe); that they steal away and indoctrinate children as unwilling recruits for their orders (third woe); that they take money for confessions (fourth woe); that they dwell upon the insignificant issue (such as the body’s health) and neglect the important one (fifth woe); that they “coueyton more per fame in be world pan pei don per holynesse knowon of God” (lines 186-87; sixth woe); that “bese newe ordres” cul_ tivate certain outward signs of holiness though inwardly they are corrupt and wicked (seventh woe); and that they have caused charity to grow cold

| through slaying of prophets (eighth woe). The author attacks the pope— and especially the divided papacy—for usurping power that belongs to God alone; and he emphasizes the power of individual Christians in the process of redemption: “3if bei sewon Crist in li3f we schulden suppose pat pei ben of Cristus membris, and, 3if pei lyuon contrarye to Crist, tak

| hem as pe feendys synagoge”’ (lines 317-19). A final example of polemical eschatology may be found in the so-called Epistola Luciferi ad cleros, an anticlerical prose letter originally written in Latin by Peter Ceffons of Clairvaux, a fourteenth-century Cistercian theologian and opponent of the Avignon papacy. In the early fifteenth century

an unknown person translated the prose letter into Middle English. This version appears on fols. 319r—325v of San Marino, California, Henry E. 80 Vae octoplex, in English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Gradon, p. 366, lines 3-4.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 31 Huntington Library, MS HM 114, a miscellany containing Piers Plowman, Troilus and Criseyde, and Mandeville’s Travels. The premise of the Hollenbriefe (the literary genre for this work) is that a Screwtape-like Lucifer is writing to his cherished colleagues in the clergy—‘“to all our dere, leef and worthi to be lovyd felawes, bretherin and childryn of pryde, universall and singuler, with the froyte of all falsnes fulfillyd of this dayes cherche.” *! The devil complains that evildoers had a difficult time in the past, when churchmen followed the “steppis” and “the tracys of [Jesus’] weyes, stablid in the signes of his vertues” (line 20). But now—“in thes dayes and moderne tymes”’ (‘“‘modernis temporibus’’)—Lucifer sees an opportunity to expand his empire of materiality, voluptuousness, and pride, with its “infynite worldly prudences and wittis, subtiltees, fallaces, glosynges, lesynges, forswerynges, deceytes, tresons, bygylyngis, symonyes, dissimulyd

and othir peyntid ypocrisye, and al other manere worldly wikkidnes, whiche unnethe al the incomprehensible gehennal wyttis and conceytes kan undurstonde or bythenke without grely ordre ascendyng”’ (lines 49,

96-102). He is pleased that modern prelates occupy themselves with ‘‘strumpetes, iapers and ianglers, harlotes, hores and her haunters”’ (lines 125-26); and he is proud that Jesus should characterize their elegant “‘palayces”—such as those at Avignon—as “‘the Sinagoge of Sathanas” (lines

130, 138). The term ‘now adayes” appears frequently in this work, as when he worries that the clergy is sending “So myche multitude of al manere of peple” that “we ne mowe hem receyve” (lines 184-85); but at least the losses sustained in former, more virtuous times have been “plenerly refourmyd, and our olde importable harmes and losses fully resto-

| ryd” (lines 194-95). 4. Scientific topics

| a. The consequences of the Flood. The question of the world’s condition before and after the Flood is a scientific issue that has implications for the idea of the world grown old. According to exegetical chronologists, the Flood, sent by God because mankind had become morally corrupt in the days of Noah (Gen. 6.4, 11-13), concluded the first world age (Adam to Noah). The commentators also asserted that the world’s fertility and topography were altered radically after the Flood. In antediluvian days the earth was bountiful, and men and women were vegetarians (an interpretation based on Gen. 2.16 and 3.18—-19, 23). After the Flood, the earth’s 81 T use the edition of Raymo: ‘A Middle English Version of the Epzstola Luciferi ad cleros,” lines 5-7, p. 235. Subsequent citations from this work will be by line numbers in the text. At the bottom of his Middle English text Raymo includes Ceffons’s Latin letter, taken from the edition of G. Zippel (1958).

82 THE WORLD GROWN OLD reduced fertility forced humans to become carnivores (Gen. 9.3). The life spans of humans shortened; their stature dwindled from that of the great antediluvians; and their bodies became debilitated. Augustine addresses these very issues in The City of God 15, in a passage perhaps indebted to Pliny’s Natural History.*? He attributes the long life spans of the antediluvians recorded in Genesis to God’s plan for sacred history (chap. 27); and he vigorously disputes those who understand one hundred antediluvian years as ten postdiluvian years or who interpret the years allegorically. As for the change in human bulk, Augustine calls the Roman poet Virgil _as a witness to the greater size of humans of former times (citing Aeneid 12.899-900). ““How much more then,” he adds, “in the days when the world was newer, before that renowned and far-famed Flood!” He also mentions large bones that have come to light. “On the shore at Utica I myself,” he says in personal testimony, “‘saw—and I was not alone but in the company of several others—a human molar so immense that if it had been cut up into pieces the size of our teeth it would, as it seemed to us, have made a hundred” (15.9). Some writers, such as the thirteenth-century abbot of Admont, Engelbert, asked whether the long lives of the antediluvians resulted from diet and bodily humors or from divine intercession. He argues that the great age of the antediluvians was not wholly a matter of diet, as some earlier writers had maintained,* since a consistent diet of plants would yield an imbalance of bodily humors. He attributes the long life spans to supernatural causes, although acknowledging that the Flood itself had a deleterious effect on postdiluvian mankind’s existence.**

b. The renovation of the elements. Another scientific aspect of the idea of the world grown old turns up in writings on the world’s renovation: de renovatione elementorum. This topic, which has gone largely unremarked in modern scholarship, can be traced to Augustine’s City of God 20.16 and 18, but it recurs often in simple glosses on scriptural passages, especially on 2 Peter 3.7—14, as in verse ro: “For the dai of the Lord schal come as a theef, in which heuenes with greet bire [gloss to the EV: or feersnesse] 82 For more on Pliny and his influence, see below, p. 185. 83 Otto of Freising, Chronica 1.3, citing Josephus. 8+ Engelbert: De causis 1, cols. 441-502. See also Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica, col. 1082, and D. C. Allen, Legend of Noah, p. 95. For earlier arguments on the question of primitive vegetarianism, see Tertullian and Alexander Neckham, as cited by Boas, PIMA, pp. 17-18 and 82-84. Neckham, like Engelbert, sees a connection between diet (and bodily humors) and the postlapsarian condition. A related topic is the shortened life span of mankind after the Flood. See the influential discussion by Pseudo-Isidore (the treatise is Irish): De ordine creaturarum 12.2-3, col. 944 (trans. PIMA, pp. 68-69); Cursor mundi 1995-98; and compare The Pricke of Conscience, ed. Morris, lines 696-891. The theories doubtless owe much to Plato’s Timaeus 81-82.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 83 schulen passe, and elementis schulen be dissoluyd bi heete, and the erthe, and alle the werkis that ben in it, schulen be brent.”’ The renovation of

the elements—a topic that owes more than a little to the ideology of renovation chronicled by Ladner in The Idea of Reform—concerned the renewal of creation at the end of history and time. As the world has grown old, the very building blocks of the universe—earth, water, air, and fire— have become old, corrupted, and polluted. Because the Apocalypse had _ spoken of a “newe heuene and newe erthe” (Apoc. 21.1), some medieval authors inquired as to the exact nature of that newness (or renewal). ‘They concluded that at Doomsday God would restore his creation to its original pristine state. Glossing 1 Cor. 7.31—“‘For whi the figure [gloss to the EV: or feirnesse, or prosperite| of this world passith’” —Hrabanus Maurus explains

that in the great renovatio the image or outward form will change but not the essence: The world passes away because it grows old day by day. After Judgment this heaven and this earth will certainly cease to be when the new heaven and new earth begin to be. For in the change of things this world will not pass away in a complete annihilation. Hence the Apostle says: ‘For whi the figure of this world passith.” The form therefore passes away, not the nature [substance]: indeed, after the judgment of those who are not in the Book of Life and after they have been sent into the eternal fire, then the form of this world will pass away in the conflagration of mundane fires, just as was done in the Flood in the inundation of mundane waters.*° 85 Hrabanus Maurus, Expositio in epistolam ad Corinthos primam, col. 72, citing Am-

_ brose, Augustine, and Gregory. Exegetical glosses on the world’s consummation and its renovation occur in commentary on Isa. 65.17, Matt. 24.35, Mark 13.31, Luke 21.33, Heb. 1.10—-12, 1 John 2.17, as well as on 1 Cor. 7.31, 2 Peter 3.7-14, and Apoc. 21.1. In addition to the definitive glosses by Augustine in City of God 20, see Jerome, In Esaiam 65.17, ed. Adriaen, 2:760; Gregory, Moralia in Fob 17.9.11, ed. Adriaen, p. 858; Isidore, Quaestiones in Genesim 6.28, col. 228, and De ecclestasticis dogmatibus 70, col. 1241; Berengaudus, Expositio 6, which Migne prints as an appendix to the works of Ambrose (cols. 936-37); Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis 3.21, col. 194; In Lucae Evangelium

expositio, ed. Hurst, pp. 370-71; In Marci Evangelium expositio, ed. Hurst, pp. 602-3; Hrabanus Maurus, Expositio in epistolam ad Hebraeos 26, cols. 719-20; Haymo of Aux_ erre, Expositio in Apocalypsin, col. 1192; Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 3.15, col. 1168; Glossa ordinaria, on Matt. 24 (4:75A), on Luke 21 (4:211B), and on 1 Corin-

| thians, citing Ambrose (4:318B); Hugh of St.-Victor, “De innovatione mundi,” in De sacramentis 2.18.1, col. 609; Arnold of Bonneval, Tractatus de operibus sex dierum, cols.

1531-32; Richard of St.-Victor, “De innovatione elementorum,” in In Apocalypsim 7, cols. 859-60; Thomas Aquinas, In epistolam 2 B. Petri Apostoli 3, in Opera omnia, 23:289B-—290B and 496; Cursor mundi 23653-56; and Alexander of Hales, Expositio in Apocalypsim, p. 461. For background on the Flood’s typology, see Daniélou, From Shad-

ows to Reality, pp. 88-89. For the ideology of cosmological renewal in the writings of the church fathers, see Ladner, Idea of Reform, part 2, chap. 1, and esp. his analysis of apoca tastasts.

84 THE WORLD GROWN OLD According to accounts like this, God will burn his creation in the cleansing fires of his day of wrath to renew the elements that humans have befouled through sin. As so often in the literature de senectute mundi, moral and physical processes are linked, immorality here serving to undermine elements of God’s originally good creation. Exegetical writers add that the fires will extend only as far as the waters of Noah’s Flood were able to reach, a height usually glossed as fifteen cubits above mountain summits (Gen. 8.20), including that of Mount Olympus, allegedly the world’s highest mountain.® In other words, the fires will not burn the celestial heavens

but only the “heaven” of the air and birds. Some medieval authors, as Thomas Hill explains, wrote that the sea, an often chaotic element in literature, would be utterly destroyed in the fire, a conflagration that somehow refashions the earth but annihilates the waters.*’ Thomas Aquinas

explains that just as God sent the Flood to cool the ardor of the antediluvian generation, so he will visit hot flames on sinners at the Last Judg- | - ment—namely, on those whose charity has grown cold (see below, 5c).* This eschatological topic found its way into Latin and Middle English poetry; and these settings, while usually dramatic, do not always preserve the exact details of the patristic topic. The third-century poet Commodian writes that at the Last Judgment a single flame will transform all of nature,

earth will burn from the depths and mountains will melt, and the stars together with heaven and earth will be changed.” A later poem in hex-

| ameters, De die judicii, ascribed to Bede and translated into Old English (Judgment Day II, in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 201), forcefully portrays the terrifying events of Doomsday: “repente / Terra tremet, montesque ruent, collesque liquescent.”’ And: “Insuper impletur flammis altricibus aer, / Ignis ubique suis ruptis regnabit habenis.”” (“The earth

86 This formulation began with Augustine. See ‘“Quaestiones Genesis” ro, ed. Fraipont, p. 4; Hrabanus Maurus, Commentarius in Genesim 2.8, col. 522. In his Confessions Augustine characterizes the waters reserved for cleansing the earth as “above this firmament [in the account of Creation, Gen. 1]” and as “other waters, immortal and kept free from earthly corruption” (13.15, trans. Ryan, p. 346). Milton McC. Gatch discusses

the “picture of eternity” in Old Testament writings as “one of a world transformed and redeemed.” He also contextualizes his study within the six world ages. See “‘Perceptions of Eternity” at pp. 191 and 204.

, 87 Hill, “The Old World,” p. 325. The three images Hill explores in the Old English

poem Christ III make up the renovation of the elements. ,

88 Aquinas, In Matthaeum evangelistam expositio 24, in Opera omnia, 10:224B. On the Flood and Judgment, see Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality, pp. 27-28, 69-112, treating especially Irenaeus. 8° “Acrostich on the Last Judgment,” in Medieval Latin Verse, ed. Raby, p. 1. 0 De die judicii, col. 635. For authorship, analysis, and influence of this poem, see Whitbread, “‘Fudgment Day II and Its Latin Source,” and the other articles cited in her study.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 85 will suddenly move, the mountains rush down, the hills melt... . Overhead the air will be filled with greedy flames, and everywhere fire will burst its bonds.”) Bernard of Cluny, author of a well-known twelfth-century poem De contemptu mundi in leonine hexameters, writes of how the “last fire” will reach up to the stars and renew the polluted waters: Denique montibus altior omnibus ultimus ignis Surget inertibus ima tenentibus, astra benignis. Flammaque libera surget in aera, surget ad astra, Diruet atria, regna, suburbia, moenia, castra. Excoquet omnia sorde fluentia nunc elementa Reddet et omnia luce nitentia, jam lue dempta. Mundus habebitur atque novabitur ipse, sed alter, Alter imagine, non et origine; non ibi pauper, Non ibi debilis aut homo flebilis, aut furor aut lis, Aut cibus aut cocus aut Venus aut iocus aut tumor aut vis. Terra novabitur et reparabitur orbis imago, Quam modo polluit, obtinet, obruit una vorago. (Then will the final fire rise up higher than all mountains; the slothful will inhabit the depths, the merciful will inhabit the heavens. The unrestrained flame will rise in the sky, rise to the stars; it will destroy courts, realms, estates, towns and castles. It will dry up all the waves now flowing in filth, and, with decay removed, will restore all things shining with light. The same world will be kept and renewed, but it will be another, another in form, not in origin; no poor man will be there, no weak or weeping man will be there, no madness or strife or food or cook or lust or sport or pride or violence. Earth will be renewed and the world’s form restored, which now one abyss has defiled; one abyss possesses and overwhelms it.)?'

Bernard intermingles tropology with his physical terms, but this is true of the reformatio tradition generally, as Ladner has demonstrated. Bernard’s conception of reforming the world’s image—the orbis imago—constitutes

a variant of the moral doctrine of mankind’s recovering the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1.26). The popular thirteenth-century meditative lyric Dies irae avers that ““The world shall dissolve in ashes” (“‘solvet saeclum in favilla’”’). And in the early-fourteenth-century Cursor mundi, the

anonymous northern poet describes the world’s destruction and renovation in some detail and in rhymed couplets. ‘The relevant passage occurs in but one codex, a fragment in the Library of the College of Physicians, Text and translation in Scorn for the World, ed. Pepin, lines 33-44, pp. 14, 15.

86 , THE WORLD GROWN OLD Edinburgh, which includes material on “the Coming of Christ to Judgment,” “of Antichrist,” “the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday,” and “the Great Doom.” In a section that the editor Richard Morris calls “the State of the World after Doomsday,” the manuscript reads, It [the world] sal be brint sa dep on dreh Als noes flod rais quilum heih,

And pan sal haf a schap al new, Euir mar to standin trew;

Al pe elementes pat we se, | ban pai sal klengid [cleansed] be, Pat nou er stirand al sal stand, Sal tar be pan na pin in land, Als we nu er ilke dai in, Pat god hauis selid vs for vr sin.

Als vr bodis pat we her bar, Bes fairer bann ban euir was ar, Alsua pis werd [world] sal we haf schrud, bat hauid it neuir nan sa prude, An hundret sibe of fairer hew, Babe heuin and erpe sal be mad new. (2365766, 23671—76)”

The renovation will be thorough, a physical and moral purgation that will

include a cleansing of the elements through fire and the emergence of more beautiful human bodies. The earth that once ran red with martyrs’ blood will be filled with lovely, sweet-smelling flowers that will never fade or wither. Although the earth once was cursed (‘“‘malediht’’) and brought forth “thornis for wr eldern pliht” (2 3697-98), it will be renovated, “bliscid ... and quite / Of labur, and of soru, and site” (23699—700).

_ The process of reform described by the poets will be a renovation for the better, a reformatio in melius. As Honorius Augustodunensis stated the case: “Just as the present figura of our bodies will pass away such that it will have another shape not comparable to the old, so the present figura of the world will completely pass away and there will be another form of ° Cursor mundi, ed. Morris, part 5, p. 1633. See also the Middle English translation of Robert Grosseteste’s Chateau d’amour, ed. Sajavaara, lines 1045-61, p. 161; and The Pricke of Conscience, ed. Morris, lines 6346-57. Richard of St.-Victor in his commentary on the Apocalypse says that the elements of air and earth will not entirely be consumed but rather will rise up again, as if from the grave, and be immeasurably renewed for the better according to their first form and appearance—made perfect so that mankind might give thanks to the Creator and renovator: In Apocalypsim 7.1, cols. 859-60.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 87 incomparable glory.” ? The Venerable Bede in his commentary on Mark 13.31 represents the exegetical tradition of worldly renovation as a simultaneous refashioning from the old and a reform for the better. Noting that Ecclesiastes testifies that “the erthe stondith with outen ende” (1.4), Bede comments, “But plainly heaven and earth are passing away in that image (imago) which they now possess, but nonetheless they subsist in essence without end.” The word “image” here bears the pejorative signification of that which is opposed to the essence or spiritual part. Quoting from the Apocalypse on the “‘newe heuene and newe erthe,” Bede explains that these “surely are not others to be established but the same ones to be renovated. Thus heaven and earth pass away and yet remain because they are cleansed by fire from the appearance they now have and still are _ preserved in their nature.” We can understand the process through change in the natural world, Bede contends: For the earth weakens in its appearance in the winter’s drought and grows robust in summer moisture. The heavens daily are obscured by the gloom of night and are renewed by the divine splendor. From these things, therefore, let the believer conclude, on the one hand, that heaven and earth are destroyed and, on the other, that they are remade through innovation.”

Similarly, Hrabanus Maurus in his commentary on 1 Cor. 7.31—‘‘For whi the figure (figura) of this world passith”—maintains that the form but not

the essence will deteriorate. “Hence it passes away because the world grows old daily,” he says; “certainly, after Judgment, the present heaven and this earth will cease to be when the new heaven and new earth begin to be.” In the same place Hrabanus brings the Flood into his consideration

of the reform issue: “The figura will pass away,” he declares, “not the world’s nature: for when those who are judged not to be written down in the Book of Life are sent into eternal fires, then the figura of this world shall pass away in the conflagration of worldly fires, just as was enacted by °3 Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 3.15, col. 1168. ** Bede, In Marci Evangelium expositio, ed. Hurst, pp. 602-3. Charles Jones discusses the complexity of Bede’s use of figura and imago in ““Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,”

pp. 135 (figura and Auerbach’s analysis of typology); 141 (figura = clothing or adornment of words, in De schematibus et tropis liber), 151 (imago = typus; imagines = “‘depictions” or “echoes”’); 161, s.v. Figura (appendix to Jones’s discussion of De schematibus et tropis liber); 163, s.v. Imago. Jones quotes from M. P. Barrows: “ ‘T find Bede’s use of figura to waver between (1) the rhetorical and (2) the prophetic senses’ (Barrows, p. 168), sc.: (1) Quod si in capillis cogitationes, in oculis sensus fidelium spiritales figurari dixerimus (P.L. XCI, 1132A); (2) nomen et persona [David] figurans soleat habere Regis aeterni (1134B)”: “Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,” p. 161 n. 139.

88 THE WORLD GROWN OLD the Flood in the inundation of terrestrial waters.” °° Augustine had noted that the words “praeterit” (1 Cor. 7.31), “transit” (1 John 2.17), and “‘transibunt” (Matt. 24.35), all referring to the earth’s passing away at the end of time, are less forceful than terms that suggest destruction or annihilation. He concludes that the world will not completely perish (The City of

God 20.24). |

While some medieval writers regarded Noah’s Flood as something like a type or foreshadowing of the greater destruction to come at the end of the world, others wrote about the Flood as a kind of baptism (a spiritual renewal). The Flood in the first world age may be considered a “little Apocalypse,” which anagogically represents the destruction at the end of the sixth age. By studying the Flood, medieval people could gaze into the

future, though as if through a glass darkly. As Archbishop Wulfstan phrases it in his eschatological Secundum Lucam, ‘And witodlice ealswa flod com hwilum er for synnum, swa cym6 eac for synnum fyr ofer man-

cynn, & paerto hit nealaecd nu swyde georne.” John Ashenden, fourteenth-century fellow of Merton College, Oxford, mentions a colleague who attempted to date the second Coming and Judgment based on certain calculations from the Flood: But amongst other new and unheard of things bruited in these days, I greatly wonder at the words of a certain reverend master and fellow [perhaps John Aston], who in that year began to lecture on the Bible at Oxford and who, at the beginning of his reading, as I am reliably informed, publicly asserted and determined in the Schools that there was a certain and deter-

mined number of years between the first Flood of water in the time of Noah and the second Flood of fire diluvium ignis futurum) which is to

come, namely 7900 years.” ,

Jean Daniélou has called attention to the links among the Flood, Judgment, and death in typological applications of the “waters of Creation” in the medieval liturgy. He cites Lactantius and Ambrose on water and death and 1 Peter on baptism as antitype to the Flood; and he quotes Tertullian, ‘who calls the Flood ‘the baptism of the world.’ ”” °5 Hrabanus Maurus, Expositio in epistolam ad Corinthos primam, col. 72. As was his custom, Hrabanus weaves together quotations from Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory. See also Hugh of St.-Victor, De sacramentis 2.18.1, col. 609. 6 Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, p. 123. Wulfstan is explicating Luke 17.26: ‘‘And as it was doon in the daies of Noe, so it schal be in the daies of mannys sone.” 7 As quoted in Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools, pp. 102-3. Robson translates from MS Digby 176, fol. 39v (dated 1357). On p. 103 n. 1 Robson reproduces the Latin of this unusual passage. °8 Daniélou, “La typologie biblique,” pp. 146-47.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 89 This important subtopic—the renovation of the elements—provides an opportunity for summary of the chief motifs de senectute mundi. Man’s “image” has been more befouled than the world and its figura because his soul, his spiritual essence, was corrupted. Humankind’s outward appearance became distorted just before the Flood, when the intermingling of the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain produced giants: physical manifestations of human deviance from the likeness of God. But in the novissima bora of the sixth world age, the sins of evil people will not everywhere be so gross and obvious as the grotesque antediluvian giants. Toward the end, antichrists and false prophets will appear who may resemble the righteous but who will work for evil purposes. The sullied image of God will lie within, unseen and not yet judged, rather than without. The world or macrocosm, however, bears the scars of humankind’s sin outwardly in the annual mutation of seasons, in the moon’s phases, in nature’s violence, and in the predations of the animal kingdom. The entire order of nature embodies humans’ fault and must be purified in the ultimate conflagration. The physical tradition of cosmic destruction at the end of the world shades into tropology and anagogy in almost every medieval exposition of de elementorum innovatione and of the consummation. Medieval writers contemplated the Flood in order to understand why God will destroy the world (because of overweening carnality) and to locate those regions of the cosmos that will be visited by the final conflagration (mankind’s sphere, to the upper reaches of the lower heavens). The Flood and Apocalypse represent two associated events in the drama of salvation history and the world in decline from the first age to the sixth, and in preparation _ for the seventh. In this respect the Flood constitutes a well-wrought figure or signpost. As Noah reached his six-hundredth year, the still-young world _ achieved an apogee of sinfulness, which prompted God to destroy his creation but at the same time to foreshadow the annihilation at the end of the world—the fire next time. The purgation of the world’s imago or figura, though a physical process, mystically harmonizes with the restoration of humankind’s image. Both renovations will justify the Creation, bringing microcosm and macrocosm into accord with the providential design and bringing forth a cosmos or ornatus where before there was a chaotic whirpool of sin and corruption.

c. The eternity of the world. A third scientific (or metaphysical) topic with ramifications de senectute mundi concerns the relation of matter and the world to time and eternity. This topic had been a crux since the time of early Christianity, both because the idea of the world’s eternity seems

to oppose the Christian idea of the world’s Creation with time and its dissolution at the end and because Plato and Aristotle had tackled the issue in their writings. Plato maintained that the world was created but that the

go THE WORLD GROWN OLD creation would not end, and that eternal ideas exist in the eternal mind of the creator, even if the sensible world is but an imperfect, time-bound copy of those ideas—time itself being “the moving image of eternity” (Timaeus 28-34, 38). Aristotle disagreed with Plato on the creation of time and held that the world exists eternally (Physica 8.1, De caelo 1.12, Metaphysica 12.7). In the controversy between Plato and Aristotle, Boethius was particularly important for medieval authors, since he not only conveyed Aristotle’s claim that the world was eternal but also, following Plato, distinguished between the world’s perpetuity and God’s eternity (Chaucer’s Boece 5 pr. 6). Augustine, too, treated the question of the world’s eternity in The City of God, arguing forcefully that God created the world in time (that is, at the same moment that he made time, “in the beginning”); that he made the world out of nothing—ex nihilo—through his Word, who is

coeternal and coextensive with the Father; and that six thousand world years have not yet elapsed (11.4—-6, 12.10—-15).

In the ninth century John Scotus Eriugena maintained that because effects participate in causes and because God created the world (an effect) and because God is eternal, the world is eternal “though participation in its eternal cause, the Word of God.” The influential Arabic philosopher Avicenna, or Ibn Sina (980-1037), also argued for the world’s eternity, since the creation proceeded from God, the first unmoved, as a necessary emanation. According to Avicenna, who tried to harmonize some aspects of Aristotle’s thought with his Moslem theosophy, the first unmoved needs the creation, the world, to complete himself, nor could Avicenna conceive of a time—an eternity apart from time and creation—when God would exist in himself, without the creation. God is the absolutely essential being,

, and the world, too, is necessary, though not in the same absolute way as the first unmoved.'” In the twelfth century this topic was revived by the Chartrians, especially by an anonymous commentator on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, who pointed out that ‘‘according to the philosophers,

the world is eternal with respect to its matter, perpetual with respect to its form.” !°!

In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, William of Auvergne, and Bonaventure, among others, turned to the question of the world’s eternity. Although Aquinas was familiar with the opinions of those who held that the world’s eternity proceeds from God’s eternity, as » Periphyseon 3.7—10, as translated by Dales, “Discussions of the Eternity of the World,” p. 496. See also Stock, Myth and Science, pp. 79-81, on Macrobius and the possibility that Bernardus Silvestris was influenced by his views on the eternity of

the world. In this section I am much indebted to Dales’s study of the Chartrians on the eternity of the world and to Stock. 100 Duhem, Le systéme du monde, 6:124-26.

101 Tales, “Discussions of the Eternity of the World,” p. 498.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS gI effect from cause, he argued not from Plato, Eriugena, or Bernardus Sil-

vestris but rather from Aristotle, who asserted that the world was not created (De caelo et mundo 1.3).'° In article 2 of question 46, Aquinas says

that the finiteness of the world cannot be proved by demonstration: it must be understood as an article of faith like the mystery of the ‘Trinity. As part of his argument he mentions that “it would clearly appear that human cultures (artes) and their geographical settlement arise at definite periods of time” (objection 4), to which he counters the view of those who urge the world’s eternity, “that a particular region has undergone an indefinite number of changes from being uninhabitable to being habitable, and vice versa, and also that the arts because of various decadences (propter diversas corruptiones) and events are endlessly being discovered and lost”’ (reply to objection 4). Aquinas reasoned similarly in his little treatise De aeternitate mundt, which he may have written in response to a tractate Quaestiones de aeternitate mundi of John Pecham. Pecham, the first Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury (1279-92), seems to have attacked Aquinas’s reasoning in the Summa theologica that it might be possible for God to have created a world that has always existed.!° In his treatise Aquinas argues that God as First

Cause acts at once and not in time or duration, that nothing precedes God, and that souls will not endure forever with God. In his discussion of eternity, aeviternity (angelic “time’’), and human time, Aquinas maintains that God alone is immutable and that anything in Scripture that is said to be eternal, such as the hills of Ps. 75.5 or the earth itself (Eccles.

| 1.4), only participates in God’s eternity (Summa theologica 1, question 10.3—5). Eternity differs qualitatively from time, which has both before and after; and aeviternity differs from time in that it has beginning but no end. Hence aeviternity is between time, which has beginning and end, and eternity, which has neither beginning nor end. Finally, it is important to note that Thomas does not argue from the world’s old age in an appeal to tradition but from the world’s lack of eternity, which constitutes a more philosophical, scientific approach. By testifying that the subject is not accessible to human reason, he seems to allow for the possibility that philosophers and theologians could be wrong about this question—that the world might indeed be eternal. Such a notion, such a possibility, scandalized some church figures, notably the Franciscan St. Bonaventure. The orthodox position was perhaps articulated most forcefully by Arnold, the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot of Bonneval: 102 Aquinas, Summa theologica 1, quest. 46, art. 1, objections g and Io. 103 See Brady, “John Pecham,” and the brief discussion (“La perpetuité du monde”’)

in Duhem focusing on Jean de Jandun (fourteenth century) and his Quaestiones on Aristotle (Le systeme du monde, 6:569).

Q2 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Nothing with God was confused, nothing without form in that ancient time, because the matter of things, when it was made, was immediately formed into its species suitable to it. Whatever the philosophers have thought, adducing many principles, concerning the eternity of the world, of byle, of ideas, or of the world soul (which they call noys), is invalidated and destroyed by the first chapter of Genesis.'™

Henry of Ghent, a secular master who taught at Paris from 1276 to 1292, also treated the question of the world’s eternity. He attacked Avicenna’s idea that creation was an emanation from the first unmoved and | a necessary existence. For Avicenna, existence was the essence of creation, as it was for the first unmoved; for Henry, eternity contradicts the nature of creation and the world.!® The Averroist philosopher Boethius of Dacia—whom Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, condemned in 1277 along with others who speculated on scientific matters—wrote a Tractatus de aeternitate mundi in which he arrived at conclusions similar to those of Aquinas. He maintained that the theologian and natural philosopher approach truth from different perspectives. What might be appropriate for the scientific thinker may not be suitable for the man of faith. He argues in favor of the world’s creation, but not as a matter of scientific demonstration: “Therefore, we say that the world is not eternal but created de novo, although this is not possible to be shown by reason, as we saw above, just like certain other things which pertain to faith: for if they could be demonstrated, it would not be faith but knowledge.” ! Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253), the first chancellor of the University of Oxford, an Aristotelian exegete and speculative natural philosopher

but a conservative Augustinian theologian, quickly saw the danger to Christian tradition posed by the pagan views of nature, matter, and time, and in his Hexaemeron he denounced the argument de aeternitate mundi. 10 Arnold of Bonneval, Tractatus de operibus sex dierum, col. 1515. I have slightly altered the translation of Curtius/Trask, European Literature, pp. 121-22. Chenu regards Arnold’s Tractatus as an example of Chartrian influence (Nature, Man, and Society, pp. 8-9; La théologie au douzieme siécle, p. 24). Arnold adds: “Non senescit aeternitas,

non mutatur veritas, nunquam excidit charitas, non rumpitur solidum, non dividitur unum, nihil deest ad perfectum, non crescit totum, non minuitur universum”’ (col. I515)-

2 Duhem, Le systéme du monde, 6:127. For William of Auvergne, see 6:12; for St. Bonaventure, 6:86—88. See also Duhem’s discussion of a document contemporaneous with the school of Aquinas but not of that school: Tractatus de erroribus philosophorum (after 1260 but before 1274), 6:3-13. 106 Boethius of Dacia, Tractatus de aeternitate mundi, ed. Saj6, p. 52. For the affiliations between Aquinas and Boethius de Dacia, see Bukowski and Dumoulin, “L’influence de Thomas d’Aquin.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 93 Grosseteste was a man of considerable learning and intellectual force. Al-

though his writings had little impact on thirteenth-century theologians, he exerted considerable influence on writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially John Wyclif and Thomas Gascoigne. Smalley summarizes Grosseteste’s views: “He takes the bull by the horns and contrasts as sharply as possible the ancient philosophers’ view that matter was eternal with the Christian belief in creation ex nibilo. One cannot water down the philosophers, he says, nor pretend that Aristotle was a Christian.

Those who christianize Aristotle only make themselves heretics. Elsewhere he calls the philosophers’ theories mere cobwebs.”’!”” In his Hexaemeron and in De finitate motus et temporis Grosseteste sought to refute Aristotle and “to prove by reason that the world, time, and motion had a beginning.” 1%

The topic of the world’s eternity seldom came into direct opposition with the arguments concerning the world’s senescence. They remained for the most part discrete topics, with their own sources and subtopics. One such opposition—an exception that proves the rule—occurs in Bernardus Silvestris’s Cosmographia:

The entirety of things, the world, is not worn out with feeble old age (senectute decrepitus), nor will it be dissolved by a final death, since its law of enduring (ratio permanendi) was drawn from the craftsman and cause of

the work—both sempiternal—and from the matter and form of the material—both perpetual.’

Bernardus is unusual in this formulation, and his concern here is not at all moral but rather scientific. More typically the arguments from senescence belonged with moral, historical, or doctrinal treatises rather than with scientific or metaphysical texts. Thomas Aquinas did treat the issue of the world grown, in the form of world ages, but he did so ina different _ 107 Smalley, ““The Biblical Scholar,” in Studies in Medieval Thought, p. 79. 108 Dales, “Robert Grosseteste’s Place in Medieval Discussions,” p. 547. 109 Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia 1.4.4, ed. Dronke, p. 117; English translation by Dales, “Discussions of the Eternity of the World,” pp. 506-7. Pelen claims to find a discussion of eternity and perpetuity, based on Alan of Lille and Boethius, in Jean de Meun’s Roman; see Poetic Irony in the Roman de la Rose, pp. 134-47. The Cathar peasants of upper Ariége sometimes cited the notion of the world’s eternity. ‘The quarrier Arnaud de Savignan asserted that the world had no beginning and would have no end. He cited two sources for his allegation: a popular proverb “about men always sleeping

with other men’s wives,” and the instruction of his master, the superintendent of schools for Tarascon, one Arnaud Tolus. See Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, pp. 240, 319.

94 THE WORLD GROWN OLD place, in his biblical exegesis.'!° Still, the controversy itself, along with the new subjects taught in universities, promoted a slightly altered climate of ideas. The old verities were still acknowledged and transmitted, but somewhat grudgingly.

5. Literary topics a. The golden age. Chief among the literary topics de senectute mundi was that of the golden age: the world’s “youth.”” Medieval authors wrote about the golden age with nostalgia, to express a sense of loss, transience, and regret. The first age was golden because it was uncomplicated and unsophisticated, lacking the innovations and technological advances of later eras. This topic, like some others such as the eternity of the world, enjoyed an existence often wholly independent of the world grown old. Some writers, notably the early Christian apologist Lactantius, tried to adapt the golden age to Christian history. Others regarded the golden age as coterminous with Eden, a pagan error for the terrestrial paradise. Hence the golden-age “race” would amount to Adam and Eve. Early on, medieval Latin poets adapted pagan descriptions of the golden age for their settings of the terrestrial paradise, as in Lactantius’s De ave phoenice, which was translated into Old English poetry. The medieval settings of the golden age and terrestrial paradise, as with the classical golden-age descriptions, feature negative characterization (what H. R. Patch has termed the “negative formula’’): in the golden age there were no seasons, no warfare, no luxuries, no agriculture, and so forth.'!!

An interesting version of the golden-age motif appears in the thirteenth-century glosses to Ovid’s Metamorphoses known as the ‘‘Vulgate”’ commentary. Explaining Ovid’s “Aurea prima sata est aetas,” from book t of the Metamorphoses, the anonymous author (who will later cite Boethius) argues in a marginal gloss that the first age was golden because its people adhered to virtue; and he lists the stages of degeneration through metals of declining value: Figuraliter primam etatem dicit auream fuisse quia homines illius etatis uirtutibus adherebant, set de die in diem in uicia processerunt: quod designatur per etates sequentes. aurea Decem sunt genera metallorum per 110 See his ‘‘mystical” gloss on John 2.1, the six water jars at the Cana marriage: In JFoannis Evangelium expositio 2.1, in Opera omnia, ed. Allodi, 10:333A. See also Catena aurea: In Foannis Evangelium 2.1, in Opera omnia, 12:287A; his gloss on 1 Cor. 10.11, in Commentarius in epistolam ad Hebraeos 9.5, in Opera omnia, 10:744A-B. 11 Patch, The Other World, p. 12. See also Levin, Myth of the Golden Age, pp. 10-11.

64-68. | ,

For an early Christian doctrinal viewpoint on paradise, see Ladner, Idea of Reform, pp.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 95 que uoluit Sibilla decem etates designari. Prima etas aurea figuratur quia, sicut aurum preualet ceteris metallis, sic prima etas ceteris in bonitate. Nomina metallorum sunt hec: aurum, argentum, cuprum, electrum, auricalcum, es, stangnum, plumbum, acinas, ferrum.!” (Figurally, he says the first age was golden because men of this age adhered to virtues, but from day to day they degenerated into vices, which is indicated by the later ages. Golden. There are ten kinds of metals by which the Sybil wished to designate ten ages. The first age is figured as golden because, as gold is worth more than other metals, so the first age surpassed the others in goodness. The names of the metals are as follows: gold, silver, copper, amber, brass, bronze, tin, lead, inferior bronze, iron.)

This commentary suggests a slowly evolving decline leading inexorably to the basest metal, a process akin to alchemy in reverse.

The primary function of the golden-age motif in medieval literature was to provide normative values that pointedly contrast with present-day ethics. To underscore the differences between a primitive past and the present, medieval writers usually adopted for their golden-age settings what Lovejoy and Boas call “mixed primitivism,” a combination of the “soft” or Ovidian and “hard” or Juvenalian primitivisms. In The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius saw fit to combine the two views of early life,

| and his depiction of the golden age profoundly influenced medieval literature, especially of the later Middle Ages. In Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’s Felix nimium prior etas: Blisful was the firste age of men. They heelden hem apayed with the metes that the trewe feeldes broughten forth. They ne destroyeden ne desseyvede nat hemself with outrage. They weren wont lyghtly to slaken hir hungir at

even with accornes of ookes.... They slepen holsome slepes uppon the gras, and dronken of the rennynge watres, and layen undir the schadwes of the heye pyn-trees. (Boece 2, met. 5, 1-6, 15-18)

Chaucer adapted some of the motifs and even the language of Boece for his own treatment of the Saturnian golden age in The Former Age, a short lyric that appears as a marginal gloss to Boece. In both Boece and The Former

Age the speakers, recognizing a gulf between past and present, decry modern values: “I wolde that our tymes shold torne ayen to the oolde maneris!”’ (Boece); ‘‘Allas, allas, now may men wepe and crye! / For in oure dayes nis but covetyse ...” (The Former Age, lines 60-61). 112 “Vulgate” Commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ed. Coulson, p. 85. Coulson says

that twelfth-century commentators distinguish “six ages of man” figured in degenerating metals: “aurum, argentum, es, cuprum, stagnum, ferrum”’ (p. 85, note to line 89).

96 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Another well-known setting of the golden age appears in Bernard of Cluny’s De contemptu mundi, dedicated to Peter, abbot of Cluny. This setting, like that of Boethius, includes generous allusions to classical mythology; but unlike Boethius’s Consolation, Bernard’s poem posits a larger context of worldly decline. At the opening of book 2, Bernard describes a golden-age race that is clearly not Adam and Eve and that lives in a style

close to that of twelfth-century monks—or rather close to the way they ought to live. Bernard’s golden race ate acorns and drank water, slept on the grass (Boethian elements), and sought shelter in caves (a Juvenalian feature). They were modest in their desires and observed the golden mean in all things. They were farmers (an unclassical concept) and reaped a rich harvest; they were also shepherds. They held property in common: Publica vellera, lac, sata, jugera, fertilitates, Pocula, prandia, pascua, praedia, prata, penates. (2-73-74) (Wool belonged to all, and milk, crops, land, fruits, drinks, lunches, fodder, farms, meadows, and hearths.)

The true point of Bernard’s description of the golden age is that this ideal human condition has disappeared in modern ages. Book 2 of De contemptu mundi begins, Aurea tempora primaque robora praeterierunt, Aurea gens fuit et simul haec ruit, illa ruerunt. (1-2) (The golden age and primal strengths have perished. The race of gold existed, and once this fell, those too collapsed.)

In many ways the people of the golden age lived a monastic existence— farming, shepherding, living moderately, and holding property in common—before monasticism was instituted. They possessed an oak-tree

: hardness, a robur, that has vanished as the world has grown old. The words robur and robora, oak tree (with figurative connotations of hardness), contain in some patristic writings the signification of original golden-age strength or Christian moral stabilitas, and this signification is Bernard’s meaning in book 2, line 1, of De contemptu mundi. Cyprian, for example, in Ad Demetrianum 3, allows that the world has grown old,

adding, ‘it does not preserve the strength it had nor is it strong in that 113 For the significance of robur/robora in golden-age writings, see Dean, “Spiritual Allegory and Chaucer’s Narrative Style,” esp. pp. 277-81.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 97 force and robur that once prevailed.” And Augustine in De Genesi contra Manichaeos 1, speaking of the fifth world age, testifies that “this age declined from the strong virtuous rule (a regni robore) and was broken with respect to the Jewish people, just as a man ages from his youth.” Robur/ robora developed as it did, I believe, because certain influential medieval writers understood that the oak tree, not to mention acorns, symbolized the Saturnian golden age, the first age of youthful moral strength before the world began to grow old. Alan of Lille alludes to the golden age in a sequence de senectute mundi in meter 6 of De planctu Naturae: Leges lege carent iusque tenoris Perdunt iura sui. Nam sine iure Fit 1us omne, uiget lex sine lege. Mundus degenerat, aurea mundi Iamiam degenerant secula, mundum Ferri pauperies uestit. Eundem Olim nobilitas uestiit auri. (18-24) (Laws lack legal force; rights lose their right of tenure. All justice is administered without justice and law flourishes without legality. The world ts in a state of decline: already the golden ages of the world are in decay. Poverty clothes a world of iron, the same world that noble gold once clothed.)'"*

Alan locates the decline of the golden age in the context of clerical satire (“Leges lege carent,” etc.), but he also, with the word “Iamiam”—“already,” or “even now’ —obscures the historical moment of the golden age to some unspecified time in the quite recent past, as if the golden age had recently departed and the iron age had just now emerged. ‘“‘Golden age,” in De planctu Naturae, does not necessarily mean Saturnian golden age. Pagan golden-age motifs also found their way into the Navigatio sancti Brendan, a combination of saint’s life and travel book of the ninth century. The Navigatio describes the travels of Brendan (c. 486-575) and his associates in western and southern seas, in regions close to the terrestrial paradise. Brendan, his fellow monks, and those in other monastic communities described in the Navigatio exist—when they live properly—according to golden-age standards of moderation and Christian virtue. The Navigatio sancti Brendani is an important witness not only to the food and drink associated with fitness for paradise but also to hagiography on the 114 Alan of Lille, De planctu Naturae, ed. Haring, p. 851; trans. Sheridan, pp. 167-68.

98 THE WORLD GROWN OLD world grown old, since it is clear that Brendan represents the virtue and moral strength of an earlier time when monks gladly endured austerity for the faith.1!°

The pagan golden age was never fully incorporated into medieval Christian thought because of the discrepancies between the Saturnian age

and the early chapters of Genesis. But as John Fleming has written in relation to Jean de Meun’s setting of the golden age in Le roman de la Rose:

“The fable of the end of the Golden Age was taken by the Latin Middle Ages as an antique ‘parallel’ to the scriptural account of the Fall of Man. The one was narratio fabulosa, the other historical truth, but both, as events that had ‘another sense’ beyond the letter of their texts, spoke of the theological condition of fallen man.” !!© Some authors, particularly in the thir-

teenth and fourteenth centuries, found moral and satiric uses for an ante legem age of natural piety and innate virtue: primitive folk challenge and admonish the more advantaged Christians, who know the truth of Christianity and yet do not behave accordingly.

b. Vestiges of paradise. Middle English authors developed a special interest in artifacts or objects that originated in the terrestrial paradise. Chief among these vestiges were, first, the footprints of Adam and Eve, which shriveled the grass as they walked away from Eden but which point the way back to the terrestrial paradise; and, second, the pippins from the Tree of Life, which Seth is said to have carried away from Eden and which

Eve later planted. The withered footprints suggest that nature, too, in Milton’s phrase, ‘felt the wound” when Adam and Eve sinned. The pippins grew into trees of three colors—white, green, and red—which then grew together to form a single tree in a kind of spiritual-botanical mystery, a mystery that perhaps reflects exegetical glossing of the mulberry tree, Luke 17.6.!!7 According to Malory, who was following the Queste del saint

graal, Solomon’s wife had three spindles fashioned from this trinitarian tree; and these spindles remain as ornaments atop a bed in the ship of

, Faith. As part of his grail adventures, Perceval achieves the magical sword of Solomon that lies on the bed with spindles in that ship. The spindles— 115 For analyses of this work, see Borst, Lebensformen im Mittelalter, pp. 133-38; and

Hanning, “Mony Turned Tyme.” 116 Fleming, Reason and the Lover, p. 115. For an interesting application of the Saturnian golden age to The Knight’s Tale, see Paul Olson, The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, pp. 83-84. 117 See, for example, Walafrid Strabo’s comment in Expositio in Lucam: “. . . its fruit

was first white, next red, finally black: thus the devil while an angel was white, black in Adam’s fall, red in the homicide of Abel by Cain” (col. 902); and Glossa ordinaria, 4:200B (PL 114:318). For an early interpretation of the mulberry tree, see Ambrose, Expositio Euangeli secundum Lucam 8.28, ed. Adriaen, p. 308. I have investigated this theme in my “Vestiges of Paradise.”

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 99 white, green, and red—provide a measure of how far mankind has fallen since the pippins originated in the terrestrial paradise, one index, a moral yardstick, of the world’s old age. Many English writers, including the anonymous author of Cursor mundi (early fourteenth century) and Malory, transmitted the Seth legend and elaborated various legends of Adam and Eve (see Chapter 2). Sir John Mandeville, although he does not specifically treat the legend of Seth, does concern himself with vestiges of paradise, including such varied traces as the Nile River (identified as the paradisaical Gyson); “apples” of paradise (the banana); the Vale of Mambre, where Adam is said to have wept one hundred years for Cain’s murder of Abel; the wood of the Great Chan’s chariot, said to derive from Eden; and Golgotha, where Adam’s head was buried (a strong iconographic motif in Renaissance art). In Mandeville’s Travels the farther one travels east and the closer one gets to the terrestrial paradise, the more innocent and relatively simple become the earth’s inhabitants. Some, who lack written law or a knowledge of Christ, seem to be naturally Christian with an innate sense of contemptus mundi.'* Along with many other medieval authors, Mandeville was fascinated with the Holy Land, the Far East, the terrestrial paradise, and the past—and particularly with the relations among these. But the motivating force or theory behind this intense interest in the terrestrial paradise and the past was, in no small part, the idea of the world grown old. As Colin Morris has written, ““Men realized the inadequacy of the immediate past, and, as many reformers do, they turned to distant and more civilized ages to repair the inadequacy of their immediate inheritance.” !! The old world, known and familiar, made the world of the past more appealing; and literature, including travel books, could make that past more vivid. In this way the idea of the world grown old became part of the travel book genre and of the curiositas of pilgrimage and tourism. Later on, a similar interest would motivate some Renaissance explorers (and others), who would regenerate the Old World with a New World.

c. The decline of love. Another important topic in the development of senectus mundi—the degeneration of human love—appeared in the writ-

ings of romance authors beginning in the twelfth century. Some poets,

, extolling love in the old days—specifically in the time of Arthur—maintained that love has suffered an unfortunate decline; in Malory’s words, 118 See Mandeville’s Travels, ed. Seymour, pp. 30 (Nile as coming from ‘‘Paradys Terrestre”), 35 (“apples of Paradys”), 48 (Vale of Mambre), 56 (Adam’s skull and Golgotha), 174 (wood of Great Chan’s chariot). For the idea that people are naturally Christian in eastern realms, see Howard, “Mandeville’s Travels,” and Writers and Pilgrims, pp. 66—76. 119 Morris, Discovery of the Individual, p. 53.

100 THE WORLD GROWN OLD “love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadayes.” But Chrétien de Troyes had written on the same theme, and he probably took over the motif from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Britain declined, Geoffrey implies, when the Britons, like the iniquitous pre-Flood generation, gave themselves over to sexual license and homosexuality, a notion Geoffrey derived from Gildas’s harangues in De excidio Britanniae.'*° The persistence of this literary topic may result from the prevalence of

a similar, or perhaps related, topic: the cooling of charity in the world’s latter days. Christ said in the Matthew “apocalypse” (Matt. 24.12) that one of the signs of Doomsday would be, along with a rise in false prophets and apostles, a decline in charity, “for wickidnesse schal be plenteuouse, | the charite of manye schal wexe coold”’ (“refrigescet caritas multorum’’; see above, 3d[3]). Exegetes interpreted this to mean either that before the end—variously understood (sixth world age generally? last days?)—every-

one would deny Christ and cool to religion, or that each person would love the world to the point that “the charite of the fader is not in hym” (1 John 2.15, the classic biblical passage on the contempt of the world).'?! Because antifraternal writers interpreted the false prophets as the friars, the friars were regarded as the vanguard of the cooling process. William of St.-Amour, for example, in De periculis novissimorum temporum (1255), identified friars with the antichristi of 1 John; the seventh sign of the end of the world is to be found, according to William, in the cooling of charity (see above, 3g). As Szittya has shown, William warns that hordes of friars will penetrate homes—literal houses but also the house of the soul, or the conscience—and cause a decline in human relations generally. Jean d’Anneux, on the faculty of theology at Paris, in De confessionibus, denounces the friars as pseudoapostles of the end. Szittya summarizes:

The Pharisees sprang up at the end of the Old Law to persecute Christ more than others, despite their apparent sanctity; so men similar to them have arisen against the New Law who are more contrary to the church of Christ than others. Jean has a strong sense of historical decline and senes120 For Malory, see Works, ed. Vinaver, 3:1119. For Geoffrey of Monmouth, see Historia 2.10, ed. Griscom and Jones. Hanning has written about historiography de senectute mundi in fall of Britain texts (Vision of History, esp. p. 57). See also Patterson, “Historiography of Romance,” esp. pp. 14-15. '21 See Origen, Commentaria in Matthaeum 39, col. 1654; Wyclif, De Antichristo 1.50, in Opus evangelicum 3-4, ed. Loserth, p. 183. See also A'lfric’s Sermo de die judicii, lines

330-44, ed. Pope, p. 605. This homily, number 18 of the supplementary collection, which influenced Wulfstan’s Secundum Marcum (see above, n. 24), has as its texts Luke

, 17, Matt. 24, and Mark 13. The well-known Blickling Homily 10, “Pisses middangeardes ende neah is,” combines material from the Matthew apocalypse, the disease metaphor, and the cooling of charity motif. Text and translation in Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, pp. 106-9.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS IOI cence in the church. Before the friars became so exalted, the faith flourished, charity prevailed, local churches prospered, and prelates were honored by their subjects. But with the coming of the friars, the age of decline

began... .!” Several Middle English lyrics from preachers’ manuals shade the issue of “love,” it seems deliberately, by juxtaposing romance and political ter-

minology. One fourteenth-century poem from Bishop John Sheppey’s collection, which is entitled De mundo and begins “Falsenesse and couetys er feris,” says that while “falsedam” rules above, “byrid es trwloue.” An-

other complaint lyric bemoans that “‘trew love is ful thinne.” In a Latin and English poem beginning “Munus fit iudex, fraus est mercator in urbe,” the anonymous poet describes how “‘loue is lecherye.” ‘This poem concludes, Now men leuyn good thewis, & holy chyrch is led with schrewys, Clergie goth owt of be wey, be fend among hem hath hys prey, Symony is aboue, & awey is trwloue.!”?

The word “trwloue” may translate the French phrase verai’amors, a synonym for fin amors, but in the English lyrics such “true love” has a distinctly monastic odor. Wenzel has identified such lyrics as a specific type of Middle English complaint verse—he calls them type B lyrics to distinguish them from complaints deriving from “The Twelve Abuses” (type A)—that, in Wenzel’s words, “speak of change, of a development through time, usually from good to bad.” ““The idea of degeneracy through time,” he adds, “‘is essential to this type, and it is expressed in various ways.” !*4 122 Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, p. 91. For William’s De periculis, see esp. chap. 1.

123 For “Falsenesse and couetys er feris” (IMEV 759), see RL XIV, p. 54; for the political song and the “thin” love, which begins “Whose thenchith up this carful lif’ (IMEV 4144), see Political Songs, ed. Wright, p. 195; for “Munus fit iudex,” see HP XIV & XV, p. 144. See also the macaronic poem that Rossell Hope Robbins entitles “The Sayings of the Four Philosophers” (1311), beginning “L’en puet fere & defere” (IMEV 1857): HP XIV & XV, lines 39-44, p. 141. See also the lyric from about 1298 beginning “Ludere volentibus ludens paro lyram,” in Political Songs, ed. Wright, p.-161; “Loue is out of lond iwent” (MEV 2008); and “‘Charite, chaste, pite arn waxin al colde” (IMEV 592), both in Political, Religious and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, pp. 228 and 236, and the lyric from Fasciculus morum beginning ““Trewe loue among men pat most is of

lette,” ed. Wenzel, p. 198. 124 Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric, p. 182. For the type B complaint lyrics, see pp. 182-93.

102 THE WORLD GROWN OLD The ways include vice’s appearing as a virtue, virtue’s having become vice, or a mix of the two.

d. Nobility of soul. A motif related to the decline of love is the issue of hereditary nobility and virtue (Curtius’s topos “nobility of soul”). This topic has an existence quite independent of the idea of the world grown old, and some of the greatest writers of the later Middle Ages, including Jean de Meun, Dante, and Chaucer, treated this subject at length. A lessnoticed example of the nobility topos in a context de senectute mundi occurs

in Andreas Capellanus’s De amore. In book 1, chapter 4, Andreas points out that everyone derives from common ancestors, Adam and Eve, and that in the beginning there was no peerage. When class distinctions de-

veloped, in ancient times, they were based on integrity of character. ‘There are indeed many whose seed is sprung from those first nobles but who have gone downhill and declined to the opposite condition (in aliam partem degenerando declinant).” ** A woman therefore does not love a man for his class but for his innate nobility and his virtues: the more virtuous he is, the more she is likely to love him. In his section of Le roman de la Rose Jean de Meun aggressively tackles the issue of gentility in the person of Nature, who observes that the king and plowman are indistinguishable as regards their bodies. If there is a difference between the estates or classes, it comes in conduct rather than in bodies or inherited qualities: nus n’est gentis s'il n’est a vertuz antantis, ne n'est vilains fors por ses vices, don il pert outrageus et nices. (18585-88) (No one is noble unless he is intent on virtue, and no man ts base except because of his vices, which make him appear unbridled and stupid.)

The concept of nobility of soul became a significant political topic in English writings. About the same time that Chaucer was writing his moral ballades Gentilesse and Lak of Stedfastnesse, a lapsed priest named John Ball stirred up the rebels at Blackheath in 1381 by allegedly sermonizing on

| the theme of innate worth. According to Thomas Walsingham, author of Historia Anglicana, he is said to have preached on the following couplet:

125 Andreas Capellanus on Love 1.6, trans. Walsh, pp. 44, 45.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 103 Whan Adam dalf, and Eve span, Wo was thanne a gentilman?!Ӣ

If Walsingham’s report is accurate, the 1381 Rising occurred not just over

the poll tax and other economic issues but over issues of heredity and nobility—issues of human worth such as those that emerge also in Langland’s Piers Plowman. At Smithfield, Wat Tyler presented the king with a

list of six points, two of which were “That there should be no seignory except that of the King” and ‘“That there should be no serf in England.” !?’

Because Walsingham and other monastic chroniclers presented a biased account of the so-called Peasants’ Revolt, the political content and especially the alleged leveling argument of Ball’s sermon theme have been doubted. But there can be no doubt that someone, either Ball or a chronicler, juxtaposed the topos of nobility of soul with political action. e. The wasteland. A literary topic de senectute mundi with both moral and scientific implications is that of the wasteland. The wasteland, or terre gaste, is a local, disguised form of the world grown old. The origins of this topic are somewhat obscure, although there are suggestive parallels, or “remote cousins,” in Celtic writings.’’? The motif occurs in Manawydan son of Lijr from The Mabinogi, a Welsh work compiled in the fourteenth

| century that probably records much earlier material. By the time Chrétien de Troyes wrote about the wasteland, in Le roman de Perceval (written

, about 1175), it had become part of the Christian moral and symbolic 126 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, 2:32. The Laie Bible, a French fourteenth-century didactic and moral poem in octosyllabic couplets, contains a brief description of gentility under the general rubric of pride. See lines 247—76 of Le aie Bible, ed. Clarke. For an analysis of John Ball’s career and teachings in the context of Langland’s Piers Plowman, see Justice, Writing and Rebellion, chap. 3, esp. pp. 1og—10. Richard

Firth Green interprets Ball’s letters against a backdrop of literary convention (“John Ball’s Letters’’). 127 Robertson, Chaucer’s London, p. 148.

28 Loomis, The Grail, p. 75, referring to the Irish echtrai. Sometimes complaint writers ascribe the land’s waste to political events, as in the thirteenth-century Latin lyric (in goliardic measure) beginning “Plange, plorans, Anglia, plena jam dolore,” which contains the lines Sic resplubica perit, terra desolatur; Invalescit extera gens et sublimatur; Vilescit vir incola et subpettiatur. _ (Thus the state 1s ruined, and the land is laid waste; the stranger is strengthened and raised up; the native is debased and trodden under foot.)

See also the lyric beginning “Eaduuardi regis Anglorum me pepulere,” which castigates the “Degener Anglorum gens.” Both poems in Political Songs, ed. Wright, pp. 121-24 and 128-32.

104 THE WORLD GROWN OLD landscape surrounding Perceval and his quest for identity as a knight. Chrétien, it should be noted, does not actually use the phrase terre gaste in the Perceval. The concept, however, occurs in two passages, both having

to do with Perceval’s education. In the first passage, after the innocent Perceval has seen Arthur’s knights and reported this wonder to his mother,

she tells him that when his father died, the land and its institutions declined (ed. Roach, lines 427-34). In the second passage, after Perceval’s experiences in the grail castle, the loathly damsel explains that because Perceval remained silent at the castle, Dames en perdront lor maris,

_ Terres en seront escillies | Et puceles desconseillies, Qui orfenines remandront, Et maint chevalier en morront;

Tot cist mal esteront par toi. (4678-83) (Ladies will lose their husbands; lands will be devastated; young women, who will remain orphans, will be distressed; and many knights will die:

all these evils will occur because of you.) |

So much depends on the actions of the young would-be knight, who at first does not understand the codes of chivalric behavior and then fails to grasp the deeper mysteries of the grail castle. In his silence he follows the

| advice of Gornemans (line 1654), his tutor in chivalry; the advice fails him at the castle, and Perceval will cause the land to become waste, according to the loathly damsel. The point is that the well-established codes of chivalry will not provide infallible guides to right conduct in a fallen world, here specifically a world grown old. Even Perceval’s youth, innocence, and

innate goodness cannot forestall the predicted calamities for which he somehow is marked as responsible. The fisher king retains his wound; the land remains unfertile. In Chrétien’s Perceval and in works dependent on it, the mystery of the wasteland is inextricably bound up with family and history, with actions in the world, and with the Christian faith. Even ethical conduct in a fallen world, with its foréts gastes, can have unfortunate,

unforeseen consequences. Chivalry, with its rules and civilizing ethos, helps guide the Christian pilgrim. But it does not offer secure directions for worldly behavior in all cases, nor does it prevent the world from grow-

, ing old. To the contrary, Chrétien shows in the Perceval, without dogmatizing the point, that individuals, acting (or failing to act) on a local

level—a particular time and place—unwittingly contribute to the decay of | nature and institutions.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 105 The wasteland appears in a well-known nonromance context as well,

: and with unmistakable overtones of the world grown old. In Dante’s Inferno 14 Virgil relates the legend of the mysterious old man of Crete, the gran veglio, a great statue that presides over “un paese guasto,” Crete, a land that was fertile and abundant in the Saturnian golden age (see below, Chapter 4). This, too, is a localized scene of decline and infertility, yet a theater that symbolically suggests a greater decline, a greater loss—a story whose full dimensions are known to Christians but not to pagans such as Virgil. f. Nostalgia. A fifth and especially literary topic de senectute mundi is the glorification of the past, in which people were said to lead a more virtuous and blissful existence. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries particularly, literary writers, together with historians, theologians, and preachers, organized some of their major works around the idea of the world grown old. Jean de Meun, Dante, Petrarch, Sir John Mandeville, William Langland, John Gower, the Gawain poet, and Chaucer all focused

attention on the past in an effort to understand the gulf between primitive times, with its innocence, integrity, simplicity, and idealism, on the one hand, and the present era, with its experience, complexity, and corruption, on the other. They struggled to come to terms with time and mutability, and they imaginatively returned again and again to the terrestrial paradise, or earlier times, for mirrors of virtuous conduct. These mirrors—Abraham, Jonah, Gawain, Alceste, Alexis, Erkenwald, or Grisilde—indict the

present age through their untutored goodness. Sometimes women are es- , pecially singled out for praise, as in the writings of Chaucer and Christine de Pizan. Such virtuous folk manifest the innocence of an uncorrupted, young (or younger) world. — We can perceive a special reverence for old “‘ensamples”’ of virtue in a Middle English sermon De sancta Maria (before 1402) in which the anonymous writer, in an ubi sunt? passage, laments the decline in morals from past to present: For in comparison pat it was som tyme, vertewes morall ben goyn. Fey3th, hope, and charite be welny3 exiled, and sewerly with-owte pise vertewes may be no seynt in pis liff. Haa, good Lord God, where is be fey3th of Abraam, pe good hope of Ysaak, be prudens of Iacob? Where is pe chastite of Ioseph, the pacients of Moyses, be gret zele of Finees, of all pe wiche scripture rememburs. . . .'”°

g. Political and occasional applications. Another literary application of the world grown old may be found in certain political and occasional 129 Middle English Sermons, ed. Ross, p. 252.

106 THE WORLD GROWN OLD lyrics, including s¢rventes. In a number of political lyrics, especially on kings, the world has grown old because of dire conditions or what are alleged to be terrible, special circumstances. Such poems occur in both Latin and vernacular poems, and often the lyrics dole out praise and blame with a generous ladle. But as Rossell Hope Robbins has observed, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between political occasion and mere convention.!*°

An example of a political attack de senectute mundi appears in an eleventh-century Latin complaint against Rome, “Venite cuncti populi.” This lyric, part of the polemical literature of the Investiture Controversy, contains the following characterization of Pope Gregory VII:

O Hildebrande liuide, orte Draconis semine, subisti sedem temere, mundum foedasti feruide.

(41-44) (O spiteful Hildebrand, born from the Dragon’s seed!—rashly you stole upon [St. Peter’s] chair, and you violently defile the world.)

A similar attack occurs in a well-known treatise directed to the German emperor Henry IV by his ardent supporter Benzo of Alba. Benzo attacks Gregory (Hildebrand) as “Prandellus” (“little ass”) or “Folleprand Manicheus”’ (““Manichaean windbag”’); he begins the narratio section of book 6 by explaining the world as old and upside-down because of clerical abuses from the top: Silicernius est mundus, finem clamat seculi; Ante tempus senectutis homines sunt vetuli, Longe fiunt a virtute, sed in malis seduli. (Ihe world has grown old, [and] it proclaims the end of the age. Men are gray-batred before old age. They are far away from virtue, but zealous in vices.)

Prandellus, says Benzo, has revealed himself as Antichrist; he is a “‘false monk” possessed of ‘‘a thousand vices.” '3* In such writings there is a fine 130 Rossell Hope Robbins, ‘““Middle English Poems of Protest’; “‘Dissent in Middle

English Literature”; “The Lyrics,” esp. p. 396. For an important critique of the terms “politics,” “protest,” and “dissent” applied to fourteenth-century English verse, see Kane, “Some Fourteenth-Century ‘Political’ Poems.” 131 In “Gedicht auf die Einnahme Roms 1084,” ed. Sudendorf, pp. 55-56. 132 Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV, ed. Pertz, p. 659.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 107 _ line between a convincing expression of belief in the world’s decline and a cynical manipulation of a monastic trope for political reasons. A Peter Damian will denounce the world and monkish practices in general terms without reference to specific personalities or occasions, but Benzo and some others have a clear institutional and personal ax to grind. Many lyrics of this type were composed on wars or situations of stress. A sirvente on King John’s weaknesses, for example, begins, “Mors est li siécles briemant, / Se li rois Touwairs sormonte.” (“The world will shortly come to nought,—if the king overcome Thouars.”) In a lyric from Edward I’s reign beginning “Ich herde men upo mold make muche mon” (Song of the Husbandman), farmers complain against bad treatment, including robbery:

Thus me pileth the pore and pyketh ful clene, The ryche raymeth withouten eny ryht; Ar londes and ar leodes liggeth fol lene, Thorh biddyng of baylyfs such harm hem hath hiht. Meni of religioun me halt hem ful hene, Baroun and bonde, the clerc and the knyht. Thus wil walketh in lond, and wondred ys wene, Falsshipe fatteth and marreth with myht.'?

The anonymous author depicts a scene, a condition—familiar enough from the Latin complaint tradition—of a people overwhelmed with oppression and taxation. Finally, a lyric on the death of Edward III, 1377— a poem included in the Vernon Manuscript—frames the king’s demise in terms of the world’s degeneration: “A! dere God, what may this be,” it begins, That alle thing weres and wasteth away?

Frendschyp is but a vanyté, , Unnethe hit dures al a day. Thei beo so {sliper] at assay, So leof to han, and loth to lete, And so fikel in heore fay, That selden iseize is sone forzete. 13+

The poet comes close to saying that the earth has become empty and reduced because it seems that way to him after the king’s death. Things seem to have declined because Edward no longer guides the nation. The 133 Political Songs, ed. Wright, pp. 1 and 150. 134 Political Poems, ed. Wright, p. 215.

108 THE WORLD GROWN OLD , remainder of the lyric (fourteen stanzas) fleshes out an allegory of the now rudderless ship of state.

h. The translation of empire. The venerable commonplace of the translation of empire, translatio imperii, and its companion topos, the translation of culture and learning, translatio studi, explain the transference of empire and learning from east to west.!3° Medieval interpretations of history and culture based on this idea of transference derive from commentary on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image of Dan. 2, with its head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay: an image of degeneration. ‘The traditional empires

symbolized in the metals were the Assyrian (Babylonian), Persian (Medean), Greek, and Roman; later the list was updated with the Frankish kingdom or Holy Roman Empire. Otto of Freising, noting that learning progressed (and improved) from ancient Egypt to the world’s extremities, in Gaul and Spain (‘‘ad ultimum occidentem”’), speculates that the world has grown old and draws its final breaths because there is no longer anywhere for learning to move.'*®

The topic is ambiguous in that it evokes at once renewal and decay. On one level empires progress from pagan to Christian, from Babylon to Charlemagne’s France or Otto’s Germany; on another level the empires degenerate, and medieval empire rested on an uncertain foundation (the present divided empire of iron mixed with clay). Just as the empires progressed from east to west, so learning and poetry transferred from the Greece of Homer to the Rome of Virgil to the Aachen of Alcuin or the Paris of Thomas Aquinas. Curtius cites Chrétien’s Cligés, which speaks of

the translation of learning (clergie) from Greece to Rome and finally to | France. Curtius points out that Chrétien’s “modern” application of this

topic, since he claims that France has supplanted rather than renewed | Rome and Greece, is antihumanistic: the classical flame has been extinguished (“estainte”’).!*” But the translation can also be regarded as an at135 See Curtius, European Literature, pp. 29, 384-85; Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, pp. 185-87; Goez, Translatio imperi; Ladner, Idea of Reform, p. 15 n. 35 (bibliography). 136 For the interpretation of Daniel, see Goez, Translatio imperii, pp. 366-77. Goez also includes the subtopics of translatio religionis and translatio sacerdotit, with citations

from Hrabanus Maurus, Rupert of Deutz, and others, in his “Exkurs I,” pp. 378-81. For Otto of Freising see Jeauneau, Translatio studii, p. 22 and n. 43, with reference to Historia de duabus civitatibus, prologue to book 5. Jeauneau links Bernard of Chartres’s statement about giants and dwarfs to Otto’s observation about the translatio studi by noting their citation of Priscian and the progress of Greek learning. 137 See Cligés, lines 14-44, ed. Gregory and Luttrell; Curtius, European Literature, p. 385. For a discussion of this topos as a rhetorical ploy for introducing new modes of writing, see Freeman, Poetics of ““Translatio Studi” and “Conjointure,” prologue and chap. 1. Goez analyzes the topic of translatio sapientiae in conjunction with the translatio studii and Chrétien in Tvanslatio imperii, pp. 122-23.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS 109g tempt to appropriate literary and historical material from one culture and to refashion it into material for another.!** In Philobiblon Richard of Bury asserts that, despite the general decay of wisdom in the modern period, scholarship has passed from east to the farthest west. Minerva—personification of study and wisdom—has abandoned (“deseruit’’) Athens, has retired (‘“‘recedit’’) from Rome, has passed by (“praeterivit’”) Paris, and has come to (‘‘accessit’’) Britain. He even accuses French soldiers of being less manly (“‘penitus evirata’’) than British

counterparts because of their lack of philosophical wisdom.'*? Although elsewhere in Philobiblon Richard laments the world’s degeneration with respect to knowledge and study, here he seizes on the trans/atio topic to praise his countrymen at the expense of the French. Oxford University participated in the translatio studii in the form of the Mempricius legend, related by John Rous, fifteenth-century chantry priest of Warwick, in Historia regum Angliae. According to the myth of origins, King Mempricius, who lived in the time of the biblical David, founded Oxford. Greek professors came to Britain with the Trojan Brutus and took up residency at Cricklade (““Greeklade’’), in Wiltshire, before removing to Oxford. The better-known legend of the founding of Oxford appears at the beginning of book 6 of Higden’s Polychronicon. Higden claims that King Alfred surpassed others in hunting, construction, and other works. He gathered psalms and prayers in a little book, which he kept with him; but he knew only a little grammar because there was no grammarian in his kingdom at that time. “Perfore by counsail of Neotus be abbot, whom he visited ful ofte,” Higden writes (in John of Trevisa’s translation), “he was pe firste pat ordeyned comyn scole at Oxenforde of dyverse artes and sciens, and procrede fredom and priveleges in many articles to pat citee; he suffrede no man to stye up to what manere dignitee it were of holy chirche, but he were wel I-lettred.” !#

‘THE ABOVE, IN SUMMARY, represent the several phases of sentum mundi from

its beginning to about the fourteenth century. Perhaps the most accurate way of stating the case is to say that the basic tenets of medieval primitiv138 Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, p. 61. 139 Philobiblon g, ed. Maclagan, p. 106. 140 "The Mempricius story is briefly related in Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the

Middle Ages, 3:5-6. The dates of John Rous or Rosse are 1411?-1491. Geoffrey of Monmouth (2.7) mentions Mempricius as a contemporary of King David but says nothing about his relation to Oxford or to a university. The quotation from Higden/Trevisa occurs in Polychronicon 6.1, ed. Babington and Lumby, 6:355. For the founding of the Universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, see the concise recent analysis of Jeauneau, [vanslatio studii, pp. 29-46.

IIo THE WORLD GROWN OLD isms, eschatology, and historiography all harmonize to the extent that all

recognize the common motif of a degenerating world. The dominant strain of primitivism throughout the Middle Ages was a combination of soft and hard primitivisms, derived from both classical authorities and Genesis and articulated best by Boethius, who wrote that mankind in the earliest ages led a spartan but blissful existence (Boece 2, met. 5). That age

of virtue fell when the early people discovered gold and then luxuries. Medieval eschatology, after biblical apocalyptic, stressed the world’s destruction in the wake of the world’s old age as evidenced by earthquakes, plagues, floods, falling stars, and other natural disasters—the catalogue of omens eventually codified as the fifteen signs before Doomsday.'*! Medieval historiography was also generally based on decline (the six ages), although there were other more optimistic medieval historical schemes, such as the triple division before the written law, under the law, and under grace; Anselm of Havelberg’s progress of the Church; or Joachim of Fiore’s third age of spiritual men—schemes that highlighted the advances of Christianity.!*#? The various subtopics I have brought forward all achieved prominence, I believe, because of the continuing medieval interest in the past and specifically in the divergence between the virtuous past and the inferior present. As the above morphology has, I hope, made clear, the idea of the world grown old extended into virtually every avenue of inquiry in the Middle Ages. Those who study medieval literature will recognize the idea’s literary applications—the glorification of the past, the sense of nostalgia in some writings, the uses of moral satire, the reflections on the human con-

dition, and the importance of love and other human institutions in the processes of degeneration. Those who study medieval history will recognize the idea’s historical applications—the periodizations of history, the focus on the past, the assigning of specific years to the world’s duration, and the speculation about Doomsday. Those who study medieval theology and philosophy will note the idea’s moral applications—the exhortation to flee sin and to hold the world in contempt, and attitudes toward the moral degeneration of humans over time. Those who study medieval scientific thought will recognize the idea’s scientific applications—questions of diet and humors in relation to the Flood’s erosion of fertility, issues of 141 See Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 141, col. 1611; and Heist, “Fifteen Signs before the Judgment” and Fifteen Signs before Doomsday. 142 For the temporal eras, see above, Introduction, n. 32 and Table 1. For Anselm’s progress of the Church, see Dialog? 1, ‘De unitate fidei,” cols. 1141-60, where he speaks

of “mutations” within the old and new “covenants” and the necessity of the Church’s adapting to new historical conditions. For Joachim, see, for example, Reeves, foachim of Fiore, p. 2 (contrasting the traditional notion of the world grown old with Joachim’s vision), and Boas, PIMA, pp. 181-84.

A MORPHOLOGY OF SUBTOPICS III the world’s eternity versus its old age and “death.” My point is that these various topics and subtopics are interrelated and not discrete, as they have too often been treated in previous studies. The idea of the world grown

old is a congeries of issues, topics, and attitudes and better understood as background to Chaucer and his age than as footnotes to Augustine’s City of God.

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Genesis and the World Grown Old in Middle English Historical Writings

Mikel malice was first in man Bot neuer forwit sua mikel as pan; In adam time was wrang i-nogh, Bot pis tim wex wel mare wogh, Namlik amang kaym kyn Pat lited bam noght bot in sin. (Cursor mundi 1555-60)

‘THE ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION of the Book of Genesis as a scenario of

decline'—one of the most important elements of the world grown old— provided the ideological underpinnings for many late-medieval historical writings, especially in Middle English. This moralized interpretation of primitive history was articulated in Jewish legends, exegetical commentaries, chronicles, and literary works dependent on those sources. The decline began with Adam’s Fall and the punishments God visited upon Adam, Eve, and nature for original sin. At this time the pristine world that God created “ful goode” changed and started to grow old. The other stages of primitive decline include Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and his building of the first city (allegorically the city of man); Lamech’s bigamy and his double manslaughter (Gen. 4.23); the invention of luxuries and the further building of civilization by Lamech’s offspring (Gen. 4.2022); the sexual and other moral depravities of the pre-Flood generation, ' Of Gen. 4.17-22 Boas has written, ““Taken in connection with the rest of the larger

story ... this confused section could be read as implying a primitivistic moral: the original city-builder was also the original murderer, and the loss of the easy a-technic life of the first pair in ParaJise was followed by a progressive development of the arts by their posterity” (PIMA, p. 186). See also PIMA’s “The Original Condition of Man: Patristic Period,” pp. 15-53, and “Original Condition of Man: Medieval Period,” pp. 54-86.

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114 THE WORLD GROWN OLD who united sexually with the “dowztrys of men” (variously interpreted) and who produced giants, with the result that God saw the earth was corrupt and decided to purge it in the Flood (Gen. 6.5—13); and Nimrod’s establishment of the first empire, Babylon, his hunting of men, and his building of the tower of Babel (Gen. 10.9, 11.1-9). The pattern of moral decline is chronicled in the Revelations of PseudoMethodius, a popular historical moralization attributed to the fourth-century bishop of Patara, St. Methodius, but “compiled in Mesopotamia in the seventh century, translated into Greek, and in turn carried to the West and translated into Latin by Peter the Monk in the eighth century.” The Revelations, edited by Ernst Sackur in his Szbyllinische Texte und Forschungen

(1898), is best known today as a sibylline eschatological or millenarian writing, doubtless because of Norman Cohn’s well-known book The Pursuit of the Millennium. Organized around the sons of Cain and the sons of Ishmael, the Revelations depicts the battle with, and the Roman emperor’s triumph over, the Saracens; the “gladnesse & pees” in “pe laste ende of worldes”’; the coming of Gog and Magog and the terror they inspire; the

} advent of the Greek emperor to Jerusalem for seven years; the coming of Antichrist and his initial success; the appearance of Enoch and Elijah to convert the Jews; and the struggle between Christ and Antichrist with the eventual defeat of Antichrist. The work was extraordinarily popular in the Middle Ages, and its view of the end of the world harmonized with other popular depictions, such as the famous Treatise on Antichrist by Adso, abbot of Montier-en-Der. Adso’s treatise in turn heavily influenced the eschato-

logical homilies of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (died 1023). Less well known but almost as important as the prophetic vision of the end in the | Revelations is the author’s portrayal of the earliest ages of the world. This derives in part from Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, itself a very influential work of the first century a.p. that fleshes out the primitive his-

tories of Adam and Eve and their progeny with the help of rabbinical commentary. Of sybilline writings in general, Norman Cohn has said, “Throughout the Middle Ages, the Sibylline eschatology persisted alongside the eschatologies derived from the Book of Revelation, modifying

| them and being modified by them but generally surpassing them in popularity. For, uncanonical and unorthodox though they were, the Sibyllines had enormous influence—indeed save for the Bible and the works of the Fathers they were probably the most influential writings known to me-

dieval Europe.” Pseudo-Methodius influenced Peter Comestor’s Scholastic History (1169), a work that became a textbook for study and glossing in the schools and that earned its author the honorific “master of the Histories” to parallel

? Livesey and Rouse, “Nimrod the Astronomer,” p. 213. 3 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 32-33.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD 115 Peter Lombard’s “master of the Sentences.” + Chancellor of the cathedral school in Paris, he was called “‘ccomestor” (‘‘the eater’) because he was

said to have ingested Scripture. His summaries of biblical stories were often read not only alongside the Vulgate but in place of it; and his versions of the literal level of Scripture became standard for the later Middle Ages. ‘These helped to promote an explosion of English vernacular scriptural retellings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—what we might characterize as “the Comestor tradition’ —including a number of lives of Adam and Eve, Cursor mundi (about 1300), the great (and influential) Polychronicon or “Chronicle of Many Times” of Ranulf Higden, monk of

Chester,° and three Middle English translations of Pseudo-Methodius, entitled by their editor be Bygynnyng of be World and be Ende of Worldes.°

Higden’s Polychronicon, written in Latin, traces the course of the world until the year 1327, when it breaks off; it was continued by others until the year 1352, and John of Trevisa translated portions of it into Middle English between 1378 and 1387. Of Cursor mundi J. A. W. Bennett has written: “it is often far from paraphrastic, and draws on several sources besides the Bible, notably Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, which did for Western Europe as a whole what the Cursor did for Northern England at the end of the thirteenth century.’’’

+ See Ogle, “Petrus Comestor”; Smalley, Study of the Bible, pp. 178-85. The most ~ recent work on Peter Comestor and English biblical paraphrases is by Morey, who argues that because of Peter’s History ‘‘there was what we may call a pre-Reformation vernacular Bible which enjoyed widespread influence and authority in learned and lay circles” (“Peter Comestor,” p. 7). For Peter’s sources, see Morey, pp. 11-16. See also Twomey, “Cleanness,” esp. p. 208. > Kriger in his study of world chronicles regards Higden’s Polychronicon as a prime example of the type of universal chronicle organized around Augustinian history and world ages. See chap. 1 of Die Universalchroniken, esp. pp. 23-28. See also Taylor, English Historical Literature, chap. 5. The author of the post-Reformation banns for the Chester cycle of mystery plays credits “one Randle, monk of Chester Abbey”’ as responsible for “the device” of the cycle. See Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. Mills, p. 4. 6 See d’Evelyn, “Metrical Version of the Revelations of Methodius.” The Middle English prose translations of the Latin Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius were executed

in the late fourteenth or fifteenth century. There is a shorter version, witnessed in London, British Library, MS Harley 1900, fols. 2 1v—23v (1400-1425) and in San Marino, Calif., Huntington Library, MS HM 28561, fols. 21r—23v (1450-1500), and a

longer version, witnessed in British Library, MS Add. 37049, fols. 11r-16v (14001500). There is also a fifteenth-century metrical version published in d’Evelyn, p. 151. See Kennedy, “Chronicles” 30-32, pp. 2664-65 and 2880 (bibliography), and the discussion by Perry in his introduction. Perry prints only the British Library prose versions of Pseudo-Methodius since he could not locate the manuscript that now is housed in the Huntington Library. For the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius in Anglo-Saxon England, see Twomey, “Ps Methodius, Revelationes,” in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Biggs, Hill, and Szarmach, pp. 33-34. ’ Bennett, Middle English Literature, p. 35.

116 THE WORLD GROWN OLD The popularity of these primitive history narratives, according to Hugh P. Campbell, may be attributed in part to two important events: first, the

| constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), along with supporting diocesan constitutions such as Archbishop John Pecham’s Lambeth doc-

| ument of 1281 ([gnorantia sacerdotum) or Bishop Peter Quinel’s Summula of 1287; and second, the arrival in England of the Franciscans, the “‘ioculatores Dei,” in 1224.8 Pecham’s [gnorantia sacerdotum provides a syllabus for priests to instruct the laity in fundamentals of the Christian faith, mandating that the Six Points (Creed, Commandments, Works of Mercy, Virtues, Vices, and Sacraments) be preached to the common people four times a year, while Quinel adds that the laity should be instructed “saltim in lingua materna” so that they might believe and understand Christian symbolism. Such parish constitutions, G. H. Russell has argued, help account for vernacular poetry written for purposes of instruction, such as John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, an adaptation in English verse of William of Pagula’s Oculus sacerdotis, or the beginning of Speculum vitae,

a verse treatise in English.’ The Franciscans also helped the instruction of the laity with their exempla in sermons and their vernacular poetry.!° The biblical retellings of Peter Comestor, the injunctions of the Fourth Lateran Council, the English diocesan constitutions, the lively and often literary sermons of the Friars Minor and the Friars Preachers, together with the biblical paraphrases in collections such as the South English Legendary and the Northern Homily Collection, all contributed to the project of making Scripture available to new audiences in the later Middle Ages. Although the Adam and Eve narratives cannot be traced directly to the diocesan constitutions issued after Lateran [V—the influence on manuals ® Campbell’s findings are as yet unpublished. I am grateful to him for allowing me to include them here. Joseph Goering and Daniel Taylor have shown that Quinel’s Summula derives, often word for word, from Walter de Cantilupe’s confessional tract Omnis etas, which he composed for the Worcester clergy in 1240; see Goering and

Taylor, “Summulae.”

°G. H. Russell, “Vernacular Instruction of the Laity,” pp. 98-100. Russell prints as an appendix two sets of English poems of the fifteenth century on the Articles of the Faith, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, etc., from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 549, and another set from Bodleian MS Hatton 12. For corroboration of the Constitutions of Lambeth and other parish directives on religious instruction, see Pfander, Popular Sermon, chap. 1; and Shaw, “Influence of Reform,” pp. 47-49. Shaw (p. 49) discusses the expansion of Archbishop John Thoresby’s instructions into The Lay Folks’ Catechism. Nicholas Watson focuses on what he calls texts of “vernacular theology” in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as he argues that Archbishop _Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409 had a chilling effect on the generation of vernacular scriptural texts; see “Censorship and Cultural Change,” esp. pp. 829, 831-34. 10 See Jeffrey, Early English Lyric, esp. chap. 5; and Fleming, Franciscan Literature, chap. 4, and his focus on what he calls “Lateran literature.”

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD 117 of instruction!" and the growth of lay piety is more obvious—the decrees of that council and their implementation in the parishes in the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries offered a climate of encouragement for scriptural paraphrases and instruction in the Bible. The Adam and Eve

books speak to the issue of contrition and penitence, very important _ themes in Ricardian literature.'!? At the same time the focus on the beginnings of history helps illuminate the medieval present. As Edward Said has argued of such mythical, divine origins, “‘a ‘beginning’ is designated in order to indicate, clarify, or define a /ater time, place, or action.” '? The primitive history narratives perform a homiletic function concerning sin, penance, and the world grown old.

1. The Fall of Adam and Eve: From a Garden to Thorns and Weeds The first stage of the world grown old was Adam’s Fall, which set the pattern for subsequent evils. Before the Fall, as Higden makes plain (in Trevisa’s translation), the world was youthful and flourishing: Pe world was at be begynnynge pryuynge and strong for to brynge forp children as it were in 30wpe, and was ful of hele, and so fresche and grene, and by greet richesse it was fatte. But now it is abated, wipelde, and [as it] were i-dryue toward be deth wip ofte and meny diseses.'*

The world did not remain “youthful” for long; Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and in punishing them God brought about a deterioration in their form of living. The Cursor mundi describes the world’s new, fallen estate, which contrasts sharply with the peaceable kingdom before the Fall. The new condition features contention and the law of the jungle: Al bigan to strut and strijf Agains adam and his wif; 11 Pfander, “Some Medieval Manuals”; Boyle, “Manuals of Popular Theology.” 12 "The term “Ricardian” refers to the English literature of the reign of Richard II (1377-99). See Burrow, Ricardian Poetry. \3 Beginnings, p. 5.

‘4 Higden, Polychronicon 2.1, trans. Trevisa. The thirteenth-century Middle English translation of Grosseteste’s Chateau d’amour in British Library, MS Egerton 927, attributes reduced powers in nature to Adam and Eve’s sin: “Alle thing vnder heuen made was to mannes solace, / And therfor, syn he synned, all thai lesse vertue has” (Middle English Translations of Grosseteste’s Chateau d’amour, ed. Sajavaara, p. 322, lines 65-66).

For bibliographic aids on scriptural adaptations see Muir, “Translations and Paraphrases of the Bible, and Commentaries.”

118 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Bituix pam tua to strut alsua, Pe strang be weker for to sla, Iikan to mak of oper prai, Als we mai see pam do to dai; Fra bepen first com ded to man bat fra pat tide al wa bigan; be wrangwis wit bar waful wrak

| Par pai biginning gan to tak, Sin and sak, and schame and strijf, Pat now es oueral pe werld sa rijf.

| (829-40)?

Higden/Trevisa describes the movement of Adam and Eve out of Paradise

and into the world as from a bright, familiar world to a harsh, woeful habitation: out of hize in to lowh, out of li3t in to derknesse and slym, out of his owne londe and contray in to outlawynge, out of hous in to maskynge and wayles contray and lond, out of fruit into wepynge and woo, out of preisynge in

, to deel and sorwe, out of merpe in to stryf, oute of loue in to hate, out of joye and welbe in to peyne and tene, out of helpe and grace in to gilt and synne, out of pees in to peyne, out of homlynesse into offence and wreppe. (2.4)

This new dwelling for humans, according to Gerhoh of Reichersberg, is a place of judgment, both on Adam and Eve and on Noah’s generation; and the entire first age may be characterized as an era of fear.'° In the centuries after Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, biblical storytellers, especially in England, attempted to illuminate the early years of Adam and Eve’s postlapsarian existence. A number of manuscripts record Adam and Eve’s failure at penance after the Fall, an episode that is not scriptural (and not in Peter’s retelling) but that enters later medieval texts via the eighth-century apocryphal work Vita Adae et Evae.'’” Many of these 'S' The Trinity manuscript and the southern version (ed. Horrall) specify that the _ stronger beast slays the weaker (832). For a similar view of the world’s fallen estate, see De principio creationis mundi, lines 154-72, ed. Horstmann, p. 351, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 61. 16 Tibellus de ordine donorum Sancti Spiritus, ed. Classen, p. 102: ‘““Nam prima hutus

mundi aetas .. . insinuat timorem.” 177 here reproduce the information on manuscripts and dates provided by Mabel Day in the introduction to her edition of the Wheatley Manuscript for the Early English Text Society. For the date of the Vita Adae et Evae, see Foster, “Legends of Adam and Eve,” p. 441. Foster also lists five separate accounts under “Legends”: Auchinleck

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD IIgQ Middle English texts—the primitive history narratives, I want to call them—also contain the story of Seth and the oil of life, which appears notably in Cursor mundi; and a few of them are affiliated with, and include quotations from, the Wycliffite Bible. These primitive history narratives help attest to the sad deterioration of postlapsarian existence in the world’s first age.

The earliest extant Middle English texts of Adam and Eve’s penance date from the early fourteenth century. Pe lyff of Adam and Eue, from the Vernon Manuscript (about 1390), describes how Adam and Eve—who are wretched humans rather than allegorical figures of Everyman and Everywoman—lived in miserable circumstances after God’s curses on them and their expulsion from Paradise. The once bountiful, beneficent garden existence has metamorphosed into a vale of tears, a hostile place: Per heo lyueden heore lyf in pe wrecched weopes dale. Ofte heo weoren | a-colde and sore of-hungrid; eddren mihte hem styngen, foules and beestes hem mihte to-tere; be watur bat bifore hem bare, hem mihte adrenche.!®

Because the first pair have nothing to eat, Adam can think of nothing better than their doing penance and throwing themselves on God’s mercy. He commands Eve to remain silent in the river Tigris for thirty days while he stands mute in the Jordan for forty days, “for vre lippes ben vnworpi to speken eny ping to god.” Adam’s penance in John the Baptist’s river

has patent typological significance. A wicked angel—the devil—soon coaxes Eve out of her penance; and when she emerges from the Tigris, couplets (about 1300-1325); Canticum de creatione (1375); Vernon prose narrative (about

1385); Bodleian 2376 prose version (in two fifteenth-century manuscripts); and the “Golden Legend Adam and Eve” (in eleven manuscripts). See pp. 441-42. For a discussion of Middle English biblical texts in the Peter Comestor tradition, see Morey, ‘Peter Comestor,” pp. 26-35. \8 be lyff of Adam and Eue, ed. Horstmann, p. 222, lines 36-39. See also the poetic version in the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates’ 19.2.1), ed. Horstmann, in Sammlung, lines 139-400, pp. 140-43. Bliss notes problems in Horstmann’s transcription of the “badly rubbed and in many places illegible” manuscript (“The Auchinleck Life of Adam and Eve’’). The Polychronicon, in a passage drawn from Isidore of Seville, includes a similar depiction of primitive life in the first ages: “Iszdorus, libro 15°, capitulo 2°. Men were first naked and vnarmed, nou3t siker az3enst bestes, noper a3enst men, and hadde no place to fonge hem, and to kepe hem fro colde and for hete; pan by besynesse of kynde witte bey bepou3t hem of buldynge, perfore pey bulde hem smale cootes and cabans, and waf ham and heled hem wip smalle twigges and wip reed, pat hire lyf my3te be be more saaf” (2.5). Higden’s words for “cootes” and “‘cabans”’ are “‘tuguria” and “‘casas.” See also Macrobius’s testimony that “the ancients recall or relate in legends that, in the beginning, men were uncultivated [rudes] and, in their rustic crudeness, not unlike wild beasts” (as translated in Stock, Myth and Science, p. 81).

120 THE WORLD GROWN OLD “hire bodi was grene as eni gras.”’ Eve is so mortified and wretched at her failed penance that, shortly after the birth of Cain, she resolves to separate

from Adam and live at the end of the world, in the west. There “heo madde hire a logge, forte wonen inne, for chele of snou3 & of forst & for alle maner wikked wederes.”’!’ In a roughly equivalent passage of the Latin Vita Adae, a pregnant Eve, weeping and wailing with great groans, built

| for herself a “little dwelling” (“habitaculum’’). The Wheatley Manuscript (British Library, MS Additional 39574, beginning of the fifteenth century) contains a similar legend of Adam and Eve’s penance (called the “1438 Golden Legend Adam and Eve’’).”° In this prose narrative, Adam does not impose silence on himself or Eve but

instead laments and summons the Jordan River—the “wawis and alle lyuynge beestes” within it (p. 82, line 12)—to grieve with him. He distinguishes between humans, who caused the new, less prosperous worldly estate, and the rest of God’s creation, which is innocent but which suffers

along with humans: ,

I seye to pee, Iordan, gadere to-gydere bi wawis and alle lyuynge beestis wib-inne pee, and comep aboute me and maakip sorowe wip me. Not for 30u-silf make 3e sorowe, but al for me; for 3e han not synned, but I wickidly az3eyns my Lord haue synned. Neipir 3e diden ony defaute, neipir 3e ben bigylid fro 3oure sustenaunce, neibir fro 30ure metis ordeyned to 30u; but I am bigylid fro my sustenaunce which was ordeyned for me. (P. 82, lines

II-IQ) Man’s expulsion from Paradise and God’s curse on the earth constitute

the first stage in the world’s degeneration. But the world continued to decline after the expulsion, and the Fall extended beyond the first moment of original sin. As humans developed new modes of living and interacting with their fellows, and as they made technological advances, they brought

| about a deterioration of the earth beyond what Adam and Eve effected by , their first disobedience. God’s initial curse on the earth merely set the pattern for the earth’s, and man’s, later decline.

2. Cain, the First Murderer, and the City of Man The patriarch of the city of man was, according to Augustine, Adam’s firstborn, Cain, who was associated with earth and flesh, materiality, and 19 Be lyff of Adam and Eue, ed. Horstmann, p. 223, lines 7-8, 17-18, 41-42.

20 See Foster, “Legends of Adam and Eve,” pp. 442, 636-37. Foster lists eleven manuscripts that contain this version of the life of Adam and Eve based on the Latin Vita Adae. D’Evelyn, “English Translations of Legenda Aurea,” pp. 432-36, describes the 1438 version of the Golden Legend.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD 121 separation from God and the human community. Cain embodies a state | of mind, for he represents the man who, envying his brother’s achievements, treacherously rises up against him. After the fratricide he became a wanderer, homo vagus, profugus, vagabundus—not the archetype of the Christian wanderer, homo viator or peregrinus, who uses the world as a stranger, but the errant, deviant alien, a tragic figure, who wished to create permanence through the work of his hands.?! Medieval commentators view Cain as greedy and acquisitive and as a bad tither, hence spiritually disrespectful. His vocation, farming and tilling the soil, associates him with the earth and God’s punishment of Adam (Gen. 3.19, 23). Josephus says that Cain “‘was thoroughly depraved and had an eye only to gain: he was the first to think of ploughing the soil.” ”? When Cain slew Abel, his brother’s blood spilled on the earth, the same earth that God had cursed with respect to Adam’s labor. ‘Then God cursed Cain and established an adversary relationship between him and the soil. The first brother-slayer and murderer caused further terrestrial deterioration, at least in those regions inhabited by his kin, as we may learn from an Old English poem of the twelfth century, Genesis A. God speaks to Cain: ne seled be westmas eorde

wlitige to woruldnytte ac heo weldreore swealh halge of handum pinum. forpon heo be hrodra oftihd, glemes grene folde. (1015-18) (Nor shall the earth give goodly fruits for use in this world, but she, holy, swallowed the blood of strife from thy hands; therefore she shall withdraw from thee her comforts, the green earth her beauty.)

The authors of the Glossa ordinaria, interpreting 1 John 3.12 (“for hise [Cain’s] werkis weren yuele”), explain that Cain’s sin was envy of his brother, while Abel’s virtue was charity; Cain tried to substitute an offering 71 Ladner, “Homo viator’; Dahlberg, Literature of Unlikeness. 22 Josephus, fewish Antiquities 1.2.1, ed. Thackeray, p. 25.

?3 Genesis A, ed. Doane, p. 127; also in The Funius Manuscript, ed. Krapp, p. 33; translation by Emerson, ‘Legends of Cain,” p. 864. Emerson speculates that Cain’s tithes may have had something to do with the original curse on the earth (pp. 849-50). Doane comments, “In the conceit of the poet, the blood cries out because it went into the earth, earth withholds her fruits because the blood went into it” (p. 248). For a tropological and horticultural explanation of Cain’s sin in relation to the earth, see the quotation from the Anglo-Saxon Genesis and a discussion of it in Swanton, English Literature before Chaucer, p. 80.

122 THE WORLD GROWN OLD but in the wrong spirit because of envy and hatred.’* Because of Cain’s “mikel felunny,” says Cursor mundi, his wheat shall ever after come up — “sizanny” (or “darnel” or “cokul hye’’)—debilitating weeds—and the earth shall yield him only “thorne and wede” (1137-40). The echoes of the original curse here are unmistakable. While Hrabanus Maurus points out that God cursed Cain rather than the earth (as in Gen. 3.17) because Cain knew of original sin and its resultant penalties, the G/ossa underscores the direct line between Adam’s sin and Cain’s outrage: “Because he added fratricide to original sin, Cain too is cursed when it is said: ‘Now therfor thou schalt be cursid on erthe’ [Gen. 4.11].” 5 Original sin, fratricide: like

father, like son. Adam was the first sinner, his firstborn the original brother-slayer. Adam transgressed against God’s express command, Cain against the natural law (see Cursor mundi 1105-6). According to the Middle English version of the joca monachorum, Cain’s slaying of Abel caused

| stones to become infertile: ‘“C[lerk]: Whi berith not stones frutes as well as tres? M[aister]: For Caym slough Abell with an asse chekebon.” *° Another phase of terrestrial decay began with Cain’s banishment from the fellowship of Adam and Eve to the land of Nod. In that unidentified location, “which is called commotion, or unstable and fluctuating, and of uncertain fixity” (Isidore of Seville), he lived to the east of Eden, “‘that is, not in delight but against (versus) the land of delight’? (Peter Comestor).”’

In the land of Nod, Cain built the first city, which he called Enoch, or “Dedication,” after his son. Pseudo-Methodius says that Seth—‘‘a man geaunt & grete”—separated his kin from Cain and went to live “a3enus be eest into an hil bat was next to Paradise,”’ whereas Cain ‘“‘dwellide & his kynrede, where he had do pe cursed slau3ter of his broper in Ynde, in pe same place of Delicis where raper pilke Caym made a cite, to which he put a name Effrem. & pis is pe first made before pe flode.”’?* It is ironic 24 Glossa ordinaria, 4:540B (PL 114:699).

25 Hrabanus, Commentarius in Genesim 2.1, col. 504; Glossa ordinaria, 1:32A, both interlinear and marginal gloss (PL 113:95). Rosemary Woolf, speaking of Cain’s murder of Abel in Ludus Coventriae, observes, “In terms of ordinary reckoning man has obviously still a long way to fall, and the Fall is therefore in a sense not complete until Cain has slain his brother Abel”; see English Mystery Plays, p. 124. 26 Questiones by-twene the Maister of Oxenforde and his Clerke, ed. Horstmann, p. 286. This work, a translation of the twelfth-century Solomon and Saturn, is commonly known as The Maister of Oxford’s Catechism. See Utley, “Dialogues, Debates, and Catechisms,” pp. 738-39 and 897. 27 Isidore, Quaestiones in Genesim 6, cols. 226-27; Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 27, col. 1078. See also Bede’s “mystical interpretation” of Cain’s wandering and the land of Nod: In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, p. 85. 28 be Bygynnyng of be World and be Ende of Worldes, ed. Perry, pp. 95-96. Quotations from the Middle English translation of the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius refer to the version in British Library, MS Harley 1900, unless otherwise noted. The translator

, GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 123 that this uneasy vagabond should try to put down roots. But his construction of that city represented not so much actual permanence as the yearning for order and stability. Because he finds no mention of other humans except for Adam’s immediate kin when God exiled Cain, Philo of Alexandria presumes that the city of Enoch should be understood allegorically and not literally. Cain’s “city,” Philo believes, was actually his creed, his d6ypa (De posteritate Caini 14-15). At least one late-medieval illustrator depicted the building of the city of Enoch, juxtaposing it with Noah’s ark (‘“‘Archa noe cristum et ejus sponsam ecclesiam significat’’). In the foreground of this French manuscript illumination of about 1473, seven generations in Cain’s lineage (Adam to Lamech) move in a procession toward the city of man, while in the background ten generations (Adam to Noah) move toward Noah’s ark, figure of the city of God.?? Most medieval authors assume that Cain gathered around him folk who lived in the primitive world’s wilderness or who belonged to Adam’s family and yet received

no mention by the author of Genesis. Many writers, including John Gower, rely on the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius for the names of Cain’s and Abel’s wives: Calmana and Delbora, respectively, the daughters of Eve (Confessio amantis 8.63—74). Gower cites his source as ‘““Metodre”’ (8.48). Despised by Adam’s fellowship, Cain set about acquiring possessions and treasure. As Pseudo-Bede wrote, The seed of wicked men built a city in the beginning of the world, because evil people in this life have established all their material goods where they claims that Cain and his family lived in a place called Delicis rather than in Nod or Naid. In this he adopts the same reading as the author of Cursor mundi, who testifies that Cain fled “Vntil a sted pat hight eden” (1500), since Eden was regularly glossed as “delight.” The Vulgate and the Wycliffite Bible read, “And Cayn 3ede out fro the face of the Lord, and dwellide fleynge aboute in erthe, at the eest coost of Eden [gloss: that is, of ertheli paradys|” (Gen. 4.16). I am uncertain why the translator replaces “Enoch” with “Ephraim.” There is a city, Ephraim, mentioned in the Gospel of John as surrounded by wilderness: ‘“Therfor Jhesus walkide not thanne opynli among the Jewis; but he wente in to a cuntre bisidis desert, in to a citee, that is seid Effren, and there he dwellide with hise disciplis” (11.54). Cursor mundi identifies the city correctly as “enos” (1504). The Middle English version of the joca monachorum, replying to the question “Hoo made the first Citees,” reads, “Enos, Seth is son, & the Citee high Ninimem. & per were per-in XII: & XXM Cheueteyns, with-owten women, with-owte bachilers & with-owte children. And whan Noe is flood was awey, thai made Jerusalem”: Questiones by-twene the Maister of Oxenford and his Clerke, ed. Horstmann, p. 285.

29 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 19, 55v. Reproduced in Kolve, Imagery of Narrative, fig. 146, p. 317. John Fyler discusses the visual ordering of lines from Cain and Seth in Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi in British Library, MSS Royal 8.C.IX, fol. 3r; Cotton Faustina B VII, fol. 45r; and Egerton 1894, fol. 2v (which illustrates Lamech’s wives and their offspring). See “Love and the Declining World,” pp. 300 and 302 and n. 9.

| I24 THE WORLD GROWN OLD have their treasure; the blessed, however, are guests and wanderers. From which we should understand that Abel, like the wandering Christian people, did not found his city on earth; the city of the righteous is on high.>°

It was a self-assertive, prideful act; and Cain is often compared with the Jews “and all those who are contumacious in diverse errors by resisting truth.”?! For Augustine, Cain foreshadowed the eponymous founders of the great western city-state, Romulus and Remus, and he likens the first city to the earthly Jerusalem, because “that city has both an earthly beginning and end wherein nothing is hoped for beyond what is seen.” Josephus transmitted to the later Middle Ages several allegations about Cain that enhanced his already vicious reputation. According to the Jewish historian, Cain committed every sort of sexual outrage, acquired treasure through violence, ordained a primitive bureaucracy of weights and measures, and marked off fields and boundaries.*> Ranulf Higden repeats these charges against Cain. “‘Caym gadered richesse violentliche by strengpe,”’ he asserts, “‘and made men be lecchoures and peues, and tornede symple

| lyuynge of men to fyndynge of mesures and of wy3tes; he ordeyned merkes and boundes of fildes and of londes, and bulde a citee and walled hit, for he dredde ful sore hem pat he hadde i-greued” (2.5). Cain in this account was not only violent and greedy, building a city to protect his ill-gotten worldly possessions, but also the instigator of lechers and thieves. It is not clear how he caused men to be lecherous or thievish, though it is intimated that he introduced a complex and sophisticated, not to mention divisive, 30 Pseudo-Bede, In Pentateuchum commentarii: In Genesim 4, col. 219. For the spu-

riousness of this commentary on the Pentateuch, see the introduction to Bede’s In Genesim, p. iv and n. 5. For similar discussions of Cain and the city, see Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.17, ed. Hoffmann, p. 96; and Bede, In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, pp. 85-86. The reference to “thesauros” alludes to Matt. 6.19~—20: “Nile 3e tresoure to 30u tresouris in erthe, where ruste and mou3te destrieth, and where theues deluen out and stelen; but gadere to 30u tresouris in heuene, where nether ruste ne mouste distrieth, and where theues deluen not out, ne stelen.”’ 3! Isidore, Quaestiones in Genesim 6, col. 227. See also Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.7, ed. Hoffmann, p. 71. Amsler analyzes Jerome’s derivation of Canaan from Cain “based

on phonological similarity.” He points out that “In Logos grammar,” such as that Jerome practiced, “linguistic historicity is subordinated to typological history,” and that “After the fourth century, it was Jerome’s grammatical and glossographic model for etymological grammar which persisted in the encyclopedic texts of Cassiodorus, Isidore, and Hrabanus Maurus and in the technical and exegetical discourse of the early medieval grammarians” (Etymology and Grammatical Discourse, pp. 111, 115, 118). 32 Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.5 and 15.17, ed. Hoffmann, pp. 64-65 and 97. 33 Josephus, fewish Antiquities 1.2.2, ed. Thackeray, p. 29. For an expanded treatment

of moral degeneration in Josephus’s history, see Attridge, Biblical History, pp. 109-44. Peter Comestor paraphrases (and cites) Josephus in the section “De generationibus Cain” (col. 1078).

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 125 view of human affairs that inspired men to establish private property through his system of measurements. The city, Cain’s creation, was associated with sodomy and homosexuality not only in Scripture but also in medieval historical records. The inquisitorial registry of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers (later Pope Benedict XII), makes clear that homosexual networks existed in cities and that sodomy was an urban phenomenon. Arnaud de Verniolles, lapsed Minorite who formed homosexual liaisons with monks and mendicant friars and who sometimes pretended to be a priest, claimed that in Pamiers there were more than one thousand people “infected with sodomy.” *+ To disassociate themselves from urban wickedness, the fifteenth-century heretical Adamites of Bohemia went naked. ‘““They taught that nakedness was essential to purity, for this was the only way to restore antelapsarian innocence.’’ #5

Cain established the pattern for his successors. The consensus among biblical commentators is that his posterity continued the secular work initiated by the patriarch and that both mankind and world declined after

Cain’s generation. |

3. Lamech, Bigamist and First Double Killer The Genesis narrative offers no details concerning the generations between Cain and Lamech, seventh from Adam, but we may imagine that Cain’s sons and grandsons—Enoch, Irad, Mahujael, Mathushael—insti-

| tuted technological but not spiritual advances. ‘The line of descent then from Adam through Cain the criminal,” says Augustine, “ends with the number eleven, symbolizing sin” (The City of God 15.20). Some of the sources allude to sexual degeneracy. Augustine again: “Another result of the sin is physical pleasure with its resistance to the spirit, and Lamech’s daughter Naamah, which means ‘pleasure’ ” (15.20). Josephus concludes

his section on the children of Lamech by remarking, “Thus, within Adam’s lifetime, the descendants of Cain went to the depths of depravity, and, inheriting and imitating one another’s vices, each ended worse than the last” (1.1.2, p. 31). The Middle English translation of Pseudo-Methodius says, ‘“Soply in pe sixe hundred 3ere of be lif of Adam, pe sones of Caym bygunne to mysuse pe wyues of her breperen in many fornicaciouns. Pe ei3te hundrid 3ere soply of pe life of Adam, fornicaciouns bep ouermyche enlargide vppon erpe, & vnclennessis of be sones of Caym” (p. 95). 34 Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, p. 147, quoting from Le registre d’Inquisition de Facques Fournier, évéque de Pamiers (1318-1325), ed. Jean Duvernoy. 35 Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, p. 225.

126 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Technocracy is the primary characteristic of this next phase of decline, but sexual uncleanness is also an element. As John Fyler has observed: ““To the Genesis commentators, sexual duplicity and the arts of civilization are closely linked; thus, when Chaucer refers to Lamech, he uses bigamy and amorous deceit as a way of summing up moral decline, and identifying duplicity with division.” Lamech was an innovator with respect to marital relations and sexuality. He was the first bigamist or “spousebreche” (Higden), taking as wives both Ada and Zillah (Gen. 4.19). Perhaps because of Lamech’s overactive libido, Peter Comestor and Higden characterize him as “be seuenbe from Adam and most schrewe.”?’ ‘The Ad-

ditional manuscript version of the Middle English Pseudo-Methodius blames Lamech for being the first blind person, as if it were a moral fault: ‘“Lamech, pat was blynde, pat was first blynde man” (p. 96). Because of his blindness—literal and figural—he was also the first to kill two people (doubling Cain’s felony). The first bigamist was also, as the Middle English Genesis and Exodus phrases it, the first “twin-manslagt.”* He ac-

quired this representation because of medieval interpretation of Gen. 4.23-24: “And Lameth seide to his wyues Ada and Sella, 3e wyues of Lameth, here my vois, and herkne my word; for Y haue slayn a man bi my wounde, and a 3ong wexynge man bi my violent betyng; veniaunce schal be 3ouun seuenfold of Cayn, forsothe of Lameth seuentisithis seuensithis.” Scriptural commentators understood the first man to be Cain and the second—the “3ong wexynge man” who perished by his “violent betyng”’—to be a youth who guided Lamech’s arrow. Both Peter Comestor and Higden transmit the full story. Lamech was a blind archer who liked to hunt despite his handicap. Because of his myopia he took with him on the hunt a young man—Rashi says his son Tubalcain**—to act as guide. 36 “T_ove and the Declining World,” p. 303. Chaucer mentions Lamech in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue (II1.54); The Squire’s Tale (V.5 50-51); and Anelida and Arcite 14854. For another literary view of Lamech see Reiss, ““The Story of Lamech and Its Place _

in Medieval Drama.” |

37 Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica, col. 1078; Polychronicon 2.5, trans. Trevisa. Higden’s Latin has “et pessimus” for Trevisa’s “most schrewe.” For a discussion of the Lamech story, see Pseudo-Augustine, Liber questionum Veteris et Novi Testamenti 6, ed. Souter, pp. 29-30. Bede says that the good Enoch, who was translated from the world, prefigures “‘the Sabbath of future bliss.” See Charles Jones, ““Bede’s Commentary on

Genesis,” p. 144. ,

38 Middle English “Genesis and Exodus,” line 485, ed. Arngart, p. 66. For a recent

discussion of this poem, which dates from around 1250, see Morey, “Peter Comestor,” . 26-29. m 39 Fyler, “Love and the Declining World,” p. 300 and n. 11. Fyler documents points of agreement between Ovid’s Ars amatoria and the primitive history depicted in Gen, esis. For Peter Comestor’s version of Lamech’s slaying of Cain, see Historia scholastica, col. 1079. The pseudo-Augustinian Quaestiones 6, in the section “Si Lamech occidit Cain, sicut putatur?”’ refutes the Lamech interpretation. See also Mellinkoff, Mark of

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD 127 Once, believing he was shooting at a wild beast lurking in the bushes, he slew Cain. Then he became so distraught that he killed the young man who misdirected his arrow (2.5). Lamech seems to have been impulsive and thoughtless: he married two wives out of lust, slew the protected Cain unawares, and cut down his servant in distraction.

4. Technocracy and the City of Man: Cain’s Progeny Lamech’s sons, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubalcain, and his daughter, Noema,

were inventors, discoverers, innovators—“fynders of be sonnes of Chaym”’—and they were evil. The Middle English Revelations of PseudoMethodius waxes indignant over the ante /egem creators:

In pe CCC & XL?° zere of be lif of Iareth, in be secunde pousand of pe world, bere were men wickid doeris & fynderis of worst crafte of be sones of Caym, & of al vnclennesse & filbe, pat is Obal & Tubal, pat is to wite be sones of Lameth pe blynde, which was be first blynde man, pat slow Caym. bese fonden firste pe werkes of bras & of iren, of gold & of silver, & of grindinge; and pei firste fonde alle pe artes of musik.”

According to Scripture, Jabal was the first tent dweller and herdsman, Jubal the first musician on the harp and the organs, and Tubalcain the first metalworker (Gen. 4.20—22). Noema, Tubalcain’s sister, was the first

weaver: “Scho was be formest webster / Pat man findes o pat mister” (Cursor mundi 1525-26). “Tabel,” says Higden, citing Josephus, “ordeynede first flokkes of bestes, and merkis to knowe oon from anober, and departide kydes from lambren, and 3onge from olde” (2.5). Like Cain, the

: first nomadic herdsman was a divider and delimiter, setting beasts aside into separate flocks, branding them as singly owned rather than communal property, and marking off kids from lambs. John Gower, following Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon, claims that Jadahel (Jabal) originated the arts of fishing and hunting.*! Again following Peter Comestor, Higden relates Cain, p. 125 n. 167 (Genesis Rabbah). For Lamech’s slaying of Cain in artistic representation, see esp. Mellinkoff, ibid., fig. 14 (from an Anglo-Norman Bible, ca. 1330, from British Library, MS Add. 47682, fol. 7r). 40 be Bygynnyng of be World and pe Ende of Worldes, ed. Perry, p. 96. See also Pseudo-

Methodius, Revelationes 2, ed. Sackur, p. 62. Bede thought it appropriate that Cain’s line terminated with a woman, Noema, whose name means uoluptas, since the carnal life of the city of man declined from Eden (woluptas [or delectatio| in bono) through human

moral depravity and self-indulgence (woluptas in malo), which led directly to the Flood (In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, pp. 88-89). +1 Gower, Confessio amantis 4.2427-30: “And Jadahel, as seith the bok, / Ferst made

Net and fisshes tok: / Of huntynge ek he fond the chace, / Which now is knowe in many place” (ed. Macaulay, 1:366-67). Macaulay in his notes quotes from Godfrey of Viterbo’s twelfth-century Pantheon 2 (1:509).

128 THE WORLD GROWN OLD the story of Jubal’s discovery of music by listening to his brother Tubalcain as the latter pounded on the anvil:

Tubalcain fonde first smythes craft and grauynge, and whan Tubalcain wrou3te in his smepes craft, ‘Tubal [i.e., Jubal] hadde grete likynge to hire pe hameres sowne, and he fonde proporciouns and acorde of melodye by wy3te in pe hameres, and so bey vsed hym moche in be acorde of melodye,

but he was nou3t fyndere of be instrumentis of musik, ffor bey were 1founde longe afterward. R. Here wise men tellep pat bey Tubal vsede first musyk for to releue hym self while he was an herde, and kepte bestes, ffor

all bat he was nou3t pe firste pat fonde be resoun of acorde in musyk by : wi3tes, but Pittagoras fonde pat. . . .#7 (2.5)

Lamech’s sons and daughter were hard at work building the city of man,

and they took pride in their inventions. But they were, as the Middle English Revelations puts it, “wickid doeris & fynderis of worst crafte of be sones of Caym, & of al vnclennesse & filpe.”” Medieval biblical interpreters

condemn the discoveries of Jubal and Tubalcain. Bede in his In Genesim points out that these inventions pertain to the attractions and luxuries of this life. He contrasts the life of technology with Abel’s pastoralism and with the generally unencumbered existence of Seth’s descendants, the peregrini. Bede concedes that even the good servants of God lived in tents, played on musical instruments, and worked in metals, but, he says, it is all a matter of use or degree. Wicked men take delight in technical improvements as if they were the principal good, but the chosen people (e/ecti) either denounce the innovations or use them while remaining wanderers. The patriarchs lived in tents, Bede observes, yet their life should be distinguished from that of city dwellers; and when the psalmists sang with lute and organum, it was in God’s praise.* Bede regards the invention of ® The letter R (for “Ranulphus’”’) signifies Higden’s commentary. See Fowler, Bible in Early English Literature, pp. 209, 212, 219. Higden’s mistake of crediting Tubal rather _ than Jubal with the discovery of music was common among medieval commentators. The same error occurs in Vincent of Beauvais, Peter Comestor, Petrus Riga’s Aurora, and Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (line 1161). Beichner has explained that three im-

portant manuscripts of the Vulgate substituted tubal for iubal and that the legend of Pythagoras’s discovery of music from the sound of hammers was transferred to the first blacksmith, Tubalcain (Medieval Representative of Music, p. 7). * Bede, In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, pp. 87-88. Cf. Pseudo-Bede, In Pentateuchum com-

mentariu: In Genesim 4, cols. 219-20. Charles Jones observes that Bede did not scorn | agriculture because Cain was a farmer; he saw farming as a dignified occupation but Cain as “lacking piety and devotion.” Jones says: “Bede expresses resentment against the sons of Tubalcain, city life, metal foundering (II, 532-562), while glorifying agriculture: the heroes Noah and Melchisedech are farmers” (““‘Bede’s Commentary on Genesis,” p. 130).

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD 129 comforts, ornaments, and musical instruments as acts of retrogression, not of progress. Such things might be put to good use, but they tend toward

evil in and of themselves. Bede’s primitivism may be characterized as Christian pastoralism—the retirement from urban, technological society in favor of the passive nomadic existence of Abel. Although the time from the Fall to the Flood was an era of increasing corruption and iniquity, the world’s “infancy” was nonetheless qualitatively different from postdiluvial ages. The Magister of Honorius Augustodunensis’s Elucidarium explains to his student that from Adam to Noah

there was no rainfall, men did not eat meat, they drank no wine, and it was a time of perpetual spring. But all of this changed, he adds, because of the sins of men.#

5. Uniting the Lines of Seth and Cain in Sexual Depravity: The Pre-Flood Generation The final stage of pre-Flood degeneration saw the sexual union of two previously segregated peoples, the lines from Seth and Cain (see Table 2), and the birth of giants and monsters as a result. According to Genesis, And whanne men bigunnen to be multiplied on erthe, and hadden gendrid dou3tris, the sones of God seizen the dou3tris of men that thei weren faire,

and token wyuves to hem of alle whiche thei hadden chose. ... Sotheli giauntis were on erthe in tho daies, forsothe aftir that the sones of God entriden to the dou3tris of men, and tho dou3tris gendriden; these weren my3ti of the world and famouse men [gloss: that is, of yuel fame (or name) for thei weren rauenouris and lecchouris]. (6.2, 4)

The exegesis on this passage has a venerable history that revolves around the meaning of the phrase “‘sones of God.” In the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch the sons of God are interpreted as angels sent from heaven, the Watchers, who went astray and taught mankind forbidden knowledge (notably, herbalism), united with mortal women, and spawned giants more than two miles high—monsters who ate both clean and unclean animals,

who devoured all human supplies, and who finally cannibalized their mothers’ generation.* Early Christian commentators, influenced by Jew* Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 1.15, col. 1120. 5 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charles, 2:191. The Book of Fubilees is related to

Enoch and follows the same traditions of the Watchers, who taught mankind “charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants” (Enoch 7.3). See Jubilees 4.22 and 5.1-9 in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 2:8-9; and Mellinkoff, “Cain’s Monstrous Progeny,” pp. 146-52. The issue of giants and giantism is an important subtopic of the idea of the world grown old. See below, Chapter 4.

|,| |, ||| 130 THE WORLD GROWN OLD

TABLE 2. Primitive Genealogy and the World’s Decline

City of Man City of God “Daughters of Men” [fiiiae hominum] “Sons of God” [fila Dei]

2. Cain Abel Seth ADAM & EVE

3. Enoch (in malo) Enosh [Vulg. Enos]

4. Irad Kenan [Cainan]

5. Mehujael [Vulg. Maviahel] Mahalalel [Malalehel]

6. Methushael [Matusahel | Jared

,|

7. Lamech (in malo) + Enoch (in bono) (1) Adah [Ada] (2) Zillah [Sella]

8. Jabal [Jabel] Jubal Tubalcain Namaah [Noemma] Methuselah (tents) (harp, pipe) (metalworking) (weaving) (Mathusalam]

9. sons & daughters , Lamech (in bono) |

10. nepbilim (gigantes) Noah [Noe] 11. Ham [Ham, Cham] Japheth [afeth] Shem [Sem]

(Africa) (Europe) (Asia) Canaan [Chanaan| : | Nimrod [Nemrod, Nebroth] : David

Jesus Christ

ish exegesis, understood the sons of God as fallen angels who became the devil’s henchmen (“satellites ac ministros’’) and produced the world’s evil spirits and demons.* St. Augustine, however, rejected the notion that an-

‘6 Tertullian, Apologeticum 22.3, ed. Dekkers, p. 128; Lactantius, Divinae institutiones

, 2.15, cols. 330-33. See also Julius Africanus, Ex quinque libris chronographia 2, col. 65; and Sulpicius Severus, Historia sacra 1.2, cols. 96-97. For an extended recent discussion

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD I31 gels could fall in this way and explained the sons of God as favored mortal creatures.*’

Peter Comestor, basing his account on Pseudo-Methodius, explains the cause of the Flood as follows. When Adam died, Seth separated his kinsmen from those of Cain and returned to his birthplace. While Adam was alive, he had forbidden the two lines to intermarry. So Seth dwelt on a mountain near Paradise, whereas Cain lived on the plain, where he killed his brother Abel. In the seven-hundredth year of the second millennium, the sons of Seth lusted after the daughters of Cain. They came down off the mountain, united with the daughters, and sired giants and other prodigies.** be lyff of Adam and Eue (Vernon Manuscript), in a passage based on Peter Comestor, explains that Cain went into exile after the slaying of his brother. “And,” continues the anonymous fourteenth-century work, Adam comaunded to Seth pat non of his kuynde schulde felauschupe wip Caymes kuynde ne wedde non wyues in Caymes kuynde—for po pat coomen of Sepes kuynde ben cleped godes sones, and Caymes kuynde to ... men sones. And penne at pe fiftene hondred winteres ende heo bigunnen to don heore lecherie priueliche, & afturward openliche. And bo afturward heo weddeden pe to kuynde in to pat opur, & geeten geauns.* of these issues (keyed to folklore and Rabelais), see Stephens, Giants in Those Days, chap.

2, esp. pp. 76-84. 47 Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.22-23, ed. Hoffmann, pp. 108-14; “Quaestiones — Genesis” 1.3, ed. Fraipont, pp. 2-3. 48 Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 31, col. 1081; Pseudo-Methodius, Revelationes 2, ed. Sackur, pp. 62-63. See also Pseudo-Clement of Rome, Recognitiones 1.29, col. 1223. Kaske has conjectured that the author of Beowulf might have known the Book of Enoch because of the juxtaposition of “giant” and “evil spirit” in both works (“Beowulf and the Book of Enoch”). The Liber monstrorum (1.2) mentions Hygelac among the monstrous giants (ed. Porsia, p. 138), and this, say Greenfield and Calder, “is probably the earliest reference in an English source to Hygelac, the Geatish king and Beowulf’s uncle” (New Critical History, p. 13). For further discussion of this issue, see Bandy, “Giants of Beowulf,” pp. 243-44. The fifteenth-century treatise against witchcraft, Malleus maleficarum 1.3, argues that the sons of Seth were actually demonic incubi. The Cathar myth of the Fall includes the idea that rebel angels fell through a hole in heaven and were invested with “tunics of human flesh” by the devil. Then women seduced and manipulated these humans. See Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, p. 352; Runciman, Medieval Manichee, p. 148. 4° be lyff of Adam and Eue, ed. Horstmann, p. 225. Although most medieval com-

| mentators regard the vocations of Cain and Abel—farming and animal husbandry respectively—as expressions of their personalities, several Middle English writings, including Pe lyff of Adam and Eue (p. 224), allege that the first parents, fearing Cain’s nature, segregated him from his brother and ordained their work. ‘They set up Cain in the fields, whereas they placed Abel on the mountains. See also Canticum de creatione, , lines 469-79, ed. Horstmann, p. 130; and Life of Adam and Eve, in The Wheatley Manuscript, ed. Day, pp. 86-87. Richard of St.-Victor characterizes the intermarriages as a mixing of the sacred with the profane: Excerptiones allegoricae 4.6, col. 216.

132 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Higden, citing Peter Comestor, suggests that Seth’s kin after the seventh generation turned to homosexuality (2.5). And though, again adducing Peter, he provides a late entry into the fallen-angel-or-human controversy, he only raises the possibility that demonic incubi coupled with the “dou3tris of men”: “And hit mizhte be,” says Higden cautiously, “pat Incubus — [or Incubi], suche fendes as lieb by wommen in liknesse of men, made geantes be i-gete, in be whiche geantes gretnesse of herte answerep and acordep to pe hugenesse of body” (2.5).°° Cursor mundi deplores those preFlood generations, saying that it was bad enough in Adam’s time but much worse after Cain. In Jared’s generation things took a radical turn for the worse: Mikel malice was first in man

| Bot neuer forwit sua mikel as pan; In adam time was wrang i-nogh, Bot pis tim wex wel mare wogh, Namlik amang kaym kyn Pat lited pam noght bot in sin. (1555-60)

Women coupled with women, men with men, a man with his brother’s wife: the natural law was abandoned, and the devil thought he could ensnare all humanity (1569-84). All of this human wickedness—the intermarrying of the lines from Seth and Cain, the sexual dissoluteness, the birth of giants—had a direct bearing on the Flood, for God sent the Flood in response to the increase of man’s

evil (Gen. 6.5-6, 12-13). The Book of Wisdom attributes the Flood directly to Cain—the “manqueller”—and his wickedness: 50 Philo interprets the giants as those men of earth who take pleasure in carnal matters: De gigantibus 13, trans. Colson and Whitaker, 2:474. See also Ambrose’s interpretation of the giants as those who have no concern for their souls: De Noe 4.8, ed. Schenkl, p. 418. Pseudo-Methodius believes that Seth was a giant and that the “sons of Seth” united with the “daughters of Cain” (2, ed. Sackur, p. 62). Peter Comestor gives the familiar story and then mentions the incubus, or demon, theory, which he ascribes to “Methodius” (i.e., Pseudo-Methodius): “Potuit etiam esse, ut incubi daemones genuissent gigantes, a magnitudine corporum denominatos, sic dicti a geos, quod est terra, quia incubi vel daemones solent in nocte opprimere mulieres; sed etiam immanitati corporum respondebat immanitas animorum” (Historia scholastica 31, col. 1081). Pseudo-Bede regards the giants less as very large people than as great sinners: “Gigantes qui hic dicuntur indicant magna peccata, etenim magnitudine peccati nati sunt.” They were conceived by the union of “bonae cogitationes”’ with ‘“‘malae cogitationes” (In Pentateuchum commentarii: In Genesim 8, col. 224). See also Bede’s In Genesim 2, ed. Jones, pp. 100-101, and contrast the statement in the G/ossa attributed to Alcuin that giants existed after the Flood—even female giants (PL 113:104). I could

, not find this passage in the 1480 version of the Glossa ordinaria, only in Migne.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 133 This wisdom of God kepte hym, that was formed first of God, the fadir of the world [gloss: that is, of alle men (Lyra)|, whanne he aloone was maad of nou3t. And this wisdom ledde hym out of his trespas, and ledde hym out of the sliym of erthe, and 3af to hym vertu to holde togider alle thingis [gloss: for it 3af to hym the lordschip ouer alle lowere thingis (Lyra)]. As the

vnjust man in his ire 3ede awei fro this wisdom, brotherhed perischide bi the ire of manquellyng. For which thing whanne watir dide awei the erthe [gloss: that is, alle men dwellinge in erthe|, wisdom heelide eft; gouernynge a lust man bi a dispisable tre. (10.1-4)

An important point for the idea of the world grown old is that God destroyed virtually the entire earth, the human, vegetable, and animal kingdoms—“fro man til to lyuynge thingis, fro crepynge beeste til to the briddis of heuene”’ (Gen. 6.7)—because man had corrupted everything around

him. The combination of the all-devouring pre-Flood giants and the destructive Flood waters after them caused a great deterioration in the earth’s vegetable abundance. The Flood dramatically sealed off the first world age from the second. ~ But the new beginning turned very quickly into the same old pattern, the pattern of decline. There was a recrudescence of the evil impulse in humans just after the Flood. Ham, third of Noah’s sons, carried on the tradition of his ancestor Cain; and medieval commentators often linked his name (Cham) etymologically and morally with Cain’s. The Middle English version of the joca monachorum connects Ham with Cain, the man of

the soil, by claiming that Ham invented the plow: “C[lerk]: Hoo made firste plowes? M[aister of Oxford]: Cam, Noes son.” *! Sir John Mandeville

even derives the honorific “the great Chane,” of Ghengis Khan, from Cham (Travels 24). Ham was the patriarch of the Canaanites, ancient enemies of the Israelites and (some say) of the Egyptians. Some even claim that he was the “first sorcerer.’ 5? Chaucer’s Parson identifies Ham (Canaan) as the first slave: ““This name of thraldom was nevere erst kowth til that Noe seyde that his sone Canaan sholde be thral to his bretheren for his synne” (X.766). The chief practitioners of outrages against God may have perished in the Flood; in this the Lord achieved his vengeance against that evil generation. But the seeds of original sin, which brought about the outrages, persisted in mankind like a genetic code. Lee Patterson has recently linked Ham with the origins of European serfdom and “ungentilness.” This connection appears in the Liber armorum, “a brief treatise on heraldry included in the early fifteenth-century 51 Questiones by-twene the Maister of Oxenford and his Clerke, ed. Horstmann, p. 286. 52 See Jeffrey, “Ham,” in Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, ed. Jeffrey, p. 327 (s.v. Ham [Chaml]).

134 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Boke of Seynt Albans.” The anonymous author claims not only that Ham “‘was become a chorle” because of his “vngentilnes” but also that Europeans derive from Ham rather than Japheth. Europe is characterized as “the contre of churlys.” Because his father, patriarch of “vngentilnes,” had mocked Noah’s nakedness, Canaan became ‘“‘thral to his bretheren for his synne.”’** This testimony provides a justification not only for Israelite subjugation of indigenous peoples—an exegetical justification—but also for servitude and the oppression of peasants generally, a political justification.

6. Nimrod the Hunter-Giant | We can see the continuity of evil most strikingly in Ham’s grandson Nimrod, who was accused of being a wicked hunter, a giant, the first ruler in _ Babylon (beginning of empire), builder of the Tower of Babel, and a re-

ligious tyrant. The offspring of Shem and Japheth at first followed the pattern of Abel and Seth, according to medieval commentators. In his In Genesim Bede contrasts the lines from Shem and Japheth with that of Ham

in a way that recalls the dichotomy of the city of man versus the city of God in pre-Flood days: Progenie Sem et Iafeth in uitae simplicitatis innocentia permanentibus nascitur de stirpe Cham maledicta, qui statum humanae conuersationis nouo uiuendi genere peruerteret. Dum singulari potentia elatus, primum uenatu uiueret; dein, collecto exercitu, insolitam in populos tyrannidem studuit exercere. Denique in sequentibus regnum habuisse et ciuitates maximas aedificasse legitur.** (While the offspring of Shem and Japheth remained in the innocence of a simple life, from the seed of cursed Ham [or Cain] a man was born who perverted the estate of human life to a new way of living. Carried away in his own power, he was the first to live as a hunter; then, having gathered an army, he busied himself in administering an unwonted tyranny against the people. Finally, we read that he had a kingdom and that he built great cities.)

Bede here glosses the laconic verses in Genesis on Nimrod: “Forsothe Thus [Cush or Chus] gendride Nemroth; he bigan to be my3ti in erthe, and he was a strong huntere of men bifore the Lord; of hym a prouerbe 53 Patterson, Chaucer and the Sulyect of History, pp. 267-69. *4 Bede, In Genesim 3, ed. Jones, p. 144. See also Gerhoh: “Peracto diluvio, in quo periit ipsius Cain pessima, superba et luxuriosa propago, rursum inter filios Noe distinctae sunt potestates istae” (Libellus de ordine donorum Sancti Spiritus, ed. Classen, p. 106).

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 135 3ede out, as Nemroth, a strong huntere bifore the Lord” (10.8-9). The phrase “huntere of men” in the later version of the Wycliffite Bible (quoted above) includes a gloss, for earlier versions of the Wycliffite Bible and the Vulgate read simply “‘huntere” (wenator); other glosses of the later version read “huntere, that is, oppressere.” But the glosses are well documented in

exegetical commentary. Augustine suggests that the phrase “huntere bifore the Lord” (wenator ante Dominum) should read “hunter against the Lord” (uenator contra Dominum). “For the word ‘hunter’ can only suggest a deceiver, oppressor and destroyer of earth-born creatures,” says Augustine.*> Peter Comestor intimates that more is meant by the word “hunter”’ than animal slayer. Nimrod, he declares, “began to be a mighty one on the earth, and he was a mighty hunter of men before the Lord, that is, a killer and oppressor in the love of domination.” * Higden cites this passage in his Polychronicon, but he changes the wording somewhat with the result

that Nimrod may be either a killer or a general tyrant. The ambiguity is preserved in Trevisa’s translation: “Panne Nemprot, a stronge huntere of men, pat is, a tyraunt vppon men, he putte Assur out of pat londe, and byganne to reigne among Cham his children in pe citee of Babiloyne pat he bulde”’ (2.6). Isidore of Seville simply asserts, “‘Nembroth interpretatur

tyrannus” (Etymologiae 7.6.22-23). The Cursor mundi calls Nimrod a “great warrior’ (alternatively, “wrongful emperor”), a ‘“‘robber,” and a ‘“‘man-queller,” who showed mercy to no man and who spread evil and “rage” wherever he went (2204-9). Medieval commentators tend to cast Nimrod as the darkest of villains, for any hope that the world could be renewed was frustrated by Ham’s descendants. They merely recapitulated and added to the iniquities of the first fratricide and city builder, Cain. Nimrod’s chief offense in the eyes of medieval commentators was that he was the first ruler of the world’s most wicked city, Babylon. “Primus post diluvium inter homines,” notes Isidore of Seville in Quaestiones in Genesim, ““Nemrod filius Chus nova imperii cupiditate tyrannidem arripuit, regnavitque in Babylonia, quae ab eo, quod ibi confusae sunt linguae, Babel appellata est, quod interpretatur confusio.” In the Etymologiae Isidore makes the link explicit with Cain: “Primus ante diluvium Cain civitatem Enoch ex nomine filii sui in Naid condidit, quam urbem sola multitudine suae posteritatis implevit. Primus post diluvium Nembroth gigans Babylonem urbem Mesopotamiae fundavit.”’ *’ 55 Augustine, De civitate Dei 16.4, ed. Hoffmann, p. 134. See also the discussion by Willard, “Chaucer’s “Text,’ ” p. 211; the Anglo-Saxon poem Genesis A, ed. Doane, lines 1630-32; and Emerson, “Some of Chaucer’s Lines on the Monk,” pp. 107-8. 56 Historia scholastica 37, col. 1088. 57 Isidore, Quaestiones in Genesim 9g, col. 237; Etymologiae 15.1.3-4, ed. Lindsay. For

a similar linking of Cain and Babel, see Hrabanus Maurus, In librum Sapientiae, col. 716. See also Bede, In Genesim 3, ed. Jones, p. 145. Jeffrey argues that Gen. 11.1-9

136 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Just as there is ambiguity about Nimrod’s being a hunter (of animals or of men?) and a hunter with respect to the Lord (before the Lord or - against the Lord?), so there is a problem with the phrase “he bigan to be my3ti in erthe.” Working from the Septuagint text, Augustine understands Nimrod to be a giant, a reading that is preserved in a very early anonymous

chronicle, Pseudo-Methodius, Hrabanus Maurus, and Peter Comestor, who claims that Nimrod was a giant of ten cubits.** Morally and physically

Nimrod was a throwback to the pre-Flood generation. _

Although the Bible attributes the Tower of Babel to the “sones of Adam” rather than to any specific architect (Gen. 11.3-6), medieval commentators—perhaps associating ““Babel”’ with “Babylon” and a giant with a high tower—established Nimrod as the builder. Inspiration for the tower constructed of baked brick and slime constitutes, we are assured, the fulfillment of Nimrod’s haughty character. “He wished to penetrate heaven unnaturally (ultra naturam),” states the Glossa ordinaria. “He signifies the devil, who says: ‘I shall rise above the stars of heaven.’ ”’°? The Cursor mundi portrays Nimrod as a pugnacious organizer of men, who incited a “felauscap” or “euyl pak” from the East to scale heaven’s heights, wage war on the sun and moon, and risk hand-to-hand combat with God (221238), while the earlier Genesis and Exodus offers the interpretation, which owes much to Josephus and traditions of Jewish Haggadah (1.4.1-2), that

Nimrod suffered from hydrophobia and that he erected the Tower of

Babel to escape from deluges such as the Flood: | Nembrot gat hise feres red,

for dat he hadde of water dred, ‘appears to have two evident purposes: (a) to interpret the name of an alien power, Babylon (Heb. babel), and (b) to explain the plurality of languages” (““Babel,” in Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, ed. Jeffrey, p. 66). Amsler points out that Jerome links ‘““Nimrod’s desires (cupientes) with the dispersion of languages” (Etymology and Grammatical Discourse, p. 114). Sometimes medieval historians credit Semiramis, wife of King Ninus, with building Babylon. Otto of Freising claims that she constructed Babylon with the bricks and pitch of the ruined Tower of Babel (Chronica 1.8); but Isidore says that she

enlarged it (“Hanc ... ampliavit, murumque urbis bitumine et cocto latere fecit” [Etymologiae 15.1.4, ed. Lindsay]).

8 Augustine, De civitate Dei 16.3, ed. Hoffmann, pp. 128-29. This reading is pre_ served in the Glossa ordinaria, 1:42A (PL 113:113). See also Chronicon anonymi of A.D. 236 (col. 680); Pseudo-Methodius, Revelationes 3, ed. Sackur, pp. 64-65; Hrabanus, Commentarius in Genesim 2.11, col. 529; and Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 37, col. 1088. See also Guido da Pisa’s commentary on Dante’s Inferno 31.121 (“i figli de la terra’’), tracing the word gigas (giant) to Greek geos (earth), and recapitulating the commentaries of Genesis, Josephus, Pseudo-Methodius, and Peter Comestor: Expositiones et glose, ed. Cioffari, pp. 655-56. °° Glossa ordinaria, 1:42A (PL 113:113). For an important allegorical explanation of the Tower of Babel and its architects as “magistri errorum,” see Bede’s “Interpretatio spiritalis” in In Genesim 3, ed. Jones, pp. 157-62.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 137 To maken a tur wel heg & strong

Of tigel and ter for water-gong. ,

Twelwe and sexti men woren dor-to Meister-men, for to maken it so. Al was on speche 6or-bi-foren: Dor woren sundri speches boren. Do wurden he frigti and a-grisen, For dor was sundri speches risen; Sexti lond-speches and .xii. mo Weren dalt dane in werlde do. Babel dat tur bi-lef un-mad, Dat folc is wide on lon sad. Nembrot nam wid strengéde dat lond, And held de tur o babel in his hond.© (659-74)

Higden suggests that Nimrod misled his fellows into believing that good fortune comes not from God but from man’s own powers and that God, through envy, wanted to keep men alienated from one another in order more easily to subjugate them. Fearing that this God might send another flood, they built the Tower of Babel high and with “glewe”’ (bitumine) as

proof against the flood waters. They did this in the same place where Babylon was later constructed, at least according to the Polychronicon (2.6). Augustine, perhaps following suggestions in a midrash that when the great tower fell it spawned demons and spirits in surrounding regions, includes an exposition of “monstrous humanoids to his discussion of the tower.” *! Nimrod was said to be an oppressive king, the world’s first. Chaucer in his short lyric The Former Age mentions that Nimrod was “‘desirous to regne,” an allegation that echoes or anticipates Higden/Trevisa’s ““Nem-

proth had greet desire to reigne” (2.6). Cain had built the first city and ordained standards, and Lamech had a passion for two wives. But Nim-

| rod’s lust was something new in the world—an appetite that later Babylonians would satisfy by enslaving the Jews in the Babylonian Captivity (fifth world age). Pseudo-Methodius claims that Nimrod was the first “to

govern the entire earth” (p. 64). Peter Comestor, who says that Nimrod was a hunter of men as well as of animals, also states that “he compelled men to worship fire” as part of his political oppression, an allegation that John Gower repeats in a marginal note to his discussion of the worship of 60 Middle English “Genesis and Exodus,” ed. Arngart, pp. 70-71. See also Higden/ Trevisa 2.6, p. 249. 6! Jeffrey, “Babel,” in Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, ed. Jeffrey, p. 66, referring to

City of God 16.8.

138 THE WORLD GROWN OLD elements by the Chaldeans in Confessio amantis, book 5. The Cursor mundi devotes a small section just to Nimrod’s kingship and his new religion of idol (maumet) and kinship worship.” The author claims that the Saracens _ still observe the religion instituted by the world’s first king: Pis nembrod was be formast king Pat in maument fand mistruing [wrong faith]; Lang he rengud in pat land, In maumet first throut he fand,

Pat ban bigan, pat lestes yeit; , Sarzins wil it noght for-leit. Lik til his fader pat was ded A wygur was mad wit his red, And command stithli ul his men Als god pai suld it knau and ken. (2283-92)

| According to Higden, Nimrod expelled Assur from Babylon and began | to rule Ham’s children there. “Afterward Nemprot,” reads the Polychronicon in ‘lrevisa’s translation, “‘wente to be men of Pers and tau3te hem to worschippe pe fuyre, and foundede pere pe citee of Nyneue” (2.6; see also 2.9). The Middle English Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius includes a story of Nimrod’s birth not from Cush but from a son of Noah, Jonitus, who learned the “wisdom of God”—astronomy—in the land of Eocham

(where the sun rises), although he did not participate in the tripartite division of the world among Noah’s sons. “Jonitus pe sone of Noe gat a man geaunt & a stronge hunter. And pilke Nemproth, after be flode, buylde a tour pat is cleped Babiloyne” (p. 98). Higden knows this story, and he adds that Jonitus’s wisdom includes prophecy and a knowledge of “pe foure cheef kyngdoms” (2.6). The Jonitus thread, which confuses rather than clarifies the biblical narrative, seems to have entered western historical literature via a Latin translation of the Liber Nimrod, “‘a Syriac mythological and astronomical handbook which was cast in the form of a | ” For a different (extended) view of the origins of idolatry, see the account in Guido de Columnis’s Historia destructionis Troiae 10, ed. Griffin, pp. 93-97. Guido demonstrates that different races have different ideas about the origins of idolatry: among the Jews, Ishmael; among the classical writers, Prometheus. But he himself believes that Bel the Assyrian was the first idolator and that he passed on the worship to his son Ninus. Augustine transmits the historical testimony of Justinus, who alleges that the legendary king Ninus was the first king to extend his kingdom “through a craving for empire, which was then a novelty” (City of God 4.6). Augustine is dubious about the authenticity of Justinus’s history, which is an abridged version of the universal history of Pompeius Trogus.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ 139 dialogue between the astronomer Nimrod and his disciple Ioanton.” © Some say that Nimrod was an Ethiopian (“whose color signifies the shad-

ows of the soul, and squalor’), others that he spread the passion for empire from Babylon to Persia (Higden). Every aspect of Nimrod’s life— his might, his hunting prowess, his gigantic size, his lust for domination, his pride, his construction of the Tower of Babel, and his state religion— supported the notion that his character was twisted. Medieval exegetes and those who sought to understand the historical forces at work in the first and second world ages regarded mankind’s early development as a gradual but steady decline from Adam’s original, fortunate condition. Terrible as was Adam’s initial disobedience, his actual offense against humans was slight in comparison with the atrocities committed by his successors in later generations. Stull, Adam’s sin established the archetypal pattern: man’s moral failure was followed by a worsening of his relationship with the earth. Later attempts to alter or improve mankind’s estate created new misfortunes for the race. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit in hopes of deriving some benefit, he succeeded only in bringing down God’s curse on himself and the earth. And when Nimrod

erected the Tower of Babel, he invited God’s wrath and brought about the confusion of languages. The first age, Adam to Noah—called the world’s “infancy” by historians after Augustine—was not so much an epoch of innocence as of ever deepening experience.

7. The Diffusion and Decay of Speech

Related to the interpretation of Genesis as a scenario of decline is the consequence of the Tower of Babel: the deterioration of language from a single tongue—usually understood as Hebrew—to many forms of speech. Early-medieval historians and commentators on the Bible regarded Adam as the originator of words, when he bestowed names on the animals (Gen. 2.19). But he had received the gift of language from God. At the moment of naming there was an exact correspondence between thing (res) and word 6 Jeffrey, “Babel,” in Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, ed. Jeffrey, p. 67. See also Live-

sey and Rouse, “Nimrod the Astronomer,” pp. 211-16. Livesey and Rouse (pp. 21113) further trace the thread to the Recognitiones of Pseudo-Clement. Richard of Bury, in Philobiblon 7, laments the loss of ancient secrets, including the “‘arcana caelorum”’ that Jonitus received directly from heaven, during the great fire at the library of Alexandria (ed. Maclagan, p. 74). 64 Ambrose, De Noe 34.128, ed. Schenkl, p. 496; Bede, In Genesim 3, ed. Jones, p. 146.

6°] am indebted in this section to Howard Bloch’s discussion in Etymologies and Genealogies, esp. chap 1 (“Early Medieval Grammar’’). See also Carolyn Dinshaw’s reading of Chaucer’s “Adam Scriveyn” in terms of “fallen language” and The Pardoner’s Tale in terms of “postlapsarian language’ (Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, pp. 5-6, 158-59).

140 THE WORLD GROWN OLD (verbum). Adam’s speech in Paradise—Hebrew, the language God used when he set down the written law—is the closest one can approach to God’s language and his original act of creation when he spoke the universe into being. Hebrew preserves the authentic or “proper” sounds for things; other languages are merely deteriorations from the authentic language. ‘The history of human language is that of genealogical succession: from the first universal syllable, the name of God, to the most particular patois; and from God the universal father to the last sons of his line.” © When God rebuked Nimrod’s pride at Babel, he destroyed the unity and simplicity of language—its original economy—and brought about division and confusion. ‘T'revisa’s translation of the Polychronicon explains the

disarray as separation and division: “Pat place is i-cleped Babel, pat is to menynge schedynge; for bere at God Almyzte his heste pe longages and tonges of pe bulders were i-schad and to schift” (2.6). Higden explains that God’s act of destruction was not motivated solely by revenge; he wanted to prevent the querulous builders from fighting among themselves: “Babiloyne was afterward i-bulde [in pe feeld pat hatte Sennaar|, but God Almy3ty departed hem for pey schulde not make discencioun and stryf among hem self.” These contentious folk dispersed into the three regions of the known world—the realms of Shem (Asia: the Semites), Japheth (Europe), and Ham (Africa)—and they instituted a new world order that featured overlords and underlings: Augustinus de Civitate Det, libro octavodecimo, capitulo primo. Whanne men

were departed and to schift in to dyuers londes, and euerich folowed his owne likynge and wille, while pat it semede pat what pat was desired was i-now to no man. Mankynde was departed a3enst hym self, and pe strenger party bare doun bat oper, and tolde more prys of fredom pan of sauacioun and of hele; so pat it was greet wonder of hem, pat hadde leuere be lost and i-spilde pan be vnderlynges and servy. And 3it be lore of kynde, bettre is to be vnderlynge and seruaunt pan be put out of lyf. (2.7) In this remarkable passage Higden traces class hierarchy to a mentality based on oppression and raw power. There are the dominant figures and, as the Harley translation has it, “the parte more feble”’; this same translator ascribes the willingness of the weaker subjects to be governed to “nature’’—presumably the same force as “lore of kynde”’ (natural law, law of

survival). And, following Higden’s Latin, the Harley translator ascribes this new class-bound estate to “the prouidence of God,” who foresaw the 6 Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, p. 43.

GENESIS AND THE WORLD GROWN OLD I4I necessity of governance in human affairs.°’ Historical speculation of this kind appears in Jean de Meun’s section of Le roman de la Rose (see below, Chapter 3). The consequences of Babel were division, violence, and loss. The original unity of language—the cement of human relationships and the defin- | ing element of race—was shattered in the plain of Shinar. Isidore of Se-

, ville, in his postil on Genesis, deplores the separation between things and words, with the resultant loss of meaning, at the diffusion of speech. He addressed the issue of words and things—and their fundamental interrelatedness—in his Etymologies, which Curtius has characterized as “‘a basic

book” of “the entire Middle Ages.” Isidore’s epistemology has been described as “verbal” and his ontology as “essentially an ontology of words.” ® The medieval scholar and etymologist could help repair the divisions and violence that were the heritage of Babel. Yet the principle of linguistic deterioration persisted in medieval thought and literature. As David Jeffrey has put it,

The language theme, uniting discussion of the seventy-two language groups apparently indicated in the genealogies of Gen. 10 with the tower narrative, developed especially in the 12th through 16th cents. an enormous literature (see Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel), most of which is concerned with the question of ur-languages and the relation of pride to confusion of tongues. In this tradition, Nimrod can be associated with gigas super terram,

“giants in the earth” (Glossa ordinaria), gigas Sathanas, Satan (P. Riga, Aurora, 1.691), or the Antichrist, and there is a general notion, reflected in works as apparently diverse as Aelfric’s homilies (Catholic Homilies, 1.22, 1.318, 2.198, 2.472), Pope Innocent’s De Contemptu Mundi (2.32), and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (K. Lachmann, 399.18—19) that the

67 Babington prints the Middle English translation from British Library, MS Harley 2261, below Trevisa’s translation. The whole passage from the Harley version reads, “This peple diuided in to the worlde, and folowenge the lustes of ambicion, seenge that thynge not to be sufficiaunte that was desirede, was diuidede amonge theyme selfe; and the stronger parte oppressede the parte more feble, preferrenge liberte to theire sawle healethe, to be hade in grete meruayle, wyllenge raper to die then to be subiecte; sythe nature willethe rather to be subiecte then to be destroyede: whiche thynge was not doen with owte the prouidence of God, that somme scholde be gouernoures in _ realmes and somme subiectes.” Higden’s Latin reads, “‘Gentibus itaque per terras divisis, quibusque suas cupiditates sectantibus, dum id quod appetebatur nemini sufficere videbatur, adversus seipsas dividebantur; et pars prevalens reliquam opprimebat, saluti libertatem preferens, ita ut magne fierent admirationi, qui perire maluerunt quam servire; cum vox nature sit malle subici quam deleri. Hinc non sine Dei providentia factum est, ut quidam essent regnis prediti, quidam subditi.” 6 Curtius, European Literature, p. 23. °° Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, pp. 56-57.

| 142 THE WORLD GROWN OLD fragmentation of human speech signifies a deepening intellectual darkness

in the fallen world (cf. Dante, Paradiso, 26.109-38). Humankind is no longer capable of maintaining a right relation between knowing subject and known object which the original gift of language made possible.”

Howard Bloch regards the interpretation of the diffusion of tongues as foundational for western historiography. He connects linguistics with history “through the principle of genealogy.” According to Bloch, Augustine followed Eusebius in explaining history as humankind’s divergence from God; at the same time, words “devolve—through use, catastrophe, translation, and poetry (especially pagan verse)—away from Adam’s primal act

of naming.” Hence, “history and grammar,” according to Bloch, “are bound up by a common sense of loss and dispersion, by a common nostalgic longing for beginnings, and by a set of ontologically similar strat-

egies of return.”’”! | ‘THE ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION of Genesis as a scenario of decline

helped define one of the central issues of the later Middle Ages: the question of why humans developed and progressed materially while at the same time becoming morally destitute. For medieval writers the chief point was this: if the pattern of degeneration could be isolated at the beginning of time and history, then it was no wonder that the present age, the saeculum, had grown old and corrupt. Adam and Eve, Seth, Enoch (in bono), Elijah,

Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others walked and spoke with God in the world’s “youth,” when humans were just learning to build cities and to improve their lives through technological innovations. But these good patriarchs shared their world with others—Cain, Enoch (in malo), Lamech,

Ham, Nimrod, and others—who sought gratification of their lusts for power and sexual conquest. These iniquitous types, who brought about fratricide, wars, sexual perversion, the Flood, and the division of languages, willfully contravened the natural law—what they knew in their hearts was right—and resorted to violence, oppression, and tyranny under the guise

of progress.

70 Jeffrey, “Babel,” in Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, ed. Jeffrey, p. 67. | Etymologies and Genealogies, p. 44.

3

Jean de Meun and the Critique of Erotic Idealism

But chaunged is this world unstable,

| For love is overall vendable.

We se that no man loveth now, But for wynnyng and for prow; And love is thralled in servage, Whanne it is sold for avauntage. (Romaunt of the Rose 5803-8)

JEAN DE MEUN INCORPORATED the idea of the world grown old into his con-

tinuation of Guillaume de Lorris’s love allegory, the Roman de la Rose. This thirteenth-century allegorical narrative was, to judge by surviving manuscripts, more popular and influential than any other vernacular poem save only Dante’s Commedia. The French poem tells the story of how a dreamer-lover, Amant, enters the Garden of Love, is struck by Cupid’s arrow, falls in love with a bud on a rosebush, and then ardently pursues

his Rose. Amant receives help from Raison (Reason), La Vieille (Old Woman, or Go-between), Amis (Friend), Nature, Genius, and an army of Love’s barons, who lead the successful assault against those forces, such as Daunger (Resistance), that block access to the Rose. Amant’s search for erotic consolation begins as a pursuit of refined love; but it ends in Jean’s vision of a pilgrimage turned sordid, a quest that contains unmistakable elements of violence, narcissism, and fraud. That Amant begins with a certain idealism may be seen in his conversation with Amis, who offers advice concerning the proper approach to

Bel Acueil (Fair Welcoming), La Vieille, and Malebouche (Wicked Tongue). Amis counsels various ploys, including a cunning fraud (for ex-

ample, applying onion juice to the eyes to simulate weeping); offering

bribes; deliberately losing at games such as chess, dice, and backgammon; | adopting the demeanor of the gatekeeper despite what Amant may actually 143

144 THE WORLD GROWN OLD feel; flattery, cajolery, and wheedling. Amant professes to be scandalized by these suggestions: —Douz amis, qu’est ce que vos dites? Nus hom, s’i n’iert faus ypocrites, _ ne feroit ceste deablie, n’onc ne fu greigneur establie.

Vos volez que j’honeure et serve ceste gent qui est fause et serve?! (7765-70) (Sweet friend, what are you saying? No man who was not a false hypocrite would commit such deviltry. No greater wickedness was ever started. Do you want me to honor and serve people who are false and servile?)

But Amis is not to be deflected so easily; and his advice reaches a new level

of fraud when he urges Amant to “trick [Malebouche] with treachery” (7845; “par traison le bolez’’). As Amis converses with Amant, Douz Parler

and Douz Penser return and help expel Raison’s counteradvice by their very presence. After Amant has parted company with the discouraging Richece (Wealth), he finds himself, despite his better self, implicated in fraud, thinking one thing and doing another: Ainsinc m’entencion double oi, n’onc mes nul jor ne la doubloi. Traison me covint tracier

| por ma besoigne porchacier; onc traistres n’avoie esté, n’oncor ne m’en a nus resté. (10271—76)

(In this way I had a double intention, but it was never I, on any occasion, who made it double. I had to pursue treason to gain my end. I had never been a traitor, never yet incriminated myself to anyone.)

This quest ends as it does because the world Jean posits has so degenerated from earlier, better times that Amant can approach his love only through duplicitous go-betweens. Amant must resort to subterfuge, deceit, ' References to the French text are from Le roman de la Rose, ed. Lecoy. The translations, occasionally modified for particular emphasis, are from The Romance of the Rose,

trans. Dahlberg, except when Jean’s text is translated in the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose (see n. 5). The line numbers of Dahlberg’s translations, which are based on

, the edition of Ernest Langlois and which I do not record, differ from those of Lecoy.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 145 and bribery; and his final triumph, the consummation of his love for the Rose, better resembles a one-night stand or a rape than a courtly, idealistic “winning” of a lady’s love. Amant seems to have followed Amis’s counsel to “be a man” and take the Rose forcefully, a statement relatively early in the narrative that has predictive value:

cuillez la rose tout a force et moutrez que vos estes hon. (7660-61) (Cut the rose by force and show you are a man.)

Jean’s world of modern-day eros is a compromised world in which the idealism of love is doomed from the outset, for idealism and modern-day love are, according to Jean, essentially incompatible. Jean’s erotic setting of the world grown old reveals a combination of the motifs discussed above in Chapter 1: the golden age (5a), the degeneration of love (5c), the allegorical interpretation of Genesis as a scenario of primitive decline (3f and Chapter 2), nobility of soul (5d), nostalgia for earlier times (5f), and polemical eschatology (3g). Amant exemplifies the modern-day lover who, rejecting Raison, abandons his idealism for expediency and embraces false goals, giving himself over to natural urges. He pursues a transient good, symbolized by the Rose, finally gathering his rosebud while he may. Jean’s setting of senium mundi may be characterized as a version of Chrétien’s decline-of-love topos, in which love is _ said to have degenerated from earlier times, such as the age of Arthur. As Chrétien says at the opening of Yvain, the ranks of lovers and those who delight to hear tales of love have seriously declined in his own age, so that love nowadays is “molt abessiee’’ (20; “much debased”).3 The topic of love’s decline is related in certain texts to the biblical notion of the cooling of charity.‘ | 2 As Michael Cherniss has phrased it, by the end of the poem “the Rose-symbol has declined from its earlier, elevated position as the object of a more innocent Amant’s apparently genuine devotion to its final role as the mere receptacle for his pent-up juices”: “Irony and Authority,” p. 236. Cherniss also speaks of the “idolatrous quality of Amant’s amor” and its connections with the poem’s Narcissus theme. 3 Le Chevalier au lion, ed. Roques, p. 1. See also lines 5383-90 of Le roman de la Rose, the narrator’s excursus on how an audience takes no delight in hearing of love in former times. This brief sequence is also, however, a graceful occupatio: the narrator will not speak of such things. + For example, in the writings of Rutebeuf (active 1250-85). See Les ordres de Paris 7-12; Les plaies du monde 13-20; and L’état du monde 169, in E-uvres completes de Rutebeuf,

ed. Faral and Bastin, 1:323, 378, and 388 respectively. See also Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 184-86; and Emmerson and Herzman, “Age of Hypocrisy,” p. 613 and

, N. 3.

146 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Jean draws upon the rhetorical trope when Raison concludes her discourse on friendship and love with a denunciation of greedy, rapacious men. In the translation from the B fragment of the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose:

For if thise gredy, the sothe to seyn, Loveden and were loved ageyn, And good love regned overall, Such wikkidnesse ne shulde fall If they hem yeve to goodnesse, Defendyng hem from ydelnesse, _ In all this world thanne pore noon We shulde fynde, I trowe, not oon.

But chaunged is this world unstable, ,

For love is overall vendable. We se that no man loveth now, But for wynnyng and for prow; And love is thralled in servage, Whanne it is sold for avauntage.

Yit wommen wole her bodyes selle; | | Suche soules goth to the devel of helle! (5791-94, 5799-810)

In the narrative as a whole, Jean suggests something like this cold charity in his rewriting of Guillaume’s love story: love in the Roman is qualified

and reduced by the uncharitable, unstable, even violent world of La Vieille, Faussemblant (False Seeming), Love’s barons, and Venus herself, who sets fire to the Castle of Jealousy. Jean also harmonizes the degeneration of love with a scenario of decline that owes something to medieval historical writings and commentaries on Genesis. Allied with the decline-of-love motif is what Richard Emmerson and Ronald Herzman characterize as “the apocalyptic age of hypocrisy.”’ They argue that the companion of Faussemblant, Astenance Contrainte (Con-

strained Abstinence), who is compared to the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse (12038-42), represents Amant’s own age: the time of antichrists and false prophets. Faussemblant, disguised as a friar, and his lover Astenance Contrainte, disguised as a beguine, undertake a pilgrimage but * Quotations from the Middle English Romaunt (which is incomplete in three fragments) are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson. It is generally acknowledged

that Chaucer did not translate Fragment B. For the French text and modern English translation, see above, n. 1.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 147 end up throttling and silencing Malebouche, thus helping to clear the way for Amant. Emmerson and Herzman contend that this false pilgrimage, which ends in penetration and violence, parallels and glosses Amant’s pil-

| grimage to and violent penetration of the Rose. But they insist that ‘“Amant’s pilgrimage is also hypocritical” (p. 627); that “Amant is ... in essential ways a hypocrite who uses the cloak of religion to mask his true intentions’’; and that “Amant too can be considered one of Antichrist’s boys” (p. 628). While I substantially agree with Emmerson and Herzman

| about the ultimate effects on Amant, I want to emphasize the process of degeneration. Amant does not begin his amatory career as a hypocrite or an ally of Antichrist, but the pressures of the modern, senescent world conspire to vitiate his initially noble pursuit. He begins his love quest with considerable idealism but gradually and inexorably changes during the narrative as he succumbs to the agents of narcissism, force, and fraud under the tutelage of Amis, La Vieille, Faussemblant, and Astenance Contrainte. He may end up allied with “Antichrist’s boys,” but he does not start out as such. He begins as an idealized ““Everyman/Lover,” someone whose values and aspirations approximate those of any medieval reader. I concur with those who regard the central conflict in Jean’s Roman as a psychomachia between Raison and Love. Charles Dahlberg, Rosamond Tuve, D. W. Robertson, and John Fleming have been especially prominent in highlighting the cupidinous love that subverts the efforts of Raison to instruct and console Amant. ‘Taken literally,” argues Dahlberg, “the Lover’s desire for the rose is the classic form of cupidity, a love of an earthly object for its own sake rather than for the sake of God. The linear progress of that desire through the poem follows the pattern of cupidinous

love, the love inspired by Cupid, the poem’s God of Love.”® From a different perspective, Penn Szittya has argued that Jean de Meun’s world reflects the decay of society, especially through its antifraternal criticism. Speaking of Faussemblant and his alleged digression on the Friars, Szittya says, “This is a world in decline, as many characters—the Friend, the Duenna, Nature—make clear. It is a world that the Friend says has been

taken over by deception, and he urges the lover not to hesitate to use deceit to win his lady (9493-999). It is a world in which love is cooling and pseudoprophetae will come to seduce many.”’’ 6 The Romance of the Rose, p. 15.

” Antifraternal Tradition, p. 190. In characterizing the apocalyptic context for the Roman, Emmerson and Herzman observe: “Reason ... describes the world as sick, suffering because love is absent and has become merely a piece of merchandise (5, 1005,124). This concern with the perversion of love—perhaps a contemporary manifestation of the ‘cooling of charity’ prophesied by Jesus (Matt. 24.12)—is a common complaint about the evils of the last days”: “Age of Hypocrisy,” p. 626.

148 THE WORLD GROWN OLD My emphasis in this chapter is specifically on the Roman as a work that

is in large measure about the decline of love. The decay of society that Szittya speaks of—a degeneration arising from the convergence of “False seeming, seduction, penetrantes domos” (p. 190)—is indeed a governing

trope of the narrative; but that degeneration also has a history in the Roman, not to mention in medieval literature and exegesis, as I hope this study has already made clear. Because of that history, Jean’s setting of the decline of love appears less polemical and occasional—less topically directed—and rather more textual and literary than Szittya’s focus on the antifraternal tradition suggests, helpful as it is. There is in the Roman very much the sense of a past as well as the sense of an ending. During the course of the poem, moral decline is shown to be a process that occurs

over time; that subtext runs throughout the narrative. If we associate Amant with Faussemblant, as Szittya urges (p. 189), we should do so only in recognition of a process of corruption that occurs in and with Amant;

| his idealism of love decays gradually in pursuit of his Rose. Jean depicts the world of love’s decay especially by means of three related topics: Jupiter’s silver age, hunting, and false poverty (mendicancy). The topics of the silver age (a variant of the golden-age topic) and hunting

provide a norm to judge present-day human conduct, including conduct in love, while the topic of true versus false poverty offers a perspective on fallen human motivation. These topics are related historically in that men and women in a pre-fallen—or perhaps in a newly fallen—condition ex-

them. ,

isted happily in primitive poverty, whereas latter-day clerical beggars affect

a sham poverty that realizes neither true apostolic poverty, as the mendicants alleged of themselves, nor the patient estate of primitive humankind, who did not eschew worldly goods because they did not possess

1. Fupiter’s Silver Age Jean was not the first medieval author to exploit the topic of the silver/ golden age. Guillaume’s paradisiacal garden itself certainly would have

suggested primitivism and the Garden of Eden (if not the Saturnian golden age); and Boethius’s several poetic adaptations of the classical golden age were well known to medieval authors, especially to Jean and Chaucer, both of whom translated The Consolation of Philosopby. But Jean’s

use of the golden age in the context of the world grown old and of naturalistic sexuality may be said to represent a new departure in the literature de senectute mundi. For Jean the golden age was a time of innocence and the world’s “youth,” before Jupiter instituted an age of moral decline; the golden age constitutes a norm for human conduct in a book whose irony

| is often elusive. I do not mean to say that Jean speaks unequivocally in his

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 149 own person in the two golden-age passages (8325-424 and 20000-20174),

since two dubious characters, Amis and Genius respectively, relate the passages. My point is that the primitive morals of the golden-age race were blameless by most standards and that those morals rebuke the conduct of modern-day men and women, including that of Amis, Le Jalous (Jealous Husband), La Vieille, and Amant himself. Jean’s first passage on the golden age, which Amis narrates, is prefaced

by an important, if ironic, statement on the decline of love. Amis has advised Amant on various stratagems for winning the Rose, including giv-

ing small presents (but not songs or motets). Then he adds that women nowadays rush after “‘a great heavy purse” (8317; “une grant borse pesanz’) with wordplay on “‘borse” as “scrotum” (see 7113). Formerly, he says, women did not rush after full bags but now it is otherwise: “Jadis soloit estre autrement, / or va tout par enpirement” (8323-24; “Although formerly they had other customs, now everything is going into decline’). Jean’s Amis depicts a mixed primitivism—a combination of the “hard”’ primitivism associated with Juvenal and the “soft” primitivism associated with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 1. This mixed primitivism is characteristic of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (see 2 met. 5), which presents a moralized or Christianized soft primitivism; and the ethical conduct of the golden-age race offers a pointed contrast to the machinations of Amant

as he tries to win his Rose. In Boethius and Jean the golden-age race subsisted on a rude diet of acorns, roots, and ground meal; they drank water of the cold well (no wine); and they lived in crude shelters carpeted

with rushes. Nonetheless, they were blissful and content. They never lacked for food or shelter. Into this picture of primitive contentment, however, Jean introduces a new, non-Boethian element when Amis explains that primitive men and women made love on the grass, in chaste innocence, ‘“‘sanz rapine et sanz covoitise” (8402; “without rapine and without covetousness’’). Golden-age love was not only chaste according to this account; it was also mutual and respectful. Amis characterizes the lovers as participants in refined love: “por l’amor des fins amoreus, / car mout ont en grant amor eus” (8391-92; “for the love of refined loves, since they have such great love for one another’). The lovers played seemingly innocent sexual games under a canopy of branches.’ Boethius and his more faithful imitators, it is fair to say, never envisioned such a naturalistic application for the golden-age topic. Whether Jean himself, the poet behind Amis, endorsed such a primitive naturalism has been a matter of controversy, although most scholars in the last thirty years have argued that such a naturalistic view cannot be 8 Hult observes that “innocence,” in one part of Jean’s narrative (Saturn’s castration by Jupiter), is “part of Jean’s artifice” (“Language and Dismemberment,” p. 113).

150 _ THE WORLD GROWN OLD ascribed to Jean. D. W. Robertson has pointed out that in the prelapsarian state, when reason governed conduct, Adam and Eve did not follow their “natural” inclinations; or, to state it more accurately, in Eden “natural” inclinations were different—and not at all sexual or cupidinous.’ ‘The most important point about this sequence, I believe, is that Amis, who engages. in special (and illogical) pleading, speaks in character. And the golden-age topic is used ultimately to make another point: that the world has degenerated morally in such a way that Amant must of necessity behave according to fallen standards. Amis follows his exposition of the golden age with an account of modern-day marriage relationships as embodied in the violent and sordid marriage of Le Jalous and his battered but strong-willed wife. This unattractive pair demonstrates how love in the present era has degenerated since

primitive ages; and they may well serve as an emblem of male-female relationships after the initial phases of courtship and marriage. Love in the earliest age did not rely on sovereignty (8419-24); but the present-day relationship, according to Amis, does not take advantage of the Pauline definition of the husband-wife bond. At the close of his digression on Le Jalous, Amis testifies that those lovers who woo their ladies par amour end up tyrannizing their former loves (9413-24). The jealous husband beats his wife for sins that may exist solely in his overheated imagination (see 9283-330). Amis is correct to regard Le Jalous as an example of the debased present, but he irrationally applies his exempla, Chauntecleer-like,

to another, less appropriate idea: that Amant should practice deception and spend money if he intends to win the Rose. The drift of Amis’s argument has been toward the rejection of love altogether, since through his exemplary storytelling he has demonstrated the venality and fraud of love in the modern world. Yet he does not follow through on the logic of his argument, a circumstance best explained as Amis’s desire to support , Amant by telling him what he most wants to hear. To underscore his point about the degeneration of love, Amis relates the process or stages of its decline (9463-635). This set piece derives chiefly from classical texts, especially from Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1, from Virgil’s first Georgic, and from Juvenal’s Satires 1 and 6.1-27. But the moral

underpinning, the theory of decline, does not wholly derive from such classical sources. Félix Lecoy, editor of the Roman, says of lines 9573 ff.: “But the exact source of its development remains to be found” (2:277). In my judgment no exact source will be located for these lines because Jean ° Preface to Chaucer, p. 202. For Jean’s golden age as derived especially from Lactantius, see Fleming, The Roman de la Rose, pp. 145-46. Fleming has somewhat revised this view in his more recent treatments of Raison: see Reason and the Lover, pp. 97-135, esp. p. 115.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM I51 does something new: he harmonizes the classical golden-age texts, specifically those that treat the discovery of gold as the first stage in terrestrial decline, with the scenario of earthly degeneration presented in medieval exegesis of Genesis. In Jean’s account the “ancients” lived in peace with one another, desiring neither gold nor travel: “riche estoient tuit egaument / et s’entramoient loiaument” (9491-92; “they were all equally rich, | and they loved one another loyally”). At this time they were “simples genz de bone vie” (9495; “simple people of good life’’); and like the goldenage race, this people did not extort amatory concessions from one another. But this blissful estate did not last, for soon vices intruded: Barat (Fraud) came first, followed by Pechiez (Sin), Male Aventure (Misfortune), Orgueill (Pride), and then other deadly sins, including a great evil, poverty. Barat in Old French meant literally “trickery,” “‘ruse,”’ or even “disorder and noise”; and baratron meant either “hell” or ‘“Satan.”” When Jean testifies that Barat led the way and sin and misfortune ensued, it seems very likely that Jean offers us some version, a syncretic account, of man’s Fall. This race of ancients was not coextensive with Adam and Eve in Eden, since Jean clearly envisions a substantial race of people living harmoniously with one another. In any case, these vices quickly made inroads upon the happy condition of the primitive people. As in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, men dug in the earth for gold and then fought wars to defend their newly

acquired treasure. They divided up the land, ordaining divisions and boundaries where before there had been common spaces—a motif from Georgics 1.126—27, from Flavius Josephus (in reference to Cain), and from later medieval historians and exegetes.

But Amis’s further description of a warlord in a new world of Realpolitik is not classical and derives instead from the worlds of Gen. 4 and ro: the eras of Cain and Nimrod.!° The description is specifically Augustinian and derives from The City of God. According to Augustine, God did not intend that some humans should lord it over their fellows: “Hence the first just men were set up as shepherds of flocks, rather than as kings of men” (19.15).!! In another place Augustine reports the untrustworthy testimony of Justinus, who, following Pompeius Trogus, traced political tyranny to the legendary king Ninus. Justinus claims that “at the beginning of history” moderate kings ruled wisely and well and did not seek to extend their kingdoms. But Ninus, the Assyrian king, ‘“‘was the first to make war on his neighbours; and he extended his sway as far as the borders of Libya, 10 See also Batany, Approches du “Roman de la Rose,” p. 92, and Badel, Le roman de la Rose au X1Ve siecle, pp. 100, 232-33.

11 Commentators had recourse to Cain to explain two different kinds of evils: the evil of kingship and the evil of peasantry. For the latter, see Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, pp. 262-63.

152 THE WORLD GROWN OLD over nations who were not trained to resist.’”” Augustine moralizes this sorry historical deposition: “Now, to attack one’s neighbours, to pass on to crush and subdue more remote peoples without provocation and solely from the thirst for dominion—what is one to call this but brigandage on the grand scale?” (4.6).'2 Arguing that unjust kingdoms are merely outlaw

, fiefdoms, he provides a theory of politics based on justice: “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms?” (4.4). In the Roman Amis speaks

of “un grant vilain” (9579), a great scoundrel, hired by the ancients to intimidate roving bands of robbers and looters; and thus was born kingship. Primitive kings, according to Amis, were—like Cain, Ninus, or Nimrod, models for such oppressors—powerful men whose chief function was providing security for the realm, a function that gradually became more bureaucratic as threats to security increased. In the Bible Nimrod was a

strongman: “‘ipse coepit esse potens in terra / et erat robustus venator coram Domino [or ante Dominum]” (Gen. 10.8-9; ““He bigan to be my3t in erthe, and he was a strong huntere of men bifore the Lord”’). His first _ kingdom was Babel. Medieval exegetes understood Babel in two ways: as the tower of Babel, and as Babylon, the first empire. The commentators established Nimrod as the first emperor and as the architect of the Tower

of Babel. Because Nimrod was mighty and a hunter, they also regarded , him as a great killer. After kingship was established, with its protofeudal system of rights and obligations, then also began the walled defense of private property and the vicious accumulations of wealth characteristic of later world ages and of a world grown old. Jean’s second passage on the golden-age topic extends the implications of the first. Genius speaks of the golden age during his speech on fecundity

| and specifically on what he regards as the outrage of castration, a crime against nature that Jupiter inflicted on his father, Saturn. But there is a surplus of meaning in Genius’s speech, since Genius’s real concern in this

passage is with the silver age, the age of Jupiter, rather than with the golden age. In preparation for his Shepherd’s Park sequence Genius exposes Jupiter’s reign of pleasure to illustrate the primitive history of terrestrial decline. Jupiter in the reign of pleasure is an elaboration of Amis’s “grant vilain” or warlord king, since Jupiter ordains private property and other silver-age innovations in his role as the tsar of pleasure. Jupiter’s Nimrod-like qualities perhaps account for the proximity of these two fig12 Augustine says that there are “other more trustworthy documents” than those of Justinus, who composed an epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s universal history in the second or third century. In these classical accounts, which contradict patristic traditions, Ninus’s widow Semiramis founded Babylon. See Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women,

, speaking of Babylon: “The whyche toun the queen Semyramus / Let dychen al aboute and walles make / Ful hye, of hard tiles wel ybake” (707-9).

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 153 ures from primitive history, Jupiter and Nimrod (Nembrot), in Chaucer’s

incomplete short lyric The Former Age. In the Saturnian golden age, according to Chaucer, Yit was not Jupiter the likerous, That first was fader of delicacye, Come in this world; ne Nembrot, desirous To regne, had nat maad his toures hye. (56-59)

In Jean’s version of the classical myth, Genius first tells how Jupiter became king after castrating his father and then how he published his laws | and decrees, which focused on pleasure. He explains that Jupiter instructed simple people in plowing the earth, making boundaries in fields, and establishing real estate lots (20085-99). He also claims that Jupiter caused snakes to be poisonous and wolves to prey upon other animals, and that he chopped down oak trees—symbols of the golden age—and dammed up rivers flowing with wine (20100-20103). Jupiter set animals against one

(20151-58).

another and instituted hunting as a sport; he shortened the spring and divided the year into four seasons. According to Genius, who says he follows Ovid, Jupiter was bent upon altering the world for the worse

Ironically, Jupiter promulgated his new order as if he were freeing the world from its erstwhile shackles of ignorance and oppression. When he castrated his father, he flung the testicles into the sea, an act that Jupiter regarded as revolutionary and liberating.'* The goddess of love, Venus, was born from the foam that gathered around Saturn’s testicles (5511)— an unnatural engendering, as the god of love makes clear (10799800), and a birth that gives a negative perspective on the goddess, whom her son calls “sainte Venus” (10797). After deposing his father and ending the reign of gold, Jupiter ordained that, with him as king, the world would now be governed by the pleasure principle. Pleasure became the rule. It was Jupiter’s fiat: Jupiter, qui le monde regle, conmande et establist por regle

que chascuns pense d’estre aese; | et s'il set chose qui li plese,

13 Gross comments on Jean’s conception of Jupiter in her explanatory notes to lines 48-63 of The Former Age: The Riverside Chaucer, p. 1083. See also A. V. C. Schmidt, “Chaucer and the Golden Age.” 14 See Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, pp. 266-67.

154 THE WORLD GROWN OLD quil la face, s’il la peust fere, por soulaz a son queur atrere.

(20065-70) ,

(Fupiter, who rules the world, commands and establishes as a rule that each should think how to live in ease; and if he knows of something that will bring him pleasure, let him do it, if he can do tt, in order to bring comfort to his heart.)

This view of Jupiter is doubtless what Chaucer is referring to when he calls Jupiter “the likerous” and “fader of delicacye’’—patriarch of delight or deliciousness—in The Former Age. The irony of Jupiter’s command to

pleasure is only compounded when we recall that the meaning of the original garden, Eden, was “delight,” the abundance or plenitude of worldly goods Jerome, Isidore, Hrabanus Maurus). In the Roman Jupiter speaks as if he wants unrestricted pleasure and unconstrained freedom for everyone; however, his rules of freedom and bounty amount to oppression as he brings about a reduction in the quality of life for the earth’s inhabitants. As each man seeks to increase his share of the earth’s treasure, he

deprives his neighbor of a portion of goods, thereby undermining the - common profit and causing the earth to grow older and debased, to pass from an age said to be golden by pagan poets to an age of silver: Jupiter’s unhappy reign.

2. Hunting and the World Grown Old Jupiter also instituted hunting, a topic to which Jean devotes much attention, as did Virgil (but to a lesser degree) in the first Georgic. Jean says

more about the various kinds of hunting than does his source, and he suggests darker psychological motivations for the rise of this sport. The larger application of the hunting topic is to the art of seduction—the venereal art—which Amis characterizes as involving “stretch[ing] the snare for them [the gatekeepers of the Castle of Jealousy], in order to

capture your prey” (7608-9; “leur tendez / les laz por vostre praie prendre’’). In the later Middle Ages hunting was the sport of the nobility, a symbol

of aristocratic pursuits.!° In his elegant study of chivalry, Maurice Keen has documented the connections among hunting, ideas of gentility, and

| chivalric ideology. The chivalric knight should hone his skills in hunting as well as in warfare. Keen cites Raymond Lull’s Libre del ordre de cavayleria 15 See Rooney’s introduction to Hunting in Middle English Literature, esp. ““The No-

ble Hunt and the Hunting Noble,” pp. 2-5, and her discussions of terms in hunting manuals by which a nobleman may be distinguished from a yeoman, pp. 11-15:

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 155 (after 1263) as an example of a work on chivalric ethics. Lull, a Spanish Franciscan tertiary, is best known today for his writings on the mnemonic

arts and on alchemy.'* William Caxton adapted Lull’s treatise (from a French version) under the title The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry or Knyght-

bode (printed between 1483 and 1485). Lull makes high claims for the chivalric life, regarding it as an ancient and noble vocation. Chivalry arose,

according to Lull, after the Fall, when “ ‘misprision’ began to enter the world, and to disturb it.” !” In Caxton’s adaptation, Whan Charyte / Loyaulte / Trouthe Iustyce and veryte fayllen in the world / thenne begynneth cruelte / Iniurye / desloyalte and falsenes / And therfore

was erroure and trouble in the world / In whiche god hath created manin | jntencion that of the man he be knowen and loued / doubted / serued / and honoured At the begynnyng whan to the world was comen mesprysion / jastyce retorned by drede in to honour / in whiche she was wonte to be / And therfore alle the peple was deuyded by thousandes / And of eche thousand was chosen a man moost loyal / most stronge / and of most noble courage / & better enseygned and manerd than al the other.!®

The institution of knighthood has persisted because it has proven necessary for the commonweal. The duties of a knight include, first, defending “the faith of Christ against unbelievers.” !° He should protect the weak; and he must refine his skills in the hunt. Again in Caxton’s redaction, Kniztes ou3t to take coursers to juste & to go to tornoyes / to holde open table / to hite at hertes / at bores & other wylde bestes / For in doynge

these thynges the knyztes excercyse them to armes / for to mayntene thordre of knizjthode Thefie to mesprise & to leue p* custom of pt which p* kny3t is most apparailled to vse his office is but despising of thordre.”°

Lull mentions other duties as well; and he lists such qualities of chivalric character as “Loyalty and truth, hardiness, /argesse and humility.” ! In his epilogue, dedicated to King Richard III, Caxton proclaims that his book should be regarded as a mirror of chivalry, intended for noble persons rather than for commoners. And in a passage de senectute mundi, he contrasts the ancient practice of chivalry—in the days of Arthur, for exam16 Frances Yates has written extensively on Lull. See most recently Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 253 and 346 n. 81. '7 Keen, Chivalry, p. 9. 18 Lull/Caxton, The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Byles, pp. 14-15. 19 Keen, Chivalry, p. 9. 20 Lull/Caxton, The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Byles, p. 31. 71 Keen, Chivalry, p. ro.

156 THE WORLD GROWN OLD ple—which he views as worthy, with modern-day knighthood, which he characterizes as ignoble: O ye knyghtes of Englond where is the custome and vsage of noble chyualry that was vsed in tho dayes / what do ye now / but go to the baynes & playe atte dyse And some not wel aduysed vse not honest and good rule ageyn

alle ordre of knyghthode / leue this / leue it... . Allas what doo ye / but slepe & take ease / and ar al disordred for chyualry / I wold demaunde a question yf I shold not displease / how many knyghtes ben ther now in Englond / that haue thuse and thexcercyse of a knyghte.”?

In the early fifteenth century, Edward, duke of York (Shakespeare’s

| Aumerle in Richard II), translated Le livre du chasse (1389-91), a book in praise of hunting written by Gaston, count of Foix. Edward’s treatise, dedicated to Prince Henry (son of Henry IV), presents the hunt as the noblest of pastimes. In the opening section he introduces his subject and

explains why he titles the book The Master of Game: | And for this cause: that this book treats of what in every season of the year is most lasting, and to my thinking to every gentle heart most enjoyable of all games, that is to say, hunting. For though hawking with gentle hounds and hawks for the heron and the river be noble and commendable, it seldom lasts at most more than half a year. . . . But as to hunting, there is no season of all the year in which game may not be found in every good country, also hounds ready to chase it. And since this book shall deal entirely with hunting, which is so noble a game, and lasts through all the year, of various animals that grow according to the season for the gladdening of man, I

think I may well call it Master of Game.”

Hugh of St.-Victor classifies hunting as one of the seven mechanical sciences of man. Gottfried von Strassburg represents hunting as one of Tristan’s noble accomplishments; and the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight offers a moralized perspective on hunting only insofar as the hunting scenes—of deer, boar, and fox—are juxtaposed with the lady’s visits to Gawain’s bedroom.” In the Roman de la Rose Genius offers a much different perspective on

hunting. Jupiter, Genius alleges, was truly perverse and introduced a deeply flawed human perspective into the animal realm, the world of na22 Tull/Caxton, The Book of the Ordre of Chiualrye, ed. Byles, pp. 122, 123. 3 In Chaucer’s World, comp. Rickert, pp. 218-19.

4 Kor Hugh of St.-Victor, see Didascalicon 2.20, 25, trans. Taylor, pp. 74-75, 7778. For the portrayal of hunting in literary works, see Orme, “Medieval Hunting,” PP- 139-45.

- THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 157 ture. In Jean’s Roman the silver age did not come about like the turning of a wheel, as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (‘‘subiit argentea proles”); rather Jupiter and his cohorts ushered in the new age with abandon. In regard to hunting, Jupiter invented the various animal traps and snares, and he also set dogs after the quarry. ‘That was bad enough, but, moreover, “Cist donta les oiseaus de praie / par malice,” says Genius, “qui genz aspraie”’ (20115-16; “(He tamed the birds of prey with the malice that torments men”). Not only did Jupiter wage war on the peaceable animal kingdom, he also enlisted mercenary aid from beasts; and he made the heavens into

a theater of battle: | Assauz mist en leu de batailles antre esperviers, perdriz et cailles, et fist tournaiemenz es nues d’ostoers, de faucons et de grues. (20117—20)

(He fostered assaults in battle-places between sparrow-hawks, partridges, and quails, and ordained tournaments in the clouds involving goshawks, falcons, and cranes.)

According to Genius, Jupiter pitted the ravaging birds—“‘felons oiseaus”’

(20126), “ravisseeurs horribles” (20129)—against pacific fowl; he unleashed ferrets down rabbit holes and developed the art of fishing. All of these ostensible advancements brought about a new, deleterious relationship between mankind and animals. The motif of bird entrapment reappears toward the end of the Roman—

but there as metaphor for the art of seduction. As Amant sets off in the , guise of a pilgrim to pluck the Rose, he represents his pilgrimage as a wholesome, idealistic quest: “fervenz et enterins / de queur conme fins amoreus”’ (213 18-19; “fervent, and wholehearted, like a pure lover”). But

he is sexually excited, with a tight scrotum and erect penis (21324; “escharpe et bourdon roide et fort’). Amant goes on to praise his penis and testicles; and he mentions that his sexual organs have served him well

over the years. He adds that old women can bring rich rewards but are difficult to snare since they know all the stratagems of love. Finally, he formulates the comparison between seducer and bird catcher: ainsinc con fet li oiselierres qui tant a l’oisel conme lierres et l’apele par douz sonez, muciez antre les buissonez, por lui fere a son brai venir tant que pris |’i puisse tenir;

158 THE WORLD GROWN OLD li fos oiseaus de lui s’aprime, qui ne set respondre au sofime qui l’a mis en decepcion par figure de diction, si con fet li cailliers la caille, por ce que dedanz la raiz saille, et la caille le son escoute, si s’an apresse et puis se boute souz la raiz que cil a tendue seur l’erbe an printans fresche et drue, se n’est aucune caille vielle,

qui venir au caillier ne vuelle... , (21461-78) ,

| (They operate just as the birdcatcher does. Like a thief, he hides in the thickets and spreads his net for the bird and calls him with sweet sounds to make him come to the snare so that he can be taken captive. The silly bird approaches but does not know how to reply to the sophism which bas deceived him through a figure of speech, as the quatlcatcher deceives the quail so that the bird may leap into the net: the quail listens to the sound, draws near, and throws himself into the net that the quailer has spread on the grass, fresh and thick in the springtime. But there 1s no old quail

that longs to come to the quailer.) |

| The bird catcher here is “Jupiterian,” an index of the world grown. old. He is the master of the snare and arts of love, although the quail catcher is unsuccessful with the Vieille-like old women (old quails), who refuse the bait because they know all the tricks. Jean’s dilatation of Virgil’s topic—four lines in the first Georgic, thirtyfour lines in the Romman—reflects the strong medieval interest in the moral implications of hunting, particularly when medieval notions are measured against those of the golden age. As we have seen, hunting was moralized

in two ways: as an important aspect of the chivalric life and a bulwark against the forces of mundane decay and vice (Lull, The Master of Game), and as a symptom of a world grown old (Jean). The moral theory regarding venery was perhaps best explained in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus 1.1, 3-4, written in 1159, in which John outlines

the origins and rise of hunting, which he likens to contempt for God, adducing the Theban nation (“befouled with parricide, incest, deception, and perjury’’), the Phrygians (“‘an effeminate, spineless people, fickle and

utterly lacking in modesty”), Ganymede (Trojan), Actaeon (Theban), Ulysses, Chiron, Nimrod, Esau, and others.”> But the Thebans, he says, 25 Policraticus 1.4, ed. Webb. Translations are from Frivolities of Courtiers, trans. Pike,

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 159 were the first ones “to decree that the knowledge of hunting should be imparted to all” (p. 13). What can be “more bestial”’ (“bestialius”’), he asks in the first chapter of Policraticus, than the man who rises at midnight with dogs and huntsmen to “wage from earliest dawn till darkness his campaign against beasts” (p. 12)? Observing that the lore and knowledge of hunting “constitutes the liberal studies of the higher class,” he censures his modern age for abandoning class distinctions and for “‘proclaim[ing] formal war against wild beasts” (p. 16). In another place he calls hunting “silly” (“ina-

nis”); and he claims not only that “the inferior sex excels in the hunting of birds” but also that “inferior creatures are always more prone to rapine” (p. 17). He alleges that the first “fall” of Athens occurred when the art of hunting, once banned, was reinstituted as legal by the state. Citing Chiron the centaur, he testifies that those who take pleasure in hunting “have shed the desirable element, their humanity, and in the sphere of conduct have made themselves like unto monsters” (p. 18). He says he might classify hunting as one of the indifferentia—things neither good nor evil—but “for the fact that the inordinate pleasure it causes impairs the human mind and undermines reason itself’ (p. 23). Like Jean de Meun, John places the sport of venery in a context of worldly decline. John of Salisbury’s identification of Thebes as a site of both hunting and human depravity parallels medieval tropological understandings of the story of Thebes. John’s mention of “‘parricide” and “incest” refers to the

story of Oedipus, while his allusion to “deception” and “perjury” may refer generally to the house of Cadmus and Thebes. Cadmus, founder of the house of Thebes, might be called a hunter because he slew the great serpent at the spring of Mars and then gave birth to the spartoi (“sown men”) by sowing the serpent’s teeth according to Athena’s instructions. Later on he himself was transformed into a serpent. In his commentary on Inferno 25, Guido da Pisa describes Cadmus as a man who was happy in his youth but who turned mad and desperate in his old age after he killed the snake sacred to Mars. Guido regards his serpentine metamorphosis as ‘“‘partly moral and partly natural.” The city of Thebes, where the hunting impulse may have originated according to the Policraticus, has its origins in warlike men born of earth, men who are not fully human. pp. 13, 14. Hereafter Pike’s translations will be cited by page number in parentheses following the quotations. 26 Expositiones et glose, ed. Cioffari, pp. 502-3. The Vatican mythographers prefer the word draco to serpens for the metamorphosis. See Mythographus I Vaticanus 147-48, ed. Kulcsar, p. 61; Mythographus II Vaticanus 99, ed. Kulcsar, p. 171. The Phrygians seem to have been chiefly associated with Dardanus and the Trojans in medieval writings. See Bede, Nomina regionum atque locorum 2.10, ed. Laistner, p. 171; Mythographus I Vaticanus 132 and 205, pp. 55, 82; Mythographus II Vaticanus 219, p. 258.

160 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Dante, according to John Freccero, saw Thebes as a governing trope for the earthly city; and Chaucer, according to Lee Patterson, includes Thebes and ““Thebanness”’ as a dark subtext or counterpoint to his Boethian writings. Dante calls Pisa, city of Ugolino and Ruggieri, a “(New Thebes.” “The ancient city,” says Freccero, “raised from dragon’s teeth and nurtured in parricide and fratricide, is Dante’s model for the city of man throughout the Inferno, the crystallization of the disease that afflicts all of mankind.”?” Chaucer includes allusions to the story of Thebes as a doomed city trapped in a pattern of circularity and despair. ““Thebanness” appears in Anelida and Arcite, The Complaint of Mars, Troilus and Criseyde,

and The Knight’s Tale. As Patterson explains it, For if Thebanness stands as the other that Boethianism suppresses, this is because its configurations provide a dark mirroring of Boethian idealism __ that raises disquieting and finally unanswerable questions. The Theban story is itself about disordered memory and fatal repetition, about the tyr-

| anny of a past that is both forgotten and obsessively remembered, and about the recursive patterns into which history falls. ... Thebanness is a fatal doubling of the self that issues in a replicating history that preempts a linear

or developmental progress. Theban history in its pure form has neither origin nor end but only a single, infinitely repeatable moment of illicit

fatality.?8 |

eroticism and fratricidal rivalry—love and war locked together in a perverse

The “Thebanness” and Phrygian qualities of primitive hunters in the Po/icraticus may partake of similar sentiments: a perverseness of the spirit and

an embracing of cruelty and savage inclinations. | Despite John of Salisbury’s classical references to Thebes, Phrygia, and Ulysses (said by some to be the originator of hunting techniques because of his cleverness), the pejorative. interpretation of hunting in the Policraticus appears to have its roots in Scripture and in scriptural exegesis. John grounds his views in commentaries on biblical passages such as Psalm go and on Gratian’s Decretum.’° The chief source for later exegesis is PseudoJerome’s Breviarium in Psalmos, which mentions both Nimrod and Esau: 27 “Bestial Sign,” p. 154. See also Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, pp. 98-99. 28 Chaucer and the Subject of History, pp. 75, 77. For corroboration of this view of

Thebes in the writings of the romans antiques, see Nolan, Chaucer and the “Roman Antique,” pp. 55-62, 184. 29 See Emerson, “Some of Chaucer’s Lines on the Monk,” pp. 106—7; Orme, “Medieval Hunting,” p. 145; Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature, pp. 24, 39-42 (“Sinful Hunters”). Rooney explains the importance of canon law to medieval theory against venery (pp. 40-41). Although the legend of Lamech’s murder of Cain—a hunting accident—stems from a different tradition of exegesis, it should nonetheless be

| THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 161 ‘For he delyuered me fro the snare of hunteris” (Ps. 90.3). There are many hunters in this world who try to hunt our soul. As an example Nimrod the giant: he was a great hunter in the Lord’s sight (Gen. 10.9); and Esau was | a hunter (Gen. 27.3) and hence he was a sinner. We do not find in sacred Scripture any holy hunter at all. We do find holy fishermen.*°

Esau is a type of the sinner because God blessed his younger brother and “hated” Esau (Rom. 9.13). His hunting is a sign or marker of his depravity and of God’s judgment against him (see Augustine’s Enchiridion 98). Another passage on the moral significance of hunting occurs in Hrabanus

| Maurus’s De universo 8.1 (‘De bestiis’’): The devil is a hunter, in whose type was Nimrod the giant, hunter before

the Lord (Gen. 10); hunters are vicious men, as in the prophet: “Myn enemyes token me with out cause, bi huntyng as a brid” (Lam. 3.52).

Jean de Meun’s Jupiter seems modeled on the Cain-Nimrod-Fsau type: a primitive figure who, trying to increase his well-being, created novel and most unfortunate institutions that became the new order, the new nature of things. His father, Saturn, embodied prehistoric abundance and all the temporal goods that a beneficent Creator lavished on the crown jewel of his creation: humankind. In Saturn’s time men and women advanced the common profit; they held property in common because, blissful as they were, they did not make distinctions between mine and thine, distinctions that would in later generations result in quarrels, litigiousness, and warfare

but that were then unknown. Jean’s portrayal of Jupiter, however, is not of a tyrant wholly bent on destruction, despotism, and self-aggrandizement, although he is no St. Martin of Tours either. In the Roman Jupiter believes that his new ordo, the pleasure manifesto, will benefit not only him personally but also everyone else. Jupiter’s call for a reformation in human affairs results in a rigid tyranny of the strong over the weak, the king over his serfs (with echoes perhaps of the nobility-of-soul topos). There is a certain misguided energy and enthusiasm—even something like innocence—in Jupiter’s new bureaucracy of pleasure, an energy well depicted by the illustrator of Valencia MS 387, fol. 136r.?! In this extraor-

dinary picture, which anticipates the late-medieval and Renaissance mentioned here. This legend was sometimes depicted in medieval iconography. See Male, Gothic Image, pp. 204~5 and figs. 103-4; Mellinkoff, Mark of Cain, pp. 29 (on

Rashi), 71-72, and figs. 1, 2, 7-14. |

30 Pseudo-Jerome, Breviarium in Psalmos, col. 1163. The Breviarium has Irish affiliations; see Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Biggs, Hill, and Szarmach, pp. 98-99. 31 Reproduced in Fleming’s The Roman de la Rose, fig. 38.

162 THE WORLD GROWN OLD “choice of Hercules” pattern, a master of revels in a raised pulpit explicates new “conmandemanz, / ses lais, ses establissemanz” (20059—60; ““commandments, his laws, his proclamations’). These commandments excite the aurea gens, soon to be the gens argentea, while Jupiter presides over the bird hunt on the right-hand side and the stag hunt on the left. The point of most “choice of Hercules” depictions is to illustrate the way of virtue,

presented on the right-hand side of a middle figure, as opposed to the path of vice or pleasure, presented on the left-hand side.*? The Valencia

illustration is unusual for the genre in that there is no choice in this “choice of Hercules”: all roads lead to the silver age and pleasure. Here we find, not Christ flanked by saints on his right and sinners on his left, but the master of revels surrounded by two ways, which are yet one, of the worldly life and emblems of the brave new world of Jupiter. Jupiter and the new silver-age race pursue their newly found freedom enthusi__ astically. While the silver age constitutes a severe reduction in their standard of living, the people of the silver age appear to be unaware of this. Nor do they seem at all troubled that their pleasure is defined as warfare in the animal world: falcon against quail, hound against stag. Jupiter’s idealism parallels Amant’s own initial enthusiasm for love; and Amant falls prey to the god of love’s bird snare at the Fountain of Love (1586-92).*?

The characterization of Jupiter and the silver-age race as bureaucrats

| of private property, mentioned by Virgil and advanced by Jean, harmonizes with medieval depictions of Cain and his concern with treasure and property. Yet this Jupiter is not equivalent to Cain: in Jean’s version he is a similar type who represents the silver, “fallen,” pagan variant of the scriptural figure who gathered treasure through violence, constructed the first city, instituted weights and measures, and “made men be lecchoures and peues” (Polychronicon 2.5). Jean’s Genius depicts an early world age that contained proto-kings of the Cain type. Primitive political organizers

roamed the earth’s marches not long after the Fall, and these figures sought to divide the world up in new ways advantageous to them and their henchmen, especially with regard to possessions. Hunting—venery—was regularly a trope for the erotic chase or quest in medieval art, iconography, and literature; and Jean de Meun exploits both the quibble (venery/venery, venereal) and the concepts in Genius’s discourse. Late-medieval literature and art include numerous scenes of the

32 See Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege. Although Boccaccio verbally describes the

“choice of Hercules,” its first visual depiction, according to Panofsky, dates from 1463 (see the frontispiece to Hercules am Scheidewege). See also Panofsky’s “Rinascimento delVantichita,” pp. 177-78 and nn. 4-5. 33 See Carol Heffernan, “The Bird-Snare Figure,” p. 180, and her discussion of Robertson on the bird-snare figure of Ps. 123.7, p. 182.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 163 amatory hunt, iconographic linkings of hunting with sexual love.*+ The

god of love, with bow and arrows, is of course a hunter (of men and women). And certain illustrations of the Roman represent Amant as a hunter, with hawk on hand and hounds.’ Some medieval lyrics moralize hunting and hawking as emblems of the worldly life, an avoidance of the right way of true Christian conduct, as in the famous whi sunt? lyric from Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Digby 86: Uuere bep pey biforen vs weren, Houndes ladden and hauekes beren And hadden feld and wode? Pey beren hem wel swipe heye— And in a twincling of on eye

| Hoere soules weren forloren.*®

The moralized shadings of the hunt occupy a wide spectrum, from discussions i” bono (Lull and Gaston, count of Foix), through in malo depictions such as a critique of the secular life and its allures, to more serious denunciations. In some analyses venator equals diabolus. In the Roman hunt34 See Thiébaux, Stag of Love, chap. 3 (‘““The Love Chase”), and the illustration from Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 25566, fol. 220v, from Li dis dou cerf amoreus on p. 150; and Robertson, Preface to Chaucer, figs. 8, 9, 24, 61, 62, 100. In Sophist Stranger defines the Sophist in hunting terms: ‘““Then now, Theaetetus, his art may be traced as a branch of the appropriative, acquisitive family—which hunts animals, living, land, tame animals—which hunts man, privately, for hire, taking money in exchange, having the semblance of education—and this is termed Sophistry, and is a hunt after young men of wealth and rank—such is the conclusion” (trans. Cornford after Jowett, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Hamilton and Cairns, p. 965). Jean de Meun would recognize and understand this definition. 35 See, for example, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Dahlberg, fig. 33, from Bodleian

Library, MS Douce 195, fol. 71r. From the same manuscript see fig. 37, fol. 105r, which lacks the hawk. Of these two illustrations, and in context of the horse-and-rider trope (a metaphor for rational human control of the bestial emotions), Dahlberg comments (pp. 25-26), “From the standpoint of total iconography . . . this detail [reins of

horse = rational control] is subordinate to others: the Lover himself, his clothing, curled hair, his dog, the hawk on his wrist in Fig. 33, the nature of the interlocutor— Wealth in Fig. 33 and the Old Woman in Fig. 37—all these details indicate that the Lover is engaged in the hunt of love, in ‘venery,’ and that the horse, though directed, is misdirected.” 36 FL, XIII, p. 85, lines 1-3, 10-12 MEV 3310). Guigemar, Equitan, and the king in Bisclavret in the Lais of Marie de France are said to be hunters: Guigemar, lines 76— 92; Equitan, lines 43-47; Bisclavret, lines 135-46, in Les lais de Marie de France, ed. Rychner, pp. 7-8, 34, 65. Guigemar receives a wound in the thigh in his symbolic hunt of the white deer. See the discussion by Hanning and Ferrante in The Lais of Marie de France, p. 56.

164 THE WORLD GROWN OLD ing is a token or index of fallenness, and Amant’s quest for or chase of the Rose partakes of venery in its cupidinous signification. Genius’s portrayal offers a critique of the unexamined aristocratic life and its adjunct, hunting. As an activity of the leisured, wealthy class, venery (in both its mean-

ings) becomes an emblem of worldly experience, a turning away from spiritual and ethical concerns; and the Rose comes to be seen as property,

another possession—a false idol that Amant adores. : The issue of private property was a classical topic of immediate concern in Jean’s time. The uses and justifications for property were much analyzed

in the urban universities as an aspect of moral theology. The patristic argument, which Augustine articulated in De doctrina Christiana and which Higden’s exegetical history affirms, is that things of the world should be used but not enjoyed. Patristic exegesis holds up the biblical patriarchs as ideals, claiming that they lived as nomads or wanderers—pilgrims, in effect—using the world to glorify God. This ideological position worked

well for the monastic community, since the monks aspired to poverty along with chastity and obedience. As Lester Little has shown, the position

began to break down in the twelfth century, when Aristotle’s arguments concerning property and ethics became known. The intermediate stage between condemnation and approval of private property was the recognition that people needed some accommodation with the saeculum in order to live as practicing Christians.*” Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas saw private property as both necessary and salutary. Furthermore, in Jean’s age the friars raised the issue to prominence in their living and teachings,

especially to the extent that they challenged the newly emerging—and newly defined—values of urban Christians and the secular masters. Jean’s topic, then, explored through the primitive past, had immediacy for his own times. The past furnished a constant critique of the present—even of those who, like the friars, would exploit the issue for their own advantage.

3. False Poverty The issue of private property emerges strongly in Jean’s concern for the relation between true and false poverty, or mendicancy. Jean highlights this topic both as a social-theological issue and as an aspect of his story of the Rose. The social-theological issue, in brief, states that the friars or their emulators did not use temporal goods properly but affected a sham, hypocritical poverty. The models for true (or “patient”) poverty were the golden-age race and Christ and the apostles (apostolic poverty). These two groups—those who lived in the first world age and those who gathered

around Christ in the early sixth age, the time of the primitive church— >” Religious Poverty, pp. 176-77.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 165 discovered the proper use for temporal goods: it entailed a Boethian de- | tachment from worldly things and did not involve begging. Jean includes this topic as part of his story when Faussemblant reveals himself to be a chief example of false poverty. Nonetheless, Amors, god of love, accepts him as one of his knights in the assault on the Castle of Jealousy and even dubs him “rois des ribauz” (10908): “And of ribawdis shalt be my king”’ (Romaunt 7300).*® False seeming, then, is a significant element in modernday relations between the sexes; and for Amant, the way to the Rose passes through the deceptions of Faussemblant. Moreover, the misuse of poverty, for Jean, epitomizes the modern condition. There were at least three faces or views of poverty in medieval literature: wretched poverty, patient poverty, and false poverty. Jean exploits — these three through the self-revealing speeches of Faussemblant. _ Wretched poverty or “povreté douteuse” (8149) is the malignant condition of extreme need that goes beyond the clerical abnegation of worldly possessions. There is nothing false or affected about this state of exigency. As Le Roy Ladurte has said of poverty in the upper Ariége: ‘“When poverty

was factual it was a source of shame. But as an ideal, or when it was practised for itself, it was admired.” *? Stull, medieval thinkers, after Pope

Innocent III, tended to draw a moral or spiritual conclusion regarding wretched poverty: it represents the human estate. In De miseria condicionts

humane Innocent traces mankind’s heritage to God’s creation of Adam from the slime of the ground (Gen. 2.7). In book 1, chapter 15, he shows that the poor and rich are alike miserable: the poor because they must do without, the rich because they live in constant fear of losing their worldly possessions—a point that Hugh of St.-Victor emphasizes in De vanitate mundi (cols. 705—7). Some authors, such as Andreas Capellanus, testify that this kind of poverty is inimical to refined love and the courtly life generally.” This is poverty in malo. Guillaume de Lorris describes such poverty as the last in a series of portraits on the wall of Deduit’s garden. Guillaume’s Povert was “nakid as a worm” (Romaunt 454), and his Amant editorializes that “pover thing, whereso it be, / Is shamefast and dispised

ay” (466-67). This is the indigence that Jean’s Nature denounces in her Boethian section on true nobility when she complains that clerks in earlier times were valued but now, traveling in foreign lands, they “seuffrent les granz povretez, / ou mandianz ou andetez, / et vont, espoir, deschauz et

nu, / ne sunt amé ne chier tenu” (18715-18; “endure great poverty, 38 In the C text of Piers Plowman Adam and Eve are said to engender “a rybaud,” Cain, ““Withouten repentaunce of here rechelesnesse” (10.214). 39 Montaillou, p. 329.

40 Andreas Capellanus on Love 1.2, 2.3, 2.7.3, ed. Walsh. For example: “So when grim poverty enters—as I know in the light of experience—love’s nourishment begins to fail,

because ‘If impoverished your condition, love then dies of malnutrition’ ” (1.2, p. 37).

166 THE WORLD GROWN OLD whether begging or debt-ridden, and go on, perhaps barefoot or naked, nor are they cherished or held dear’’). Poverty in bono—what Chaucer’s Wife of Bath calls “Glad poverte”’ (III.1183)—involves the renunciation of temporal possessions or the psychological condition of equanimity with respect to worldly goods. Some fortunate souls in earlier times, such as St. Alexis, Chrétien’s Enide, St. Francis of Assisi, and Petrarch’s Grisilde, were able to achieve a Boethian indifference to temporal possessions, but these were exceptions, not the rule. Nonetheless, Boccaccio claims this estate as the poet’s natural birthright: “For, with such poverty as our leader, we by choice attain to liberty and peace of mind, and thereby to honorable ease; whereby, while we dwell in the midst of earth, we taste the delights of heaven.” *! The man or woman who takes holy orders aspires to poverty, chastity, and obedience, which in theory help to remove “hindrances to perfection—possessions, marriage, and liberty—things that in another way of life are legitimate and often a duty.’”’” Jean illustrates patient poverty in the goldenage race; and he alludes to it in the eremitic existence of those, such as John the Baptist (11673), who shun an easy living in favor of the wilder-

ness.

The summons to “glad poverty” appears often in the 1221 and 1223 rules of St. Francis, in Francis’s Testament of 1226, and in Thomas of Celano’s lives of Francis, which emphasize the joyous renunciation of goods and money as well as the embracing of a severe humility and selfdenial. The rules are idealistic and otherworldly, asking the mendicant to sell all his goods and to give them to the poor, according to Christ’s directives. Again and again in the writings associated with St. Francis, we find the most exacting precepts based on Jesus’ hardest sayings. ‘The impetus for Francis’s conversion—his turning away from the mercantile life of his father toward the austerity of his religious calling—was hearing the Gospel reading at mass concerning how to live one’s life: And go 3e, and preche 3e, and seie, that the kyngdam of heuenes shal neize; heele 3e sike men, reise 3e deede men, clense 3e mesels, caste 3e out deuelis; +1 Genealogia 14.4, trans. Osgood, in Boccaccio on Poetry, p. 29. The Latin reads: “Hac

enim duce libertatem uolentes consequimur animi tranquillitatem: et cum his laudabile ocium: quibus mediis uiuentes in terris gustamus caelestia.” Osgood also directs to 1.23 in which Boccaccio speaks of the rich man’s insecurity (egestas). Late-medieval illustra-

, , tions or “portraits” represent poets, even secular writers, in humble, usually clerical attire. “Portraits” of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and others show these poets as clerks dressed in gowns or robes of gray or brown. The well-known Chaucer portraits, for example, show the poet with pen case and rosary beads (Ellesmere, “Hoccleve”’ Chaucer) or in plain dress while surrounded by fashionably dressed courtiers (Corpus). See the illustrations and discussion in Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, | appendix 1. * Hinnebusch, History of the Dominican Order, 1:122.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 167 ~ freeli 3e han takun, freli 3yue 3e. Nyle 3e welde gold, nether siluer, ne money in 3oure girdlis, not a scrippe in the weie, nether twei cootis, nethir

| shoon, nether a 3erde; for a werkman is worthi his mete. In to what euere citee or castel 3e schulen entre, axe 3e who therynne is worthi, and there dwelle 3e, til 3e go out. And whanne 3e goon in to a hous, grete 3e it, and

seyn, Pees to this hous. (Matt. 10.7-12) The 1221 rule (Regula non bullata) is replete with quotations from the Gospels (more so than the rule of 1223, which was approved by Pope Honortus HI and which contains more legalistic language than the first rule); and it begins with one of the most arduous of Jesus’ injunctions, concerning perfection: “If thou wolt be perfite, go, and sille alle thingis that thou hast, and 3yue to pore men, and thou schalt haue tresoure in heuene; and come, and sue me” (Matt. 19.21). These were standards for

, the saint and for those willing to subject themselves to the most intense askesis, but not necessarily for Francis’s brethren, even for his enthusiastic

admirers. Ray C. Petry has characterized the failure of this Franciscan ideal as “the consequence of subjecting fragile idealism to the rough shock of daily realities.” +? According to the 1221 rule, the mendicant should not engage in business transactions or receive any money except as any poor person might require to live. His clothes should be spartan: one tunic with

a hood and another without a hood, and a rope belt and trousers. This rule is very clear as regards money and begging. Friars should flee from money; and if any should collect or have money or coins, “all brothers should take him for a false friar and apostate, both a thief and robber holding the purse [like Judas]” (chap. 8). They should seek alms only under conditions of extreme need, since “necessitas non habet legem”’ (chap. 9).

‘‘When friars go forth through the world, let them take nothing with them, neither a sack nor ‘scrippe, nether breed, ne money,’ nor ‘a 3erde’ ” (chap. 14; cf. Luke 9.3, Matt. 10.10). In other matters they should avoid the impression of gloominess lest they be taken for hypocrites (chap. 7); and they must avoid illicit relations with women, which is cause for expulsion from the order (chaps. 12, 13). They should walk rather than ride (chap. 15), preach only under strictest instruction (chap. 17), and confess

to priests rather than to other friars (chap. 20). Taken as a whole, these prescriptions—the very gist of the rules—constitute a list of topics formulated by the antifraternal writers indicting the friars as frauds and hyp*% Petry, “Poverty and World Apostolate,” p. 134. See also the discussion by Hess, “St. Francis and Poverty.” “ Regula non bullata 2, ed. Esser, in Die Opuscula des hl. Franziskus von Assisi, pp. 378-79. All references to the rule of St. Francis are to this edition, cited by chapter number in the text. The rule of 1223 was ratified by Pope Honorius III in the bull Soler annuere.

168 THE WORLD GROWN OLD ocrites. The Minorites were seen to violate and abuse the very rules that Francis drew up, twice, and then reinforced in his Testament; and the failures of such fervent idealism caused later writers to look back to Francis’s age with considerable nostalgia and to indict modern friars and the contemporary age as debased and corrupt. Jean’s real concern with poverty was with false poverty and specifically with the mendicant variety representative, he felt, of his own time. The issue of mendicancy is exposed by the master of duplicity, Faussemblant, son of Barat (Fraud) and Ypocrisie (Hypocrisy). Faussemblant expresses falseness in all his speeches and gestures; hence everything he says or does is ironic. As Rosemond Tuve has written of his self-revealing monologues: “Faux Semblant must . . . be incredibly false—that is just what is true about

him; we are meeting essential quiddities, and they are themselves unbelievably ‘in character,’ beyond belief. The ordinary dreams and puzzles of life are caused by mixtures, whereas here we have the constant sensation of not believing our ears as Faux Semblant, pure falsity, and other characters, exulting in their identity, deliver themselves with bravado and gusto in brash and gloating monologues. . . .”’* Faussemblant wears a religious habit because, as he explains, fraud and hypocrisy appear more often (and most subtly) among the religious orders. Such hypocritical religious were especially vicious because they might on

the surface appear to follow a Christ-like or apostolic way of life. But appearance and reality are far apart. When the god of love observes that Faussemblant preaches poverty, Faussemblant admits it but adds that he only appears to be poor and has no interest in helping those in need. Faussemblant not only shuns poverty and the indigent, he denounces those who beg for a living on the alleged authority of Christ and the . _ apostles. In complex irony that reveals the depths of his own fraud, he refutes the Paris masters who formerly taught the mendicant doctrine, since after Christ’s death, he says, the apostles returned to gainful employment (11270-72). Faussemblant’s dilatation of the topics of poverty and mendicancy turns into an antifraternal diatribe based on William of St.-Amour’s De periculis novissimorum temporum. Through Faussemblant, Jean attacks the barefoot orders as hypocrites, the same ‘“‘Pharisees” that Christ exposed in Matt. 23 and that William of St.-Amour glossed as friars in De periculis.

William of St.-Amour and Jean de Meun interpreted Matt. 22-24 as

references to the era of friars and of the new spiritual men.* For the | antifraternal writers, the friars constituted the false teachers and pseudoa-

5 Allegorical Imagery, p. 255. For another critique of the dramatic inconsistencies of Faussemblant as a character, see Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition, pp. 90-94. % Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 186-90.

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 169 postoli of 2 Cor. 11, those who would try to seduce Christians from the true path, turn them away “fro the symplenesse that is in Crist,” and offer “another gospel” (aliud evangelium). Stealing a march on Joachimite glossators, William explained historical false teachers typologically. The Pharisees represent the Old Law, the false apostles at work in the era of the New Law, while the antichristi of 1 John 2.18, 22—those who love the world through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—are those in the present novissima hora. William regarded the friars both as these antichrists, direct outgrowths of the false apostles, and as signs of the world’s last hour. Jean borrowed this identification from William, as Faussemblant, the false friar, explains to Amors and the barons that he is indeed in the service of Antichrist: Je sui des vallez Antecrit,

des larrons don il est escrit qu’il ont habit de sainteé et vivent en tel fainteé. (11683-86) Of Antecristes men am I, Of whiche that Crist seith openly, They have abit of hoolynesse, And lyven in such wikkednesse. (Romaunt C 7009-12)”

Faussemblant and his ‘“meyne”’ await Antichrist’s open arrival, the moment when the cloak of hypocrisy will be doffed and the knives will be unsheathed (see Romaunt 7155-64). Just after Faussemblant describes how hypocritical religious like to be called ‘“‘master,”’ he characterizes himself and his confederates as a closeknit hate group: Une autre coustume ravons

seur Ceus que contre nous savons: , trop les volons forment hair et tuit par acort envair. Ce que I’un het, li autre heent, tretuit a confundre le beent. (11607-12) Another custome use we: Of hem that wole ayens us be, ‘7 Szittya discusses the implications of the Romaunt’s preserving these lines and others on the Parisian controversies. See Antifraternal Tradition, p. 213.

170 THE WORLD GROWN OLD We hate hem deedly everichon,

And we wole werrey hem, as oon. | Hym that oon hatith, hate we alle, And congecte hou to don hym falle. (Romaunt C 6923-28)

These false clerics and surrogates for Parisian academic mendicants, who anticipate Chaucer’s Pardoner, Friar, and Summoner as well as the alchemists of The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, are emblems of the senescent world. Their false brotherhood symbolizes the divisiveness and lack of charity that exist in the world of Faussemblant and the false religious. As Faussemblant witnesses in a passage de senectute mundi,

De tout le monde est empereres Baraz, mes sires et mes peres; ma mere en est empereriz. Maugré qu’an ait Sainz Esperiz, nostre puissant lignage reigne. Nous reignons or en chascun reigne, et bien est droiz que noz resnons qui tretout le monde fesnons et savons si les genz decoivre que nus ne s’en set apercoivre.... (11867—76)

Of all this world is emperour | Gyle my fadir, the trechour, , And emperisse my moder is, Maugre the Holy Gost, iwis. Oure myghty lynage and oure rowte Regneth in every regne aboute; And well is worthy we maistres be, For all this world governe we, And can the folk so wel disceyve That noon oure gile can perceyve. (Romaunt C 7213-22)

The thematic link between the hypocritical friars and the story of Amant and the Rose is the decline of love and charity. Because Faussemblant, one of the “vallez” of Antichrist, and the god of love are such close associates, and because Faussemblant and the pseudoapostoli have created a frigid moral climate in the novissima hora, Amant cannot possibly achieve his Rose in the idealistic terms he originally sets for himself. Amant to

this extent is “Jupiterian,” so to speak—or worse than Jupiterian. His

THE CRITIQUE OF EROTIC IDEALISM 171 courtship of the Rose is on some level a “Theban” hunt or a war; and fraud and false-seeming—deceptive, hypocritical appearances that have brought the world to a critical stage just before the literal Antichrist— thoroughly vitiate his quest. Amant even launches on his final push toward the Rose in the guise of a Christian pilgrim, as if the Rose were a legitimate

object of worship rather than a false idol, which of course it is. In the process of courting and “winning” the Rose, Amant exposes his own sorry complicity in the world’s senescence, an old age characterized by the decay of love from a golden era, a focus on narcissistic pleasure and quick gratification, and a general cooling of charity. Jean de Meun’s use of the world grown old, then, derives from a romance trope—the degeneration of love—but a trope moralized with exegesis on Matt. 24.12: the cooling of charity. Jean never says explicitly that the world has grown old—not in those precise words—yet he does portray a concept of love that has deteriorated from the relatively innocent primitive ages when men and women loved without mutual exploitation.

There can be no doubt that Jean’s setting of the idea is new, because it is , more complex and fully articulated than in previous writers, such as Chrétien, who used the concept topically. In the Roman de la Rose the idea of the world grown old informs the narrative and provides historical resonance, and therefore special meaning, to Amant’s quest. Amant succeeds in winning his Rose, but he fails to attain what he truly wants: the good

and the true. He fails not just because the human faculty of reason has become flawed and divided since the Fall and not just because he succumbs

to lust but also because the world in and through which Amant pursues his love has grown old.

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4 Dante and the Uses of Nostalgia: Inferno 14.94-120

Vostra natura, quando peccd tota nel serne suo, da queste dignitadi, come di paradiso, fu remota. (Paradiso 7.85-87)

AFTER JEAN DE MEUN, the next major literary figure to treat the world’s old

age was Dante, who transformed the quest for perfection in earthly love into a quest for spiritual perfection. He often explored issues of human and worldly degeneration in his writings, especially in the Commedia, where he denounces Italy, the once great political state, as a “bordello” that has neglected the “garden” of empire (Purgatorio 6), and the valley

of the Arno as a place that declines, as the river flows, from the hogs of , Casentino to the dogs of Arezzo to the wolves of Florence to the foxes of Pisa (Purgatorio 14), a symbolic decline from the incontinent to the violent to the fraudulent. He cites Florence particularly as a city that has abandoned its virtuous past (Paradiso 16; Purgatorio 6; compare Epistle 6) and the world generally, through Marco Lombardo’s denunciation, as “ben

cosi tutto diserto / d’ogne virtute .../ e di malizia gravido e coverto” (Purgatorio 16.58—60; “utterly deserted by every virtue ... and pregnant and overspread with iniquity’’).! The cause of such degeneration, according to Marco Lombardo and Beatrice (Paradiso 27), is misgovernance, especially by clerical leaders but also by bad kings (Paradiso 19), which has

| caused the natural, intended order of things to become perverted. The ' Quotations and translations from Dante’s Commedia are from Singleton’s edition and translation: The Divine Comedy. For further discussions of degeneration in Dante, see Morghen, “Dante and Florence”; Catto, “Florence, Tuscany, and Dante”; Ferrante, “The Corrupt Society: Hell,” chap. 3 of The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy, pp. 132-97, esp. pp. 160-61 (on the gran veglio); and Davis, “Dante’s Italy.” 173

174 , THE WORLD GROWN OLD mendicant and monastic orders, too, have degenerated from their ideals and origins (Paradiso 11, 12, 21). Even human speech has suffered a decline from the original Adamic tongue, Hebrew, to the later divided languages,

as a result of Nimrod’s presumption in building the Tower of Babel (De vulgari eloquentia 6-7; Inferno 31).

Dante was well aware of the patriotic, sometimes jingoistic arguments for Florence as a powerful, good city-state, arguments advanced by the Chronica de origine civitatis (early thirteenth century), Remigio de’ Girolami, Dino Campagni, and others. But he rejected the familiar praise of Florence in favor of “‘an extended negative theory of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Florentine history.”’? Dante’s teacher, Brunetto La-

tini, looked with considerable nostalgia to Florence’s past, before the Ghibellines and factional strife. Giovanni Villani, in his Cronica, characterized the Florentine buon tempo antico as a time when “the citizens of Florence lived soberly and ate coarse food, and spent little, and had many coarse customs and gallantries, and dressed themselves and their ladies with coarse cloth’’’—this in imitation of patient poverty. Dante, whose vision was always more global and imperial than that of most Florentine writers, looked to a more remote past, before the slaying of Buondelmonte; and like Villani he regarded the true strength of Florence as rooted

in “austerity” and “a more modest communal life” rather than in the wealth, power, and expansionism of later, more recent historical eras. In the Convivio Dante alludes to God’s plan for the world’s consummation at the end of six ages: “From the beginning of the world a little more than the sixth part [of the sidereal heavens] has turned; and we are already in the last age of the world, and we truly await the consummation of the celestial movement.’’* In the Purgatorio Virgil, Dante’s “dolce padre caro,” explains the disordered moral souls of humans as arising from im-

in “Dante and Florence.” , ,

? Davis, “I/ Buon Tempo Antico,” p. 74. See also Najemy’s excellent summary analysis

3 Davis, “I/ Buon Tempo Antico,” p. 78. For Dante’s radical views on poverty, the Franciscans, the past, and the end of the world, see Davis’s “Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia,” esp. p. 69: “Dante believed . . . the purity of primitive Christianity

might be restored. This was not for Dante, as it may have been for Frederick [II], merely an expedient designed to promote imperial power: it was a goal for the entire clerical church.” Also “[Ubertino da Casale and Peter John Olivi] believed in progress; Dante in renovatio. They hoped for a new age; Dante for the return of an imagined old one. Dante’s analysis of the evils of the present time and the imagery he used to denounce them, as well as his view of St. Francis, showed his indebtedness to the Spirituals. But his vision of history, while it resembled theirs, was by no means identical with it.” For Dante’s use of prophetic history in the Joachite tradition as well as for his abilities to exclaim about human sin and corruption “even in the Paradiso,” see Reeves, “Dante and the Prophetic View of History,” at p. 44. + Il convivio, ed. Busnelli and Vandelli, 1:22 2-23.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 175 proper loving; but that Aristotelian and Thomistic conception of love as deflected from its proper object, the highest good, differs substantially from Jean de Meun’s ironic presentation of the decline of love from the golden age. Dante’s chief meditation on worldly decline occurs in canto 14 of the Inferno, in which Virgil describes a large statue in human shape, a symbol

of human, mundane, and political decay:

| “In mezzo mar siede un paese guasto,” diss’elli allora, ‘‘che s’appella Creta,

| sotto ’l cui rege fu gia ’l mondo casto. Una montagna v’é che gia fu lieta d’acqua e di fronde, che si chiamo Ida;

| or é diserta come cosa vieta.

Réa la scelse gia per cuna fida del suo figliuolo, e per celarlo meglio, quando piangea, vi facea far le grida.

| Dentro dal monte sta dritto un gran veglio, che tien volte le spalle inver’ Dammiata e Roma guarda come siio speglio. La sua testa é di fin oro formata,

e puro argento son le braccia e ’! petto, |

poi é di rame infino a la forcata; da indi in giuso é tutto ferro eletto, salvo che ’| destro piede é terra cotta; e sta ’n su quel, pit che ’n su l’altro, eretto. Ciascuna parte, fuor che l’oro, é rotta d’una fessura che lagrime goccia, le quali, accolte, foran quella grotta. Lor corso in questa valle si diroccia; fanno Acheronte, Stige e Flegetonta; poi sen van git: per questa stretta doccia, — infin, la dove piu non si dismonta, fanno Cocito; e qual sia quello stagno tu lo vedrai, pero qui non si conta.” (94-120) (‘In the middle of the sea there lies a wasted country,” he then said, “which is named Crete, under whose king the world once was chaste. A mountain is there, called Ida, which once was glad with waters and with foliage; now it is deserted like a thing outworn. Rhea chose it of old for the faithful cradle of her son and, the better to conceal him when he cried, made them [the Curetes] raise shouts there. Within the mountain stands the great figure of an Old Man, who holds bis back turned toward

176 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Damietta, and gazes on Rome as on his mirror: his head is fashioned of fine gold, his arms and breast are pure silver, then down to the fork he is of brass, and down from there is all of choice tron, except that the right foot is baked clay, and he rests more on this than on the other. Every part

, except the gold is cleft by a fissure that drips with tears which, collected, force a passage through the cavern there. Their course is from rock to rock into this valley: they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then their way is down by this narrow channel until, there where there is no more descending, they form Cocytus—and what that pool is, you shall see; bere therefore I do not describe it.’’)

Virgil relates this partly etiological digression when he and Dante arrive at Phlegethon, the river of blood; he explains that Dante has seen nothing more “notable” than this river since he first entered hell (14.89). Virgil’s

narration not only accounts for Phlegethon but also for the entire river system of hell: the four rivers that are one great river, originating in the tears of the Old Man of Crete and terminating in Cocytus, the ice pond at the very bottom of hell.’ The statue of the gran veglio di Creta has been explained and widely accepted as representing “the moral history of mankind,” and specifically as St. Paul’s old man, the homo vetus or old Adam, who is replaced by the

new man and new Adam, Christ (Eph. 4.22-24).° The most important recent critical treatment of the Old Man of Crete from this doctrinal standpoint is by Giuseppe Mazzotta, who has argued contextually that the veglio, symbolizing mankind’s opus conditionis (the state of sin), prepares for the other prominent old man in the Commedia, Cato in Purgatorio, who symbolizes the opus restaurationis (the work of salvation).’? Mazzotta treats >The syntax and sense of the four rivers/one river passage have been sources of controversy. See the extended discussion, with mention of sources, in Inferno, trans. Mandelbaum, pp. 357-58, n. to lines 115-29. ‘For the “moral history of mankind,” see Ferrante, The Political Vision of the Divine _ Comedy, p. 160. For the doctrinal interpretation of the veglio as vetus homo see especially Busnelli, ““La concezione dantesca del gran Veglio di Creta,” in the appendix to L’etica nicomachea, pp. 159-91. For a similar view, see Hollander, Allegory in Dante’s Commedia,

pp. 250-51. ’ Dante, Poet of the Desert, p. 30. Mazzotta treats the Old Man of Crete esp. in chap. 1, “Opus restaurationis,” pp. 14-65. For another important contextual, doctrinal reading of the gran veglio sequence as adducing “inverted Christian baptismal language and typology,” see Cassell, Dante’s Fearful Art of Fustice, pp. 57-65. Cassell’s summaries of previous criticism are particularly valuable: see pp. 140-44, esp. nn. 1-3. Cassell understands the veglio literally, as an actual statue on Crete (p. 59). An influential treatise for doctrinal treatment of the veglio and moralized statues is Richard of St.-Victor’s De eruditione hominis interioris, the significance of which has been treated by Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, pp. 30-31; Di Scipio, “Lectura XIV,” p. 184; and others. Dante praises Richard in Paradiso 10.132 as a man who in contemplation “fu pit che viro.”

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 177 the idea of the world grown old but only in passing,® since his focus is on another context, that of the Old Man and salvation. In his doctrinal and contextual analysis Mazzotta does not dwell on the fictive, backward-looking, or affective aspects of Virgil’s story or on the statue’s tears, all of which demonstrate the uses of nostalgia. ‘Those fictive elements are very much present, however, in the passage; and the fiction making, the poetics, of this sequence needs to be acknowledged and carefully scrutinized in order to fully understand the Old Man in context. ‘The

statue is not just a doctrinal emblem, although it does invite doctrinal interpretation. It has its own existence, its own reality of a certain kind, as an adjunct to Virgil’s story of the birth of Jove in Crete, a story that, as I hope to show in this chapter, belongs to Dante’s category of the

“allegory of poets.” The gran veglio sequence as much concerns pagan | notions of time and history as it does Christian doctrine; it relates especially to “golden” pagan views of the past. Important to Dante’s conception is the statue’s human shape, its gaze on Rome, and the tears it weeps, although not from its eyes. There is an element of sadness or regret about the statue that commentators have undervalued in favor of strictly doctrinal or symbolic interpretations. Through Virgil’s narration it is meant to present an image of false pathos, the pathos arising from nostalgia for

| the past, rather than acceptance of temporal destiny, the traditional threat of journeys to hell, as John Freccero has argued.’ The meaning of the world grown old for Virgil—but not for Dante the author—is that the world has sadly changed from its earliest youth, its first prime. By includ-

ing this great weeping image, this monument to the Roman classical past, Dante manifests a sophisticated understanding of the differences between pagan and Christian ideas of the world grown old. For pagans the aging of the world is to be lamented; for Christians it is to be transcended. The pilgrim Dante does not actually see the Old Man of Crete, only the river of blood. He listens to Virgil’s poetic account of Jove’s infancy and the golden age, when the world was “‘chaste” and young and when Mount Ida “‘fu lieta / d’acqua e di fronde.”’ There are three parts to the digression: Jove’s birth, the Old Man of Crete, and the rivers of hell. These parts are linked in that Jove’s birth occurred on Mount Ida, the Old Man

is in the mountain, and the rivers of hell originate in the statue. I shall 8 Dante, Poet of the Desert, pp. 26, 30, 32, 33-35 (on allegories of the statue as Paul’s vetus homo).

° “Medusa,” in Dante, ed. Jacoff, p. 128: “Such a temporality [the temporality of the beholder: Dante] is the essence of the descent into hell, the past seen under the

, aspect of death. The traditional threat on all such journeys is the threat of nostalgia, a retrospective glance that evades the imperative to accept an authentically temporal destiny.” For literature and the ideology of nostalgia, see Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, esp. chap 4 (“Golden Ages’’). !

| 178 THE WORLD GROWN OLD discuss these three parts in turn with the intention of demonstrating the importance of poetry and poetics in this passage—what I call the uses of nostalgia—and also the ironic subversion of poetics in the flowing of the tears from Crete to the depths of hell.

1. Jove’s Birth: The Beautiful Lie Although Dante the pilgrim does not literally behold Crete, Rhea, or Jove,

he may be said to experience them as present to him through Virgil’s poetry. Poetry has the ability to make present that which is remote in time or space and even to create, through poetic fictions, that which never was or never will be, as the gran veglio sequence demonstrates. As readers of Dante’s poem, we experience this quality of presentness even more vividly, since we virtually take it for granted that the entire Commedia is on some level a fiction.!° Virgil’s narration is another fiction within the larger fiction that Dante relates—indeed, the image of a more fictional fiction than the rest of the Inferno. Here we are far away from “le rime aspre e chiocce”’ (“harsh and grating rhymes,” Inferno 32.1) that Dante would apply to hell’s

depths. Virgil moves easily and imaginatively to ancient Crete and the story of the infant Jove. His depiction of primitive Crete demonstrates the ability of poetry to transport the pilgrim Dante and the reader from the immediacy of hell and the river Phlegethon to a faraway place and time and to evoke the classical sense of the past, that sense of melancholy, that Virgil could summon up in his own verse." The first part of Virgil’s narration—concerning Crete, Jove, Rhea, and Mount Ida—approximates and recalls Virgil’s poetry, though enclosed within Dante’s terza rima. Dante here imitates a passage from Aeneid 3 (itself an imitation of Homer) in which Anchises characterizes Crete as the “cradle” of the Trojan race and as “most fertile”:

Creta ovis magni medio iacet insula ponto,

| mons Idaeus ubi et gentis cunabula nostrae. centum urbes habitant magnas, uberrima regna. (104-6)

10 By “fiction” I refer to the method of composition rather than the possible truth claims of the Commedia. On this issue, see the discussion of the “allegory of theologians” by Singleton in Commedia, pp. 84-08. '! For other examples of Virgil’s influence on Dante in this way, see Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, pp. 27-30.

, DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 179 (In mid-ocean lies Crete, the island of great fove, where is Mount Ida, and the cradle of our race. ‘There men dwell in a hundred cities, a realm

most fertile.)

This passage in the Aeneid is a set piece of rhetorical poetics; the imitative passage in the Inferno is also a set piece, but for different effect. It is not mere homage to Virgil, whom Dante calls “the poet’; it is also, and more

importantly, an opportunity to demarcate or suggest the boundaries of poetic fact and poetic fiction. In the Aeneid the oracle on Delos told Aeneas and his Trojans to “seek your ancient mother”; and Anchises interpreted

the oracle to mean Crete, since Teucer originated from that island. But Crete turns out to be a “false mother” for the Trojans: the true homeland

is Italy, the land of Dardanus. The Old Man stands in a mountain on Aeneas’s false homeland surrounded not by the glad hundred cities and a “realm most fertile” but by a wasteland." In the course of his career Dante responded to the beautiful fictions of the pagan poets, but there is great irony in his hearing this story on the banks of Phlegethon. If the story of Jove and Rhea is something like truth—just as the golden age is something like Eden but not coextensive with it—the more immediate truth is hell itself, which renders impotent all poetic fictions, as John Freccero has emphasized in his essay “Infernal Irony.” But there are truths in Virgil’s story of which Virgil himself perhaps is not fully cognizant. In the Convivio Dante characterizes Virgil’s poetics in Inferno 14 as the © “allegory of poets” (as opposed to the “allegory of the theologians’”’; 2.1.2— 4). The “allegory of poets,” found especially in classical literature, is “una veritade ascosa sotto bella menzogna’” (“a truth hidden under the beautiful lie”). The story of Rhea and Jove has truth-value similar to that of Dante’s example of the “allegory of poets” in the Convivio: the “bella menzogna”’

of Ovid’s fable of Orpheus, “which signifies that the wise man with the instrument of his voice would make cruel hearts gentle and humble, and

would make those who do not live in science and art do his will; and those , who have no kind of life of reason in them are as stones.” '* In the “allegory 2 Text and translation from Virgil, ed. Fairclough, 1:354, 355. Virgil adds a brief passage (3.12 1-23) in which Aeneas, who tells this story to Dido and the Carthaginians,

reports a rumor that the fabled Cretan cities have been abandoned. In Dante, again through Virgil, the rumors about the “false mother” have become fact. 13 For an optimistic reading of this passage—with the Old Man expecting the union of Aeneas with Paul—see Grandgent’s commentary in Companion to the Divine Comedy, . 64.

' As quoted and translated in Singleton, Commedia, p. 85. For another example of the moralization of the “allegory of poets,” see De vulgari eloquentia 2.4, on Aeneid 6.126 ff. The first Vatican mythographer characterizes the story of Jove’s birth—as is his custom—as a ‘‘fabvla” (see Fabvla de ortv Iovis, in Mythographi Vaticani I et II, ed. Kulcsar, p. 43). See also Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 1.40.3: ““Fabulas poetae quasdam

180 THE WORLD GROWN OLD of theologians” the literal level is historical fact “written” or composed by God, as in the story of Exodus. But in the “allegory of poets” the literal or historical level—the matiére, as Chrétien might say—is clearly fictional

or mythic, man-made, as in the fable of Orpheus; the allegorical level sustains the burden of meaning and significance (the sens). Dante may have

cast the Commedia as an imitation of the “allegory of theologians” (as explained in the Epistle to Can Grande), but the gran veglio sequence is best

understood as the “allegory of poets” within the larger semitheological frame. If the Old Man of Crete sequence is of the “allegory of poets” type, as I believe, its meaning—its truth—should be less theological or doctrinal than moral. The story of Jove’s birth in Inferno 14 is a “beautiful lie” that displays the diverting powers of literature to create things that never were, at least never as Virgil relates them in lines 94-102. A veil of fiction masks the essential truth that mankind in Eden knew a happy, blessed time. The

_ story has the ring of fable—of the “bella menzogna”—and not of literal truth, even though it harmonizes with certain conventional features of Christian primitivism. The passage is something of a trompe-l’oeil that beguiles the reader into accepting the Jove and gran veglio stories as Virgil’s own account rather than Dante’s terza rima imitation of Virgil. This beguilement in turn causes the idea of the world grown old within that

| passage to be viewed in a nostalgic light. But it is a trap, for we should not become entrammeled in this beautiful lie. Virgil’s narration, then, offers a specifically pagan viewpoint of the earliest moments of human history. Virgil speaks of Rhea, Jove, and the Curetes rather than of Eve, Cain, and the antediluvian race because he inherited a classical rather than a Judeo-Christian understanding of history. He does not relate this story as actual history but as something like a miraculum, a notabilitas, or an exemplum. Still, the story of Jove’s infancy has a certain historical value, suggesting both the classical golden age (the “chaste”’ world) and the loss of that golden world implicit in Jove’s survival, since

| he will castrate and dethrone his father, thereby introducing the silver age and an era of unchastity. The historical moment of Jove’s birth—if it is , delectandi causa finxerunt, quasdam ad naturam rerum, nonnullas ad mores hominum interpretati sunt.”” He shows how the Lucretian line ‘‘Prima leo, postrema draco, media

ipsa Chimaera [id est caprea]” should be interpreted according to “the nature of things”’: the lion stands for the first adolescence of man, which is “ferox et horrens”’; the Chimaera (goat, he says) stands for the middle time of life, when vision is most

acute; and the dragon stands for “senectus.” For a helpful recent exposition of the issues involved in the allegory of poets versus the allegory of theologians, see Freccero,

“Introduction to Inferno,” pp. 179-87. Renucci argues that the Old Man offers “the intersection of a pagan legend—false on the outside, true on the inside—and of Christian doctrine” (Dante, disciple et juge, p. 201).

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 181 possible to speak of this fictional time as a historical moment—was a pre- _ carious time, a brief era of innocence before the world changed forever and came more to resemble the Cretan wasteland than the garden “lieta

/ d’acqua e di fronde.” The historical value of this narrative digression resembles that of Virgil’s dream of the terrestrial paradise (Purgatorio 28.139-47). Virgil and the other pagan poets who “dreamed” of the golden age had some insight into paradise. But because Virgil and Ovid did not know Christ and hence did not comprehend the meaning of that first garden, their insight was critically limited and flawed. While Virgil’s account of the golden age and Jove offers a pagan analogue to the biblical narrative,!* the account is faulty in its historical particulars and in its gen-

eral conception. For one thing, Crete, an island in mid-Mediterranean (“in mezzo mar”), was not a central theater of early mankind’s downfall, as Dante knew from the Bible but Virgil did not. Nor is the loss of a golden past an appropriate subject for lament, especially not in the seventh circle of hell. Virgil emphasizes the pastness of the past and the /acrimae rerum as he repeats the word gia ‘once’: “sotto ’| cui rege fu gia ’] mondo

casto”; “Una montagna v’é che gia fu lieta ...”; “Réa la scelse gia per cuna fida.” Once those things were, says Virgil; now they are not. The tone suggests the loss of things that can never be recovered. The quality of the veglio passage, its tone and its fictiveness, is crucial in determining Dante’s sense of the world grown old and of the uses of nostalgia. There is an important level of fable to the Old Man, which draws us toward fiction as nowhere else in the Inferno. It is not stretching a point to say that the narrative movement from ancient Crete and Jove to gran veglio is about fiction, reception, and interpretation. Only retrospectively do we realize that we should allegorize the Old Man of Crete and question or doubt Virgil’s story of Jove’s birth. Perhaps nowhere else in the Commedia do we so clearly experience the seductive, manipulative effects of

poetry and fiction making—important concerns of Dante’s—as here, on , the banks of Phlegethon. The fictions are the golden age, the Cretan Old Man, and the “tears” flowing from the metallic statue. The reality, which caused Dante to shudder, is the river of blood.'® We should, then, regard the first two parts of Virgil’s narration—the story of Jove’s birth and the legend of the gran veglio—as fictional in the manner of the “allegory of poets.” There are elements of truth behind the golden-age story (the expulsion from Eden) and the gran veglio (the 15 In a well-known essay Singleton has argued that the “prima gente” of Purgatorio 1.24 constitute a combination of Adam and Eve and the golden-age race. See fourney to Beatrice, pp. 184-203. 16 Singleton emphasizes Dante’s representation of the reality of this particular scene. See his note to 14.8-11 (with cross-references to 12.139 and 13.1-2) and Di Scipio, “Lectura XIV,” p. 175.

182 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Christian doctrine of ages and the idea of the world grown old). But Virgil,

in character, offers these elements through a fablelike poetic story. ‘The truth beneath the fable might be expressed, in medieval fashion, as “the foolish man, not recognizing his bodily ruin and hoping to renew himself like the eagle (Ps. 102.5), trusts in the things of this world and vainly weeps for what is past.”’ Such an understanding of the Old Man may accord more closely with our actual experience of reading the passage than do strictly

doctrinal interpretations, important as those are. After we recognize and give full attention to the fable, including its poetics, we must look to the allegory and locate the veg/io, with Boccaccio, in “the moral history of mankind.” When we apply doctrinal allegory to the “allegory of poets,” however, we both correct and distort. We correct Virgil’s backward-looking, nostalgic view of the world grown old in favor of the dynamics of Christian salvation history. But we distort Virgil’s poetics by substituting Eden and Christian doctrine for his golden-age fable and tearful Old Man. At the same time we should acknowledge that Dante insists on this passage because the poetic digression clarifies and illuminates the greater reality

of hell. A continuity exists from past to present (a temporal continuum) and from ancient Crete to the seventh circle of hell (a spatiotemporal continuum); this continuity is represented by the veg/io’s tears, which form

| hell’s river system. Though there is continuity, the difference or differences are even more instructive, since “the moral history of mankind” and hell give the lie, so to speak, to Virgil’s “bella menzogna.” The ethos of reception underlying Dante’s use of Virgil may well be based on St. Augustine’s emotional childhood reading of the Aenetd—a way of reading that he later came to repudiate (Confessions 1.13-16).!” In

| his early schooling Augustine was required not only to learn Greek grammar, which he detested, but also long passages of Virgil’s epic by heart, especially sections about Aeneas’s wanderings and Dido. Dido’s tragic love for Aeneas caused him to weep, he reports. But from the perspective of the Confessions, these youthful tears seem very different:

I was required to learn by heart I know not how many of Aeneas’s wanderings, although forgetful of my own, and to weep over Dido’s death, because she killed herself for love, when all the while amid such things, dying to you, O God my life, I most wretchedly bore myself about with dry eyes (miserius misero non muiserante se ipsum).'® '7 Freccero discusses the role of Augustine in Dante’s poetics of conversion, notably in ‘““The Prologue Scene,” in which he compares the scene with Augustine’s “region of unlikeness”’; “Medusa,” on Aeneas as “a portrait of passion overcome” (p. 131); and “The Significance of Terza Rima.” 18 Augustine, Confessions 1.13, ed. O'Donnell, p. 11; trans. Ryan, pp. 55-56. Quotations from the Latin text of the Confessions are from the O’Donnell edition; translations are from the Ryan version.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 183 ~ Conversion (through askesis)!° has brought about a thoroughgoing reassessment of Virgil’s fictions, moving as they once were for the young Augustine. From a later vantage he rejoices in his literacy, but not so he can celebrate “those poetic fables” (“poetica illa figmenta’”’). Augustine also learned some Homeric stories in grammar school, and he realized that Homer “was skilled at weaving such fictions and is most sweetly deceptive” (“Homer peritus texere tales fabellas et dulcissime vanus est,” 1.14). He read Homer’s fictions of Jove as both adulterer and thunderer; his return to those passages, too, after conversion, yields a much different reading: “But with more truth it is asserted that he [Homer] did indeed make up these tales (fingebat haec quidem ille), but he attributed divine powers to vicious men so that debauchery might not be accounted debauchery, and so that whoever does such things would seem to imitate not profligate men but the gods in heaven” (1.16). Later on he will characterize ‘the fables of the grammarians and the poets” (“‘grammaticorum et poetarum fabellae,” 3.6) as better than the untruths of the Manichaeans. In Augustine’s Confessions the paradigm of revisiting earlier readings was a prominent, even a governing, trope, one that Dante might have exploited in Inferno 14.

2. The Old Man of Crete and Cretan Liars The Old Man of Crete represents the world grown old in a specifically human or humanoid image. Virgil calls the statue in Mount Ida a gran veglio, meaning that it is “great,” “grand,” “large,” or “strong,” with undertones of “advanced in years,” “aged,” or “old” (Latin grandis, grandaevus). Early commentators, who harmonized the statue’s metals with world ages, recognized that the veg/io represents the world grown old. In his commentary on the Inferno Giovanni Boccaccio alludes to the seventhousand-year tradition while keeping the focus on the veg/io’s human aspects. He explains Dante’s word gran this way: ‘““Thus he says that this statue which he describes was of a man great and old; and he wishes to show by these two adjectives, in the first case, the greatness of time elapsed from the creation of the world to our own time, which is six thousand five hundred years, and in the second case, the weakness and approaching end

of this time, since old men have lost much of their vigor on account of 19 For askesis—the strong poet’s sublimation of his instinctual aggressiveness (Bloom), or conversion, that is, the death and resurrection of the self (Freccero)—see Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, chap. 5, and Freccero’s letter to Bloom on askesis in Dante,

pp. 122-23.

184 THE WORLD GROWN OLD their blood, which in them is thin and cool.”?° Boccaccio here largely ignores the metals and their possible symbolic importance in favor of a general conception of mundane old age and the humanlike weakness of the world. He introduces an element of nostalgia by characterizing the

| first age as “‘the initial condition of mankind which was pure and innocent, and as a consequence most precious.”*! For Boccaccio the veglio seems to _ represent man the microcosm and the general weakening of humans over time and history: the shorter life spans, the loss of stature, and the debilitation of the body, especially after the Flood (Chapter 1, 4a). The golden head, he believes, stands for Eden. If Boccaccio errs in his assessment of the Old Man of Crete, it is because he believes that Dante, through Virgil, was speaking only allegorically and in a simple one-to-one figure, that is, in the kind of “other speaking”’ that the Epistle to Can Grande would seem to promote. But as I have tried to’

emphasize, Virgil has his own voice, his own integrity, in the Old Man passage; he speaks in character rather than as an allegorical or semiallegorical figure. The gran veglio, it is true, may be detached from its immediate context of Rhea, Jove, and the golden age on one side and the rivers of hell on the other, and it is true that many commentators, medieval and modern, have explained the vegtio solely as Dante’s figure for human | and worldly decay. Yet to divorce the vegi/io entirely from its fictional and dramatic context and from Virgil’s voice is to falsify or dilute its meanings. The vegiio is Virgil’s emblem for earthly degeneration, an emblem yoked

poetically and historically—such is the fiction—to the Saturnian golden age. The Old Man of Crete belongs on Mount Ida as a gigantic symbol of classical primitivism and the pagan concept of terrestrial decay. It me20 Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia 14.2.21, ed. Padoan, p. 658. Boccaccio’s commentary consists of a series of lectures commissioned by the Florentine commune, 1373-74. Boccaccio analyzes the veglio again in his Genealogia 3.5, which he may have been working on as late as 1374-75 (Bergin, Boccaccio, p. 231). For similar interpretations of the degenerating metals as world ages, see the commentaries by Jacopo Alighieri (Jacopo di Dante), Chiose alla cantica dell’ Inferno (1322), ed. Warren, p. 46; Commento alla Divina Commedia, ed. Fanfani, 1:338; and Ottimo commento, ed. Torri, 1:274—-

75. The Ottimo commento (1333) explains that whereas pagan poets find four ages at the beginning of the world, Christians understand six: Creation to Flood, Flood to Abraham, Abraham to Saul, Saul to the Babylonian Captivity, the Captivity to Christ, and | Christ to the end of the world. But then the author, probably Andrea Lancia, says that only five ages are figured in the veglio: Creation to Flood, an “age without cupidity, without avarice” (although others, he admits, claim that this time was when Adam was in Paradise, before the Fall); Flood to the birth of Isaac; Isaac to Saul (or David); Saul to the Incarnation; Christ to the end of the world. Philippe de Harvengt interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image from Dan. 2 in terms of world ages rather than of the decline and translation of empire from East to West. See Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, pp. 31-32; and Cassell, Dante’s Fearful Art of Justice, pp. 63-65. _ 71 Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia 14.2.26, ed. Padoan, p. 660.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 185 morializes the earliest age, the achievements of the ancient world, and Jove himself, who was, so to speak, larger than life. The Old Man seems to recall the patristic topos of greater human stature in the earliest ages, as in Genesis: “Sotheli giauntis weren on erthe in tho daies . . .” (6.4). The Old Man of Crete as giant may possess an archaeological or anthropological dimension de senectute mundi.”? In his highly influential Natural History Pliny the Elder reports that a giant of forty-six cubits (sixtynine feet) was unearthed on Crete when an earthquake caused a fissure in a mountain (“rupto monte’’). Some believed that Orion, others that Otus, had been found. Pliny mentions this find in the context of a famous passage on the diminishing stature of humans over ume: “But it is almost a matter

of observation that with the entire human race the stature on the whole is becoming smaller daily, and that few men are taller than their fathers, as the conflagration that is the crisis towards which the age is now verging is exhausting the fertility of the semen.”’?? Augustine cites this claim to scientific observation when, for his own purposes, he speaks of giants before the Flood. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, as part of his attack on the pagan gods and idols, testifies that “the cave of Jupiter is to be seen in Crete, and his sepulchre is shown.”’?* From midrashic commentary came the idea that Adam when he was first created filled all the world but that when he sinned he was reduced in size (though he remained a giant by later standards). The influential Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius seems to imply that Adam’s immediate offspring are, like Adam himself, very large, since Seth, in the words of ‘Trevisa’s translation, is said to be “to liknesse of hym [Adam] a man geaunt & grete.”’> Honorius Augustodu22 My treatment owes a considerable debt to Cassell’s excellent discussions in his chapters 5 (“The Gran Veglio’”’) and 6 (“The Idolaters’’). 23 Natural History 7.16, trans. Rackham, 2:553. 74 De idolorum vanitate 2, col. 587, trans. Wallis, Writings of Cyprian, p. 444. For another important passage of paleoanthropology in the ante-Nicene Fathers, see Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, cols. go1-2. 25 be Bygynnyng of be World and be Ende of Worldes, ed. Perry, p. 95 (Harley recension). [he Latin reads: “CC™° autem et XXX™° anno primi miliari, quod est primum saeculum, natus est Sedh vir gigans in similitudinem Adae” (Revelationes 1, ed. Sackur,

p. 61). I am indebted to Michael Twomey for calling this passage to my attention. Although Peter Comestor often serves as an intermediary for Jewish legends promulgated in Flavius Josephus and Pseudo-Methodius, he does not mention Seth’s alleged , giantism. He says, ““Tunc natus est ei Seth trigesimo anno primae chiliadis, id est primae aetatis” (Historia scholastica, col. 1076). It might be inferred, however, that Seth was a giant because of the reading of the “sones of God” (Gen. 6.2) as the offspring of Seth (or as evil angels). Peter comments, “Nam multi angeli Dei, id est filii Seth, id est qui supra fi/ii Dei, cum mulieribus coeuntes injuriosos filios genuerunt, qui propter confidentiam fortitudinis gigantes a Graecis dicti sunt. ... Septingentesimo anno secundae chiliadis filii Seth concupierunt filias Cain, et inde orti sunt gigantes” (col. 1081). He goes on to mention that the so-called giants could have been mcubi rather than actual

186 THE WORLD GROWN OLD nensis or an interpolator testifies that Adam was thirty cubits high (Imago mundi), the Middle English version of the joca monachorum known as The Maister of Oxford’s Catechism says that Adam was “of fowre-score and of VI enchen”’; and Sir John Mandeville seems to allude to Jewish legends when he speaks of Adam’s weeping for a hundred years after Cain slew Abel and also of ‘“‘a gret lake” in Ceylon, with “gret plentee of water,”

which was formed, according to local tradition, when “Adam and Eue wepten vpon that mount an c. yeer whan thei weren dryuen out of Paradys.” *6

While Pliny, Cyprian, Augustine, Honorius, and Mandeville refer to humans, there was also an ancient tradition of gigantic statuary, including one in a mountain cavern.”” The most famous such monument was the great Colossus of Rhodes—“a colosus of bras seuenty cubites hye” (Bar_ tholomaeus Anglicus). From Suetonius medieval Italians knew of the colossus, 120 feet high, which Nero erected to honor himself. The Liber monstrorum, an anonymous, eighth-century book of natural and unnatural lore, reports on a sea monster so large that the Tiber could not cover it. The author also says that because the monster’s bloody death had become famous throughout the world, the Romans erected a statue 107 feet high (the exact dimensions of the Colossus of Rhodes, according to EusebiusJerome).”® These titanic statues were only memories in Dante’s time. But Boccaccio reports a contemporary story of a giant seated man discovered at Drepanum (modern Trapani, in Sicily) in a huge cavern at the foot of a mountain. (The figure was unearthed when workers tried to lay foundations for a country home.)’?

giants; on the other hand, he notes that giants are said to exist after the Flood, including those in Hebron (Golias), Egypt, and Greece (the Titans) (cols. 1081-82). ?6 For the midrashic tradition, see Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, p. 51 and note 5; The Prose Solomon and Saturn, ed. Cross and Hill, p. 72 (glossing “Saga me hu lang wes adam on lenge geseapen. / Ic de secge, he wes vi and cx ynca lang” [p. 27]); and Ginzberg, Legends of the Fews, 1:59, 76, 86. For Honorius and the interpolations to Imago mundi, see the transcription by Flint, “Anti-Jewish Literature and Attitudes,” p. 201 (and her discussion on p. 49 and note 36). For The Maister of Oxfora’s Catechism, see Questiones by-twene the Maister of Oxenford and his Clerke, ed. Horstmann, p. 285. For Mandeville, see Mandeville’s Travels 9 and 21, ed. Seymour, pp. 48 (weeping

for Abel) and 145 (weeping for the exile from Paradise). 27 For a different treatment of a colossus, see Aldhelm’s riddle no. 72, from Epistola ad Acircium de metris, as edited by Pitman in The Riddles of Aldbelm, p. 42. The great statue complains that it has human limbs but cannot move or feel. Theodore Silverstein sixty years ago wrote about a tradition of classical, Arabic, and medieval weeping statues: “The Weeping Statue and Dante’s Gran Veglio.” Silverstein’s evidence for the classical and Arabic sources—particularly the brief mention in Georgics 1.479—80—is better than that for medieval sources. Cassell rethinks the issue: Dante’s Fearful Art of Justice, pp. 58, 66-68 (citing Ovid’s Niobe). 28 Liber monstrorum 1.3 (“De gigantibus’’), ed. Porsia, pp. 140-41. ? Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium libri 4.68, ed. Romano, pp. 223-24.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 187 The idea that giants existed in earlier ages had applications both i bono and in malo in the Middle Ages. The positive signification was that people

of earlier ages, living according to natural law, were closer to divinity, ethically superior, and more virtuous than their later offspring. Bernard of Chartres plays with this notion when he alleges that moderns are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants (Chapter 1, 3e). The negative signification, more appropriate in Dante’s context, was that monstrous, gigantic people arose through human sin.*? The gran veglio embodies this ambiguity about the past. Viewed one way, through Virgil, the Old Man expresses the good

qualities of the golden past of Rhea, Jove, and Crete. Viewed the other way—by far the more important—the statue expresses the immense folly of human pride and arrogance: St. Paul’s vetus homo and idolatry. In classical antiquity and in medieval literature Crete was known as the land of “tall tales” and fables, and Cretans were proverbial liars. They may have earned that distinction through their claims that Jove was not only born on Crete but buried there—the latter claim scandalized the ancient world.?! The reputation of Cretans as dubious, untrustworthy folk was quite ancient, apparently known to Homer and Epimenides (himself a Cretan). Plato remarks that the Cretans invented the fable of Zeus and Ganymede to advance their unnatural lusts (Laws 1.636). In the third century B.c. the Greek poet Callimachus, in his Hymn to Zeus, quotes the proverb “Cretans are ever liars” and mentions the issue of Jove’s tomb in connection with their mendacity: “Yea, a tomb, O Lord, for thee the Cretans builded; but thou didst not die, for thou art for ever.” >? The 30 See above, Chap. 2 (on Nimrod). Cassell has a different view: “The earthly statue ... in malo represents the source of all sin, while in another way, it ironically reflects in bono, the bleeding Redeemer” (Dante’s Fearful Art of Fustice, p. 62). In another place he says, ““The statue symbolizes both blasphemous idolatry and the effects of the Fall, for they are one” (p. 82). For the issue of titanism related to other sections of canto 14 (including Capaneus), and to the Inferno generally (especially Nimrod, and Lucifer), see Renucci, Dante, disciple et juge, pp. 199-217, and Di Scipio, “Lectura XIV,” pp. 176-78, 183, and 188 n. 43. The anonymous Florentine suggests a familial connection between Jove and Nimrod, although he is vague on the exact kinship: “Egli € da sapere che Saturno fu padre di Giove; et é vero che Nembrot, che fece la gran torre di Babel, ebbe molti figliuoli, il primo ebbe nome Crete, che fu il primo re di Grecia: il suo - regno incomincio nell’ isola di Creti” (Commento alla Divina Commedia, ed. Fanfani, p. 344). See also Boccaccio’s literal gloss of Inferno 14.49-57 on Jove, Capaneus, and “‘le fizioni poetiche” concerning the race of cyclopes—‘“uomini di grande statura e robustissimi e forti’’—and the titans and giants, “di maravigliosa grandeza e statura di corpo e di forza maggiore assai che umana” (Esposizioni sopra la Comedia, ed. Padoan, p. 643).

Similarly, Boccaccio describes Capaneus himself as “uomo di statura di corpo grande e di maravigliosa forza, bestiale e arogante” (p. 645). 31 Cassell, Dante’s Fearful Art of Fustice, pp. 76-77.

32 Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams, ed. and trans. Mair and Mair, p. 37. Cyprian reports the cave of Jupiter in Crete; and he mentions, archly, that the pagan gods seem to have exhausted their fertility since they are no longer breeding as they once did

188 THE WORLD GROWN OLD _ proverbial deceitfulness of Cretans claimed the attention of the Christian Middle Ages through St. Paul, who in his Epistle to ‘Titus assails certain men of Crete for leading people astray in their wild ravings: “And oon of hem, her propre profete, seide, Men of Crete ben euere more lyeris, yuele beestis, of slowe wombe [gluttons]” (1.12). Paul adds a point about fables: “This witnessyng is trewe. For what cause blame hem sore, that thei be hool in feith, not 3yuyng tent to [heeding] fablis of Jewis, and to maundementis of men, that turnen awei hem fro treuthe” (13-14). Jerome in his exegesis devotes considerable space to the issue of the false Cretans; and he knew the tradition that attributes the proverb to Epimenides.®? In the Genealogia deorum gentilium (14.18) Boccaccio speaks of St. Paul’s use of pagan poets, quoting the Cretan proverb and citing Epimenides. Dante,

it seems, places the Old Man statue on Crete because of that island’s reputation for prevarication and its association with pagan fables, including the legend of Jove’s birth and death, not to mention the Minotaur,

| the Labyrinth, Daedalus, and Talus. It is a sad, desolate island, once said _ to be flourishing with both vegetation and cities but now material for a cautionary tale. As we read the legend or fable of the gran veglio, we may experience it more as a digressive fiction, as part of the Rhea and Jove story, than as a doctrinal allegory. There may well be doctrinal overtones to the statue; and there is no denying a political element in the veg/io’s gazing on Rome.

The Old Man in his mysteriousness invites commentary: he constitutes, in Umberto Bosco’s phrase, ‘“‘a nucleus of thought.” 3+ Readers of Dante have responded to the implicit challenge of the veg/zo by interpreting him, or it, politically, morally, and doctrinally. But just as important as those meanings is the poetic meaning that offers itself through the initial experience of reading the passage and responding to Dante’s imitation of

Virgil. |

(according to pagan writers): “But if gods were born at any time, why are they not born in these days also?—unless, indeed, Jupiter possibly has grown too old, or the faculty of bearing has failed Juno” (De idolorum vanitate 3, col. 587; trans. Wallis, Writings of Cyprian, p. 445). The cave of Jupiter was a topos in early Christian writings. See also Tertullian, Apologeticum 25.7, ed. Dekkers, p. 136; Ad nationes 2.17.5, ed. Borlefts, pp.

72-73; and Minucius Felix, Octavius 22, col. 322.

33 Jerome, Ad Titum, cols. 605-10. Assigning specific characteristics to different cultures and races was a commonplace in medieval literature (proprietates gentium). See Meyvaert, “‘Rainaldus est malus scriptor Francigenus,” esp. pp. 747-49. In Erasmus’s lists of racial characteristics in De duplici copia verborum ac rerum (Cologne, 1554), I, cap. 46—“fiercer than a Scythian,” “drunker than a Thracian”—occurs “more lying than a Cretan” (‘“Cretensi mendacior”’) and “less trustworthy than a Cretan” (“Cretensi vanior”). See the appendix to Dornseiff, “Literarische Verwendungen des Beispiels,” _ pp. 225-27. I am indebted to Paul Schaffner for supplying these references. 34 “Tl canto XIV dell’ Inferno,” p. 73.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 189 _ 3. The Tears and Rivers of Hell As Virgil traces, and as we follow, the description of the statue from the golden head downwards to the feet, and the water from the fissure downwards to the ice pond of Cocytus, we should realize that Virgil also (perhaps not with full cognizance) characterizes two other things: the flow of time from the golden age to the present unstable time; and the movement of empires from East to West (the translatio imperii). Since early Christian times Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image had been explained as a historical image and especially as a symbol of successive world empires, first in eastern realms, then in the West: Rome and (according to Otto of Freising) the Holy Roman Empire. Because the statue of the Old Man alludes on some level to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image, it represents important spatial, temporal, and political movements or translations. Static though it is, it also suggests momentous, dynamic changes in mankind’s moral and political condition.

The Old Man of Crete is immobile, rooted in Mount Ida like some displaced metallic titan. But the increasingly base metals, the fissure that cuts through them from the silver breast to the terra-cotta foot, and the flowing waters, all suggest mutability in history as well as the pathos (and pathology) of change. Dante’s readers would recognize this general view of history under the figure of metals as the Christian understanding: the world’s growing old like a man. However, it could just as easily be Virgil’s

or Ovid’s view of history, since the ancient world also understood the broad movement of history as the decline from a paradisiacal golden age to an iron-hard present. That was the pagan golden-age fiction. Christians were familiar with the movement of history especially through Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image (Dan. 2),?° a statue similar in many ways to the gran veglio and also an image with political applications. In the Bible Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image as the rise and fall of empires, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian king-

dom. Later commentators explained the breast and arms of silver as the Medo-Persian Empire, the belly and thighs of bronze as the Greek Empire of Alexander, and the legs and feet of iron as the Roman Empire. Sull later interpreters, notably the moral historian Otto of Freising (twelfth century), harmonized Augustine’s idea of the two cities, of God and man, with an extension of empires to include the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy (clay foot). Otto also explained this figure in terms of the world’s old age and degeneration. 35 An example is the commentary on Inferno 14 by Guido da Pisa, who quotes extensively both from Dan. 2 and from Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1. See Expositiones et glose,

ed. Cioffari, p. 278.

Igo THE WORLD GROWN OLD The gran veglio has similar political value, since it turns its back on the

Egyptian town of Damietta and gazes on Rome as if on a mirror. It is clear that this positioning of the Old Man partakes of the ideology of old

and new running through the entire veglio sequence (and through the Commedia and Dante’s writings generally). Charles Singleton, citing Isi-

, doro Del Lungo, reports that Damietta represents “the East” and “has a merely geographic function in the Dantesque conception” (The Divine Comedy, 2/2:245). The geography is significant especially to the extent that

Damietta stands for “the East” in the translation of empires from East (Babylon) to West (Rome, Holy Roman Empire). But there is a specific signification to Damietta that Singleton does not mention. Some early commentators—notably Benvenuto da Imola—identify Damietta as Babylon. Benvenuto believes that Dante mistook Damietta for the Babylon of the Assyrians, or perhaps that he understood both the old Babylon of Syria and the new Babylon of Egypt—Damietta—to be under the sultan, and hence associated one with the other in a kind of geographical typol-

ogy. The Old Man, implanted in the wasteland of Crete, is said to look on Rome, but more in Virgilian celebration of the past than in Dantesque glorification of empire—more in marmoreal sorrow than in imperial ex-

, pectation.** Here again, as in the earlier sections of the Old Man digression, we must not forget that Dante reports not what he sees, as in so much of the Inferno, but what Virgil says. The gran veglio di Creta is a Virgilian version of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image, but a version that maintains decorum with Virgil’s character. Readers of the Inferno will recognize something else about the golden head (= Babylon), the turning away from Damietta (= turning away from Babylon: the translatio imperii), and the body’s weeping for a golden past, perhaps for the first empire. Babylon in Scripture has an ambiguity about

it that Dante, through Virgil, exploits. The Old Testament prophets regarded Babylon as the very emblem of fallen man, the c7vitas terrena, and 36 On the other hand, Guido da Pisa stresses the fitness of the veg/io’s turning its back on the eastern empires, “which failed,” and its contemplating Rome, “which always flourishes.” See Expositiones et glose, ed. Cioffari, p. 278. For another optimistic line of argument, with the veg/io symbolizing hope for “un risorgimento politico,” see Reggio, “Veglio di Creta,” p. 902. But contrast Boccaccio, Genealogia 3.5: “Romam regnoru(m] mundi ultimam: idest finem suum prospiciat”’; and Cassell, Dante’s Fearful Art of Fustice, pp. 80-81. The interpretation in a political sense—the Roman Empire in a condition of degeneration—rather than a moral sense constitutes an alternative reading of the gran veglio. See Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert, p. 15 n. 1. In the Esposizioni sopra la Comedia 14.1.69 Boccaccio calls Damietta ‘‘una buona e grande citta

d’Egitto” (ed. Padoan, p. 650), but in the Genealogia 3.5 he identifies it as Damascus in Syria (‘‘a damiata syriae ciuitate”), where Adam and Eve were created (“Quod autem a damiata in Roma[m] uersus sit describit humanu[m] genus: q[uod] in campo damas-

ceno principium habuit’’). ,

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA I9gl they knew the power that such a great city could evoke as the work of human hands.>’ There is an element of lament, almost nostalgia, in Isaiah’s “Babiloyne felle doun, felle doun,” although the prophet’s actual meaning

| is that God has brought low such earthly grandeur, as he adds, “and alle the grauun ymagis of goddis therof ben al to-brokyn in to erthe” (21.9; cf. Jer. 51.8). Isaiah also says of this great city, ‘““And Babiloyne, thilke gloriouse citee in rewmes, noble in the pride of Caldeis, schal be destried, _ as God destried Sodom and Gomore”’ (13.19). New Testament writers,

turning the Old Testament lament into a cry of Christian exultation, judged Babylon to be a symbol of iniquity, the great urban whore: ‘““The ilke greet citee of Babilon felde, felde, the which 3af drinke to alle folkis of the wijn of hir fornicacioun” (Rev. 14.8); and “Greet Babilon fel doun, fel doun, and is maad the habitacioun of deuelis, and the keping of eche

- -vnelene spirit...” (Rev. 18.2). There is nothing truly lamentable in Isaiah’s or John’s utterances, it must be emphasized, and yet the force of these powerful statements derives from the tragic fall of Babylon and a

voice wailing for its ruin.

In the same way there is nothing truly sorrowful about the loss of the golden past or of the first empire—unless, that is, we do not know that Christ came in the time of the Roman Empire to offer mankind salvation. He extended a way out of the city and back to paradise. Neither Crete nor Rome was a final destination, an end point—not for Paul, not for Dante— but only a way-station in the repeatable sequence of translationes on the _ journey toward a city where even Christ is a Roman. Dante the poet understands this, but Virgil keeps the focus on the golden past, the decay of metals, and the tears, the /agrime, which ultimately form the rivers of hell. We recognize the Virgilian sensibility especially in those tears that flow from the fissured body. This metallic body, as opposed to the unblemished golden head, seems to grieve for its ruin and allegorically for the original fall of mankind from the terrestrial paradise/golden age as well as for the

continuing degeneration of humankind. The “tears” of course are not actually tears. Literally, they are springs, of natural or divine origin, which

arise from the rock. Yet the lugubrious tone and Virgil’s word choice suggest a mourning for the past—a disembodied lament, so to speak, even though it is the statue’s body that seems to grieve. There is a sham quality to the weeping, reminiscent of the “crocodile tears” of the bestiaries;?*

37 Explaining the Christian (Augustinian) use of the translatio imperii, Curtius says, “The Christian’s gaze must turn from the earthly Rome, whose history partakes of the civitas terrena, the Kingdom of Evil, to the civitas Dei, the superterrestrial Kingdom of God” (European Literature, p. 30). For Dante’s extensive knowledge of Scripture and exegesis see Hawkins, “Dante and the Bible,” esp. pp. 121-22. 38 Kor the proverbial hypocrisy of crocodiles, which were said to weep while de-

192 THE WORLD GROWN OLD they call to mind the proverbial notion, discussed above, that Cretans are liars. Virgil is not in any sense a liar; but his legend of the veg/io is “‘fabulous,” and his story serves to represent the “allegory of poets.”

For Dante, Virgil was the poet of history, empire, and Rome; and Dante, along with many other medieval thinkers, suggests that Virgil predicted the first coming of Christ in his Fourth Eclogue, the so-called “Messianic Eclogue” (De monarchia 1.11, 16). According to Dante, Virgil understood the importance of monarchy, a strong central government, and Rome’s part in empire. Dante might well have thought that Virgil gained special insight into the future through consulting the sibyl—an idea Dante could have acquired from Augustine’s City of God 10.27.39 Yet Virgil’s

prediction of the coming of Christ—or more accurately, of the convergence of the Roman Empire and Christ’s birth—does not mean that, from Dante’s perspective, Virgil grasped the full implications of Christian history. He failed to comprehend the true meaning of the past, which concerns not only what has been lost but also what can be regained. When he wrote the Fourth Eclogue, he perceived that a golden age was imminent;

yet he did not understand that this age would endure only for Christ’s

lifetime. Christ embodied the “plenitude of time,” and his sacrifice brought about the possibility of salvation for those who live in the sixth world age. Even within the sixth age most humans persist in the “old Adam,” and the course of history, as the Old Man of Crete witnesses in its declining metals and especially in its feet, continues downward. Virgil understands this general decline and the translation of empires; but he does not comprehend the movement from old to new Adam. He does not understand Christian conversion. When the “tears” find their way to hell, they assume a different identity as the infernal rivers. On Crete and in Virgil’s story the tears express nostalgia for the golden past of a now ruined body: the image, not the reality, of a gran, yet pathetic, old man fixed on Rome, as water courses from the body like blood from a wounded human. In hell the tears have a different meaning. They are a warning, an aspect of the contrapasso, and symbolize, according to Guido da Pisa, four negative qualities—“joylessness,” “sadness,” “burning,” and “grief”“—four manifestations of the _ - vouring a man, see Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, pp. 56-57; see also the discussion by Hollander, Allegory in Dante’s Commedia, p. 251.

39 For convenient summaries of Virgil and the empire, see Davis, ““Dante’s Vision of History,” esp. pp. 24-28, and “Dante and the Empire.” Davis cites Giorgio Padoan on Augustine as Dante’s possible source for Virgil’s use of the Cumaean sibyl (p. 26 Nn. IT).

© Guido da Pisa, Expositiones et glose, ed. Cioffari, pp. 278-79. Reggio observes that

Statius (Thebaid 8.30) characterizes the rivers Cocytus and Phlegethon as “lacrimis

atque igne tumentes” (“Veglio di Creta,” p. gor).

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 193 same wretched condition. The tears metamorphose once when they move underground; they transmogrify again when they change from water to ice. The nature of weeping and tears changes from the upper to the lower world, where they continue to alter through the four waterways: Acheron, or joylessness, by which the souls of the damned pass over into hell; Styx, or sadness, which rings the city of Dis in the circle of anger; Phlegethon, or burning, which quenches the fire flakes that descend upon the proud and violent; and Cocytus, or sorrow, which hems Satan round and provides something like a floor to the vast funnel of hell. The changes can best be

seen in the mutation from the hot boiling of the circle of the violent to | the chilling stasis of the treacherous, the final destination of the three rivers and one stagnant ice pond that are yet one waterway originating in the tears of the Old Man of Crete. If we view the waterway as one great system, a continuum, we can see that the nostalgia of the idol-like vegiio finds its concluding point in the utterly miserable, hopeless lake where the flow of waters is prevented by the chilling winds from Satan’s flapping wings. Such is the end of vain and backward-looking sorrow. A significant perspective on the tears/river of Inferno 14 appears in Purgatorio 14, on envy, a canto that serves as a trope on the corresponding canto in Inferno. Purgatorio 14, like Inferno 14, features a river. This waterway is not the tearful flow that becomes the four rivers of hell but the Arno, which originates in Monte Falterno and descends, as Guido del Duca describes, past four cities in Tuscany and their depraved citizens:

the “filthy hogs” of Casentino, the “curs” of Arezzo, the “wolves” of Florence, and the fraudulent “foxes” of Pisa. The degeneration of Tuscany (31-66) mirrors the construction and divisions of hell with its worsening sins.*! Moreover, Guido characterizes Florence as a wasteland, re-

calling both the waste condition of Crete and the burning sands and boiling river of blood in the seventh circle of hell. The Florentine wolves—under the leadership of the alpha wolf, Fulcieri da Calboli, who “comes forth from the dismal wood (¢rista selva)” (64)—have wreaked havoc on the city such that “in a thousand years it will not rewood itself (si rinselva) as it was before” (65-66).* Fulcieri, who hailed originally from 1 Sinclair in his edition of Purgatorio comments, “There is a curious correspondence between these stages of degeneracy on the Arno with the descending scale of sins in Hell,—incontinence, violence, fraud,—from the mere brutish foulness of the hogs of the Casentino, the feeble, snarling malice of the curs of Arezzo, the fierce rapacity of the wolves of Florence, to the mean cunning of the foxes of Pisa” (p. 193). *® Tn the line about Fulcieri’s coming forth from the wood, there may be an echo of Jer. 4.7: “A lioun schal rise vp fro his denne [crouche EV], and the robbere of folkis schal reise hym silf. He is goon out of his place, to sette thi lond in to wildirnesse; thi citees schulen be distried, abidynge stille with out dwellere.” In their commentary on this passage Jerome and Hrabanus Maurus interpret the lion as the devil and direct the

194 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Romagna and who was made podesta of Florence in 1303, was not only a “bloody” tyrant who brought inordinate cruelties on the citizens of Florence; he was also, in Guido’s word, a “cacciatore”’ (59), a hunter, but a hunter of men. The devastation he created in Florence was no ecological disaster but a systematic program of terror against its human population.

Guido’s lament for Romagna (88-123) contains a strong element of nostalgia and regret for what might have been; and this section of Purgatorio 14 also serves as a trope on Inferno 14. Guido remembers the ancient noble stock of the region but finds in its present-day scions only “bastards” and “poisonous growths” (g5)—echoes of the moralized wasteland.# He launches into an whi sunt? lament for the old noble citizens: Ov’ é ’| buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi? Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna?* (97-98)

And he recalls, in phrases so important for Italian literature, le donne e’ cavalier, li affanni e li agi

che ne ’nvogliava amore e cortesia : la dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi. (109-11) (the ladies and the knights, the toils and the sports to which love and , courtesy moved us, there where hearts have become so wicked!)

In Guido’s lament the garden of charity has become a desert wilderness of malevolence. The river Arno, the cities on its banks, and the ancient and modern families of Romagna flesh out and give life to the Virgilian

fable of the gran veglio di Creta.

reader to 1 Peter 5.8: “for 3oure aduersarie, the deuel, as a rorynge lioun goith aboute, _ sechinge whom he schal deuoure.” See Jerome, In Hieremiam prophetam 72, ed. Reiter, p. 54; and Hrabanus, Expositiones super Feremiam, col. 835. +3 Singleton comments on “‘venenosi sterpi’’ (line 95): “Cf. ‘sterpi’ in Inf. XIII, 7. The whole figure expresses the idea of neglected fields that have been allowed to grow up in brush and become wild again. Thus, as indicated in vss. 95-96, it would now be too late to reclaim them, so far advanced is the growth” (2/2:301). See also his note on “tralignando,” line 123 (p. 309). 44’The Fabbro mentioned in line roo as part of the ubi sunt? is Fabbro de’ Lambertazzi, of Bologna, who “led the Bolognese crusaders in 1217 at Damietta” (Singleton, ibid., p. 303). Damietta is the place on which the Old Man of Crete is said to turn his back.

DANTE AND THE USES OF NOSTALGIA 195 DANTE’S MEDITATION on the world grown old in Inferno 14 demonstrates

the uses of nostalgia. He posits the conventional pagan and Christian un-

| _ derstanding of history through a downward, pessimistic decay of metals and the decline from a golden past. But the self-consciously fictive nature of this symbolic presentation calls into question Virgil’s poetic, critiques the “allegory of poets,” and throws into relief, as a greater reality, Virgil’s point of departure: the river Phlegethon. The veglio’s “tears” and tearfulness in general are seen to be ironic in hell, as is every assertion of human idealism and value, including the ideals of poetry and love.

In hell we do not find the bitter denunciations of human institutions that we discover in Purgatorio or Paradiso. Hell is no platform for such discourse, for such moral-satiric utterance. Dante does accept the standard medieval view of history as the history of human and terrestrial decay. Yet in the gran veglio sequence he shows something more important: what we should do with such knowledge. It is not enough to grieve for the past or to look, as Dante once did, for salvation through earthly institutions such as a world monarchy. One must overcome the past, as Cato does, and put behind nostalgia. Crete and Italy both have retrogressed from gardens to wastelands. Now Dante must set his sights on a garden that truly can be regained.

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5

Innocence, Untime, and the Agrarian Metaphor in Piers Plowman

Now failep pe folk of pe flood and of pe lond bope, Shepherdes and shipmen, and so do ise tilieris. Neiber pei konnep ne knoweb oon cours bifore anoper. Astronomyens also aren at hir wittes ende; Of pat was calculed of pe element pe contrarie pei fynde.

, Grammer, be ground of al, bigilep now children, For is noon of pise newe clerkes, whoso nymeb hede, That kan versifie faire ne formaliche enditen, Ne nau3t oon among an hundred pat an Auctour kan construwe,

, Ne rede a lettre in any langage but in latyn or englissh. (Piers Plowman B 15.367-76)

IN PIERS PLOWMAN LANGLAND’S DREAMER-NARRATOR, Will, makes an interior,

inconclusive voyage to perfection through a bewildering sequence of moral-allegorical locales. The landscape of Langland’s journey is more political, more biblical, and often more overtly social and urban than is Jean de Meun’s courtly garden of love; and Langland’s movement toward his goal is less well defined and teleological than that of Amant, Dante the pilgrim, or even Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims. During his inward journey the narrator continually speaks of the world as corrupt and decayed

from earlier, better, simpler times; and he interrogates the soul and all human faculties to determine the grounds of spiritual regeneration. What does it mean to do better? To do best? How can one best attend to one’s spiritual obligations—by staying at home and plowing one’s half-acre or by journeying to sacred locales? Whose is the better way, Mary’s or Mar-

tha’s? How can one fulfill spiritual duties if one is hungry or if one’s neighbor is hungry? The narrator never finally resolves those questions. His uncertainty stems from his growing awareness, ratified in the narrative’s form and 197

198 THE WORLD GROWN OLD structure, that while truth may be simple, the world in and through which one tries to apprehend truth is complex, involved, vitiated, and compromised—and that it grows more so all the time. By focusing on the figure of Cain, the bad farmer, and on the agrarian metaphor, I wish to argue in this chapter that Langland depicts the movement from innocence to experience, and from simplicity to complexity, as a rejection of spiritual and agrarian values—values embodied especially in Piers the Plowman. _ Langland, like his Edwardian and Ricardian contemporaries, concerns himself with when things began to go wrong in primitive history and the meaning of historical events for his present age. He seeks in part to chronicle the divergence from what Chaucer’s Parson calls “olde pathes (that is to seyn, of olde sentences) which is the goode wey” (X 77), through a focus on ethics in the present. I agree with Morton Bloomfield’s judgment

“that it is in the older monastic view of man that we can best find the intellectual framework of Piers Plowman,” although I would emphasize, too, the social and practical aspects of the narrative over its mystical, visionary, or even apocalyptic elements.! Piers Plowman, as I hope to demonstrate, is a quest for salvation in a world grown old; and the troubling ironies in the poem arise in large measure from gaps between ideals and realities, between past and present. The poem is so well received in our own day perhaps because its discontinuities and disjunctiveness conform to our sense that life and art are finally inconclusive. A. C. Spearing, comparing Shakespeare’s and Langland’s use of “telescoping” imagery, states the aesthetic case eloquently: “in devoting all his energies to the creation of a single moral allegory” (an effort that is “radically unShakespearean’’), Langland “gives his allegory a most unusual and baffling nature: it feels solid yet it will not stay still; it is at once earthy and dreamlike.”? ! See Bloomfield, Piers Plowman, p. 153. Bloomfield also emphasizes the social na-

ture of Piers Plowman (p. 4). In a recent treatment of Langland’s apocalyptic thought, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman, Kerby-Fulton argues that “Langland dab-

bled in more than one ‘school’ of prophetic and apocalyptic thought, but only the religious-reformist brand seems to have captured his imagination or shaped his reformist ideology” (p. 15). For an important statement on the conservative, non-Joachite English tradition of apocalyptic thought, see Szittya, “Domesday Bokes,” p. 378. For parallels between Langland’s poem and Hebrew prophecy (especially Isaiah), see Steinberg, Piers Plowman and Prophecy. Robert Adams makes a valuable distinction between “learned” and “popular” apocalyptic elements in Piers Plowman (“Some Versions of Apocalypse”); Fowler emphasizes history and eschatology in The Bible in Middle English Literature, chap. 5; and E. Talbot Donaldson draws parallels between Revelation and the conclusion of the B text (“Apocalyptic Style in Piers Plowman B XIX-XX’’). In section 3 of this chapter I argue in favor of textual and even scriptural interpretations of the poem and against those current interpretations that would emphasize its depictions of fourteenth-century social or political realities. ? Spearing, “Piers Plowman: Allegory and Verbal Practice,” in Readings in Medieval Poetry, p. 222.

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 199 Again and again Langland’s narrator shows impatience with the complicated everyday world, with its staggering problems, its disappointments, and its backslidings. Lady Mede, indifferent or neutral in herself, is in the present world inextricably bound up with church and state and manages to corrupt human affairs even as bribery and deceit vitiate Amant’s quest in the Roman de la Rose. Although the dreamer, just before he wakes from his dream, witnesses the king’s pledge to follow Resoun and to banish bribery from Westminster, there is a utopian quality to the passage. Per| haps nowhere else in Piers Plowman are we made so aware that the narrator has been dreaming. Later, as Piers directs mankind in plowing the halfacre, problems immediately arise. When there is an abundance of food, backsliders and cheats refuse to work toward the common good, and Piers

must call in Hunger to get honest work out of the laborers. When he longs for a simple formula for salvation, he receives a pardon—the good will go to heaven and the wicked to hell—that seems radical in its simplicity but that fails to define what it means to do good or evil. “It is,” remarks Donald Howard, “for perfect, not for fallen, men.” ? The burden remains on men and women to weigh their actions and determine whether their conduct might lead to heaven or hell, to the Tower or to the Dungeon. They are left still on the darkling “felde” without proper signposts. _ Piers tears up the pardon in anger.

| The dreamer’s quest for Truth moves between the temporal poles of the moment, on the one hand, and his entire lifetime, on the other. Often Will expresses a longing for simple faith—the piety of ‘““Plowmen and pastours and pouere commune laborers” (B 10.466)*—or for quick knowIedge and the visionary instant. He demonstrates impatience with the complexities of Christian doctrine. After Dame Scripture’s lecture on the relation of baptism to salvation, Will complains: “This is a long lesson . .. and litel am I be wiser; / Where dowel is or dobet derkliche ye shewen” (B 10.377—78; cf. C 11.129-34). The dreamer wants clarity as to the nature of dowel, but what he receives instead are sundry definitions of dowel and an intricate scheme of salvation. “‘Whan alle tresors arn tried treube is be beste” (B 1.85; A 1.83; C 1.81) may be a wonderful text, but it marks only a point of departure for Will, who, it seems, must try all treasures before

3 The Three Temptations, p. 178. The pardon scene continues to provoke controversy.

For a recent summary of the problems, see Alford, ““The Design of the Poem,” pp. 41-44. See also Denise Baker, “From Plowing to Penitence,” esp. pp. 716-17 and nn. 1-6. 4 Quotations from and references to the B text of Piers Plowman are taken from Piers Plowman: The B Version, ed. Kane and Donaldson. References to the A text are from Piers Plowman: The A Version, ed. Kane; quotations from and references to the C text are from Piers Plowman: An Edition of the C-Text, ed. Pearsall. In quoting from Piers Plowman I give priority to the B text.

200 THE WORLD GROWN OLD approaching his goal. He painstakingly, almost doggedly, progresses from Thought to Wit to Study to Clergy to Scripture (B passus 8-11; C passus 10-13; cf. A passus 9-11). The world Langland depicts in Piers Plowman is not only bewildering and involved, it is in decline. Complexity, sophistication, and degeneration form a pattern in Langland’s narrative (as often in medieval thought): because the world has become so labyrinthine through human fraud and corruption, it is decaying both morally and physically. Everywhere in the narrative Will finds evidence of a debased present world age, especially in the church, which has become so morally compromised that reform may not be possible. As early as the prologue he satirically attacks the church hierarchy and major abuses within it. The quarrel between the friars and the church he regards as especially appalling, but he also deplores the rise of the preaching pardoners and the tendency of clerics to assume secular, administrative positions at the king’s court for financial gain (B Prol. 6899; A Prol. 65-95; C Prol. 66-94). Nowadays, complains Dame Studie, in a traditional lament from the Latin complaint tradition, ‘““Wisdom and wit now is no3t worp a risshe / But it be carded wip coueitise as cloperes don hir wolle” (B 10.17-18; A 11.17-18; C 11.1415). Art and poetry have degenerated into dirty jokes. The person who knows biblical stories, says

the narrator, ‘“Litel is he loued or lete by pat swich a lesson techep”’ (10.37). In her most bitter accusation, Studie says, referring to slobbering

jongleurs, |

Ne holpe hir harlotrye, haue god my troupe, Wolde neuere kyng ne knyzt ne canon of Seint Poules 3yue hem to hir yeresgyue pe value of a grote. (B 10.46—48; cf. A 11.29-34)

In the C text Studie speaks of the domination of pride and willfulness:

In religion and in al be reume amonges riche and pore , That preyeres haen no power this pestilences to lette. For god is deef nowadayes and deyneth vs nat to here

| And gode men for oure gultes he al togrynt to deth. (11.59-62)

Later, Anima, citing Chrysostom (actually Pseudo-Chrysostom), claims that all evil things originate from a corrupted church: Sicut de templo omne bonum progreditur, sic de templo omne malum procedit. Si sacerdocium integrum fuerit tota floret ecclesia; Si autem corruptum fuerit omnium fides marcida est. Si sacerdocium fuerit in peccatis

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 201 totus populus conuertitur ad peccandum. Sicut cum videris arborem pallidam & marcidam intelligis quod vicium habet in radice, Ita cum videris populum indisciplinatum & irreligiosum, sine dubio sacerdocium eius non est sanum. (B 15.118; C 16.271a—h) (Fust as all good things proceed from the temple, so from the temple flow all wicked things. If the priesthood is unimpaired, the whole church flourishes; if it 1s corrupt, the faith of all 1s rotten. If the priesthood exists in sin, all the people turn to sin. Just as when you see a tree moldy and wasted, you know that its root is infected, so when you see a people undisciplined and trreligious, its church hierarchy without doubt is unhealthy.)

The corrupted church and fallen world have debilitated human cog-

nition as well (B 15.359-76; C 17.95-110).5 Schools and monasteries should be refuges from the cares of the world; but the religious life generally has become too worldly, too active (like Chaucer’s Monk), and compromised: Ac now is Religion a rydere, a rennere by stretes, A ledere of louedayes and a lond buggere, A prikere on a palfrey fro place to Manere, An heep of houndes at his ers as he a lord were, And but if his knaue knele pat shal his coppe brynge He lourep on hym and lakkep hym: who lered hym curteisie? (B 10.311-16; cf. A 11.211-16; C 5.156-62)

In B passus 1g an unlettered, yet astute, vicar takes the Roman church to task. Its cardinals, he alleges, do not understand the cardinal virtues; and they parade around in expensive clothing. Common people, says the vicar, daily cry out, “The contree is be corseder pat Cardinals come Inne, / And

ber pei ligge and lenge moost lecherie bere regneb” (B 19.417-18; C 21.417—-18). John Burrow, as part of his chapter “Fictions of History,”

| discerns in Langland’s portrayal of the church “a version of ecclesiastical decline, current in his day, according to which the Church suffered first > Harwood, “Piers Plowman,” pp. 124-25. Yunck, writing on Langland’s “satire,” observes, “His satire is not an essay de contemptu mundi, rejecting an ugly world for the

bright, distant prospect of the Church Triumphant; rather it bears on the duties and potentialities of the Church Militant, the Christian individual submerged in the grimy turmoil of nowadaies” (“‘Satire,” p. 151). Derek Pearsall links Langland’s notion of decline to material conditions: ““Langland’s response to the social realities he perceives

is as always that of a devout Christian, who sees all change and transformation as a form of decay, and who struggles to comprehend the nature of change within the structures of a traditional mode of thought” (‘Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” Pp. 174-75).

202 THE WORLD GROWN OLD from persecutions, then from heretics, and then, worst of all, from hypocrites; for it is hypocrisy, and especially the hypocrisy of the friars, that he represents as the chief enemy in his own day, insidiously corrupting the Church from within.’”’® All these moral failings have contributed to the world’s divergence from primitive innocence. Langland also shows in many ways that though the world is fallen and complex, spiritual truth is simple and unified: “Go to be gospel ...” (B 1.46; A 1.44; C 1.44); “Loke pow loue lelly if pee likep dowel” (B 10.192; cf. A 11.144); “‘sola fides sufficit” (B 15.389; C 17.121); “Dilige deum &

proximum tuum”? (B 17.13; C 19.13a); “Lerne to loue” (B 20.208; C 22.208). In his dream of the “lond of longyng” the narrator cites, with approval, the proverbial “‘Breuis oratio penetrat celum” (C 11.298; “A short prayer reaches into heaven”’). Yet it may be difficult to perceive unity and _ simplicity in a world in which greedy, self-serving clerics have subverted the church itself. The church hierarchy is anything but simple or unified; the pope has been far from the ideal leader to bring his widely scattered congregation back to paradise; and the dreamer must be disabused of his tendency to seek quick solutions to complex issues. So Will, the dreamer,

makes an interior pilgrimage toward Truth to discover the grounds of spiritual renewal within the soul: the garden within, which must be cultivated by the three spiritual props of the theological virtues to guard against the ravages of the devil and the three temptations. Langland tries to show that if we cannot reform the world, we can at least reform or heal ourselves through renovation of the soul by conforming to Christ’s model. In this way we may transcend the ravages of ttme—the body’s decay in old age, sickness, and death and the world’s degeneration through all its parts.

The idea of the world grown old, then, dominates the thematic substructure of Piers Plowman and helps inform its major images, which tend

to be social, biblical, and often agrarian or agricultural. ‘The narrative moves from the narrator’s initial quest and vision of the field of folk to his final dream of Antichrist, the friars, and the barn of Unity. Within these points of departure and closure the narrator dreams of various places where people enact their individual and collective destinies. Some of these locales are social and political, such as the half-acre or Westminster, while ° Burrow, Langlana’s Fictions, pp. 56-57, citing Szittya and the “Three Persecutions of the Church, as expounded by the Glossa Ordinaria commenting on ch. 6 of Rev. (the four horses of the apocalypse). A similar historical scheme was derived from Ps. go, 56 (AV 91, 5-6), according to which the third, modern age was again identified as an age of hypocrisy: Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum 1-35, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais (Rome, 1957), Sermo 33, pp. 243-4” (p. 57 n. 3). See also Barbara Nolan’s observations on the narrator’s status “in the evening of the world” (The Gothic Visionary Perspective, p. 214).

| AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 203 others are individual or personal, such as the garden of the soul. But all of these dreamscapes are best understood as variants of the original field of folk: the felde, as I shall term it. By fe/de I mean the original “field full of folk” as it is initially conceived and also as it is continually redefined and reviewed in other contexts. The other contexts help to qualify and refine our sense of this field as a locus of action. Yet it is important that Langland uses “field” for this initial, controlling image, not a ‘“‘garden”’ of love or a “wood” of error, and that it is “full of folk,’ not erotic abstractions or allegorical beasts. His field is primarily agrarian, not urban, and it is also a social arena where folk live their lives and perform their daily tasks. Geoffrey Shepherd has astutely characterized Langland’s scene of action as “an urbanized wilderness where order is replaced by agglomeration and purpose by chance encounter.”’’ Generally considered, this fe/de is, in some sense, the world, the saeculum, in which people work for, or prey upon, the common weal.’ More specifically, the felde and its variants in Piers Plowman represent those arenas in which individuals, both by themselves and as part of society, proceed toward either the Tower or the Dungeon; the dreamer himself is such an individual. Hence the felde and its extensions constitute Langland’s chief metaphor for the place where momentous human actions occur, whether in society (in relation to one’s fellows) or within the soul itself.

The agrarian metaphor and its biblical underpinnings have been explored best by D. W. Robertson and Bernard Huppé, Morton Bloomfield, and Stephen Barney,’ although Robertson and Huppé, despite their often convincing readings of individual lines and passages, imply that Langland’s narrative should be understood wholly in terms of Scripture and exegetical glosses. More recently John Alford has argued that the point of departure 7 “Poverty in Piers Plowman,” p. 173. § Of “common profit,” Russell Peck has written, ““The key to Gower’s encyclopedic

moral philosophy is ‘comun profit,’ by which he means the mutual enhancement, each by each, of all parts of a community for the general welfare of that community taken as a whole. It applies to the community of faculties within an individual man as well as the state of England with its individuals and its three estates” (Kingship and Common , Profit, p. xxi). For Langland and common profit, see Alford, Piers Plowman: A Glossary of Legal Diction, s.v. “Commune Profit,” pp. 32-33. ° Robertson and Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition, pp. 20, 79-80, and index, s.vv. “field,” “‘plowman,” “harvest,” and so forth. For Bloomfield’s treatment of the field, see Piers Plowman, pp. 106-7. For the tradition of Piers Plowman, see esp. Barney, “The Plowshare of the Tongue.” See also Kirk, The Dream Thought of Piers Plowman, pp. 73-77 (Piers as “natural man” and as farmer); Kirk, ‘““Langland’s Plowman”; and Aers, Piers Plowman and Christian Allegory, pp. 89-107. Aers has collected a series of allegorical significations for “the field” (p. 113). Du Boulay discusses the material base of the agrarian metaphor, and particularly the English sheep industry, in The England of Piers Plowman, pp. 39-41.

204 THE WORLD GROWN OLD | for Piers Plowman is scriptural quotation: that Langland “began with the quotations, and from them, using the standard aids of a medieval preacher, derived the substance of the poem.” In another place he says, ““The poetry | is structurally contingent upon the quotations.” Alford and Judson Allen have argued convincingly that Langland composed his poem as a medieval preacher composed his sermons, through the rhetorical technique of verbal concordance and with the aid of distinctiones, and that this method of composition helps explain the sometimes dense or apparently digressive

aspects of the narrative.!° I am not prepared to agree that the English narrative exists by virtue of the Latin touch-phrases. Yet it seems both accurate and fair to acknowledge that the Latin phrases serve as nodes of thought (analogous to prayer beads or sermon subtopics) returned to again and again by the poet. The importance attributed to the Latin quotations supports the notion, widespread among Langland scholars, that the poem has no central, governing idea, no dominant concept uniting the disparate searches and new beginnings.'! Moreover, recent critics have isolated the sense of social, political, and artistic crisis in the narrative.’ The work in 10 Alford, ““The Quotations in Piers Plowman,” pp. 82, 89. Alford begins his analysis with Robertson and Huppé, saying that they ‘“‘almost” answer the question of the role of quotations in Piers Plowman. Judson Allen extended and slightly revised Alford’s method in his “Langland’s Reading and Writing,” esp. p. 343. Anne Middleton and Siegfried Wenzel analyze and endorse these arguments in A Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. Alford, pp. 17 and 159-60 respectively. For the use of Latin quotations, see also Bloomfield, Piers Plowman, pp. 36-37. For seminal work on Piers Plowman and the medieval sermon, see Spearing, “The Art of Preaching and Piers Plowman,” in Criticism and Medieval Poetry, pp. 107-34; and “Piers Plowman: Allegory and Verbal Practice,” in Readings in Medieval Poetry, at pp. 220-21, 225. For perhaps the best illustration of Langland’s learning in relation to exegesis, see Kaske, “Gigas the Giant in Piers Plowman.” Kaske convincingly links B 18.252 with scriptural commentary on Ps. 18.6 and explains the famous crux of Jesus as the giant. ‘1 Summarized in Harwood, “The Plot of Piers Plowman,” pp. 96-97. For example, Steven Justice: ““The poem, however closely and skillfully annotated and explicated, seems to lack a convincing controlling idée” (Writing and Rebellion, p. 96). '2 Bloomfield claims that the poem is about “social regeneration” (Prers Plowman, p. 4) while Howard emphasizes the “body politic,” a “Christianized mundus,” “supplying the needs of the body” (The Three Temptations, esp. pp. 191-203). For crisis, see Muscatine, “Piers Plowman: The Poetry of Crisis,” in Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, pp. 71-109; and Pearsall, ed., Piers Plowman, p. 13. In another place, Pearsall __ has written, “By any standards but its own [Piers Plowman] is near to artistic breakdown” (English Poetry, p. 178). For more recent work on social and political issues, see Mid| dleton, ““The Critical Heritage,” pp. 19-20; and Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, chap. 1. Both Aers and Harwood point to Langland’s ambivalence—Aers terms it Langland’s “wobble” (pp. 45-46)—-concerning hunger, workers, and employers. Harwood correctly takes to task interpretations of Piers that naively read contemporary historical conditions into the poem or that posit a static theological continuum

from the church fathers to the middle and late fourteenth century. Most recently, Steven Kruger, explicating the mirrors in Langland’s poem, has emphasized the con-

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 205 the field (B passus 6, C passus 8) is not only, or not chiefly, “the preparation of the human heart through good works for the building of the tabernacle,” as Robertson and Huppé suggest, citing Bede, but rather good works in general and specifically good works for the common profit. Nor does “negligence in the work of the field” mean “worldly concupiscence.” It means instead a failure to work for the common profit and, on a spiritual level, an unwillingness to labor for the church (broadly conceived)—a failure to enter the fe/de or the “vineyard.” The distinction involves foregrounding and backgrounding: I regard the literary-social issues as preeminent and the quotations as significant background texts or authorities. Langland’s desire for simplicity with respect to the fe/de emerges in the governing benevolent agrarian figure of Piers the Plowman, as well as in Langland’s use of biblical language, scriptural quotations, and concording biblical phrases (“fiat voluntas tua,” “redde quod debes,” “‘vincit qui patitur,” “ite vos in vineam meam’’).'* Piers Plowman as a figure is not only every good farmer, he is also identified explicitly with Christ (“Petrus id est Chris-

tus’ [B 15.212]) and with Charite.'* The biblical language and scriptural

quotations provide authority and lend resonance to the language and events of the narrative; they suggest a greater, more perfect—as well as more economical—text behind Langland’s poem, a text embodying a harmony of word and deed in Christ, who did the Lord’s will, paid back what was owed, suffered patiently, and labored in the vineyard.

1. Cain and “Untyme”’ If Piers the Plowman is the positive model for conduct in the felde, Cain, the bad farmer, is the negative model, antitype to Piers. Langland cites Cain thematically or metaphorically when he wants to invoke the ancient, though continuing, departure from simplicity and the unity of truth, for Cain greedily sought the way of experience rather than the way of innocence. Holy Church cites Cain as a fratricide spurred on by Wrong (B nections between and among dreams, self-knowledge, and narcissism (as in the Roman de la Rose): “dreams are capable of revealing transcendent knowledge but are also susceptible to the snares of narcissism.” Kruger concludes, ‘“‘Poetry reaches out toward transcendent knowledge, but it remains a human activity, like humans themselves not wholly subject to Resoun” (“Mirrors in Piers Plowman,” pp. 75 and 95 respectively). '3 Robertson and Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition, p. 79. '4 The terms “concording phrases” or “touch-phrases” are based on Alford’s notion of “verbal concordance” in Piers. See ‘““The Quotations in Piers Plowman,” p. 81 and aSsim.

’ '5 For the linking of Piers as a plowman with Christ, see most recently Kirk, “Langland’s Plowman.” For the plowman as bovarius, intermediate between the unskilled laborer and the reeve, see pp. 4-5.

206 THE WORLD GROWN OLD 1.66; A 1.64; C 1.62). Then in B passus 9, Wit says that wicked people— “fals folk, feiplees, peues and lyeres, / Wastours and wrecches out of wedlok’’—-were conceived “in cursed tyme as Caym was on Eue” (9.12 1-23; A 10.139-40), a historical moment later explained as “in vntyme”’ (9.189;

cf. A 10.202). Wit says that all creatures will rue the day that “cursed Caym coom on pis erpe” (9.141) until the Flood; but Cain’s spirit will persist after the Flood and, explains Clergye, before a great king comes to reform holy orders, ‘““Caym shal awake” (10.334). This Cain redivivus has been plausibly glossed as Antichrist—the mystical Antichrist of 1 John (the many antichrists and pseudoapostles who prefigure the ultimate Antichrist).!°

For Langland, as for the Augustinian later Middle Ages, Cain repre-

| sents that tendency in humans to reject God, family, and the work imperative and willfully seek treasure on earth through murder, the acquiring

| and hoarding of property, and the replacing of a rural, garden setting with an urban environment. According to Augustine and later exegetical commentators, Cain was not only the first murderer (and brother-slayer); he was also the first to build a city (Gen. 4.16), to amass private property, to establish weights and measures, to rob his neighbors, and to defend his stolen goods (see above, Chapter 2). Cain was the patriarch of the city of man and the person chiefly responsible for extending the consequences of | Adam and Eve’s original sin. Cain was the first truly wicked human, whom God expelled from the fellowship of Adam and Eve after his fratricide. He managed to establish a Cainite civilization and lineage that endured

through history (see Table 2) and that persists, according to Langland, in the present day. Cain is a bad seed or evil principle: the principle of continuing estrangement from divinity and the world’s further degeneration after the Fall. Cain is an especially important figure in Piers Plowman because he rejected the farming ideal and developed a consuming interest in earthly pelf and the city of man. As momentous as was Adam’s initial disobedience to God, his crimes were not of the same order of magnitude as those of Cain, who willfully transgressed natural law. After the Fall, God ordained a new covenant with humans, one requiring men and women to work for their daily existence (Gen. 3.19). In Langland’s scripturally derived metaphors, they plow their half-acres on cursed ground, which now yields weeds along with fruits (3.18), or labor in the vineyards. Work was and is a communal good; and in winning their daily bread men and women also do the Lord’s work. Hence Hawkyn or activa vita, although unclean, is a baker who makes eucharistic wafers. Work is an important clause of the postlapsarian '6 Bloomfield, Piers Plowman, pp. 216-17 n. 70; Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, pp. 35-38, 71-73; Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 185-90, 216-18.

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 207 pact between God and mankind. But Cain went beyond simple disobedience to outrageous rebellion when he refused to tithe appropriately; killed his brother “in agro,” or as Langland might say, “in pe felde”’; and then lied to God about his brother’s whereabouts, utterly disclaiming familial responsibility for him. When God cursed Cain’s deed, he explicitly damned him with respect to the earth (terra). In an anathema directly related to the second Adamic covenant, God decreed that the earth would not bear fruit for Cain when he tried to plow it and he damned Cain to the nomadic life: ““Whanne thou worche the erthe, it shal not 3yue his fruytis to thee; thou schalt be vnstable of dwellyng and fleynge aboute on erthe [EV: “vagaunt and fer fugitif”’] in alle the daies of thi lijf” (Gen. 4.12). Langland associates Cain with the “wastours” and hence with those who refuse to cultivate their gardens as they should. If Adam and Eve caused the world to change physically through their disobedience, so that it produced “thornes and breris” where before there was the perfection of the original creation, Cain engendered a greater terrestrial decline through his moral and ethical crimes. He actively led the way into the brave new world of prideful self-assertion and into the city. In Cain and his lineage we can find no shred of the world’s youthful innocence as embodied, for example, in the chastened postlapsarian Adam and Eve, the pious Abel, or the reverential Seth, who sought the “oil of mercy” for his aged parents in medieval legends of the holy rood." Langland alludes to two apocryphal legends that help explain his view of Cain and of Cain’s relation to the world grown old. The first legend is the popular interpretation of “the dou3tris of men” and “the sones of God” of Gen. 6.1-2 as the offspring of Cain and Seth respectively, an interpretation based on Augustine’s City of God 15.23, the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius, and Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica.'® Langland quotes traditional glosses of Gen. 6 rather than Scripture itself when Wit explains that an angel came to Seth, saying, “hyn issue in pyn issue, I wol pat pei be wedded, / And nozt pi kynde wip Caymes ycoupled ne yspoused” (B 9.128—29). Seth’s sons nonetheless become inflamed with lust for the forbidden daughters of Cain:

| Yet sep, ayein be sonde of oure Saueour of heuene, Caymes kynde and his kynde coupled togideres, Til god wrabed wip hir werkes and swich a word seide, ‘That I man makede now it me forpynkep”: Penitet me fecisse hominem.

(B 9.130-33) 17 See Quinn, The Quest of Seth.

'8 See Robertson and Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition, pp. 114-17; and above, Chap. 2, section 5.

208 THE WORLD GROWN OLD God repented of creating men because the intermingling of the lines from Cain and Seth resulted in monstrous births and giants—the terrible de: formations of God’s image depicted in the wild regions of medieval mappae mundi, in the eighth-century Liber monstrorum, and in Beowulf.'° The in- _ termixing of the lines from Seth and Cain helped ensure the survival of Cain’s seed and of the city of man. The A text reveals an almost predestinarian strain of thought in which vast numbers of people have been and are “hated” by Christ:?° Alle pat comen of pat caym crist hatid aftir, And manye mylions mo of men & of wommen

Pat of seth & his sistir sipbe forp come For bei mariede hem wip curside men of caymes kyn. For alle pat comen of bat caym acursid pei were, And alle pat couplide hem with pat kyn crist hatide [dedliche]. (10.15 1-56)

Although the narrator worries that this historical determinism deprives humans of free choice (Ezek. 18.20),”! he claims to find telling resemblances between fathers and sons who commit sins. He has a concept of breeding and stock that he compares with botanical grafting: Ac I fynde, if pe fader be fals and a sherewe, That somdel be sone shal haue pe sires tacches. Impe on an Ellere, and if pyn appul be swete Muchel merueille me pynkep; and moore of a sherewe That bryngep forp any barn but if he be pe same And haue a Sauour after pe sire; selde sestow oobper: Numquam colligunt de spinis vuas nec de tribulis ficus.

(B 9.150-55)

His historical determinism receives some support in Wisd. of Sol. 10.3, which blames the Flood on Cain’s posterity (see above, Chapter 2, section 5). In a passage that appears only in the C text, Wit cites contemporary '9 On the relation of Cain to monsters, see esp. Friedman, Monstrous Races, pp. 3031, 103-7 (on Beowulf).

20 Langland softens the A-text reading—‘“‘Alle pat comen of pat caym crist hatid aftir”’—to, in the B text, “And alle pat come of bat Caym come to yuel ende”’ (B 9.126). Neither the B nor C text speaks of millions whom Christ has hated. 71 Langland cites Ezek. 18.20 (“Filius non portabit iniquitatem patris et pater non portabit iniquitatem fii?” [B 9.149]) as “The gospel.” ‘The passage reads, in the Wycliffite Later Version: ‘“‘the sone schal not bere the wickidnesse of the fadir, and the fadir schal

not bere the wickednesse of the sone.” ,

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 209 court precedents to the effect that a son and heir can, because of his father’s crime, lose his inheritance in escheat to the Crown (10.237-39).” Langland’s Wit develops this idea of genetic wickedness into a typology of marriages based on primitive history and its consequences. “Marriage”’ in this section—B 9.157—-201; A 10.179—-215; C 10.243-300—comes to have metaphorical overtones of either charity and obedience to God (marriage in bono) or cupidity and disobedience (marriage in malo). Wit, an uncomplex man who speaks in character, suggests that bad marriages of the Cain type—couplings motivated by lust and greed—dominate his modern era. In passages reminiscent of Jean de Meun’s jealous husband (Le Jalous) and anticipating Chaucer’s fabliaux or Wife of Bath, he describes how parents arrange marriages for economic advantage, disregarding their children’s preferences or the compatibility of the proposed part-

ners. Wit’s argument, which he claims to base on Scripture, is quite simple: like should mate with like, good with good (B 9.163; C 10.252). But few people follow this simple formula, preferring instead to treat their

children like chattel: ,

Ac fewe folk now folweth this, for thei 3eue her childrene For coueytise of catel and connynge chapmen. Of kyn ne of kynrede counteth men bote litel.. .. (C 10.254-56)

The predictable result, Wit maintains, is inappropriate couples who produce unfit children, since “‘if pe fader be false and a sherewe, / That somdel be sone shal haue pe sires tacches” (B 9.150—51). In an inversion of the

gentilesse formula (true nobility comes from virtue and not inherited , wealth), which appears only in the C text, he observes that parents and children alike will reject even the most virtuous and well-favored woman if she does not possess wealth (C 10.257-59). On the other hand, a woman rumored to be wealthy will find admirers aplenty: Ac let here be vnlouely and vnlossum abedde, A bastard, a bond oen, a begeneldes [beggar’s] douhter, That no cortesye ne can, bute late here be knowe For riche or yrented wel, thouh she be reueled [wrinkled] for elde Ther ne is squier ne knyhte in contreye aboute That he ne wol bowe to pat bonde to beden here an hosebonde And wedden here for here welthe and weschen on be morwe That his wyf were wexe or a walet ful of nobles. (C 10.260-67) 22 See Alford, Piers Plowman: A Glossary of Legal Diction, pp. 52-53, s.v. “Eschete.”

210 THE WORLD GROWN OLD An especially egregious example of bad marriages, according to Wit, is the old man and young wife, a coupling symptomatic, in Ricardian literature, of the world grown old; and, in a contemporary reference to the plague appearing in all three texts, he points out that since the Black Death too many marriages have resulted in joyless, loveless unions of incompatible mates: In Ielousie, ioyelees, and ianglynge on bedde, Many peire sipen pe pestilence han plizt hem togideres. The fruyt pat bei brynge forp arn manye foule wordes; Haue pei no children but cheeste and choppes bitwene. (B 9.169—72; A 10.190-93; C 10.269-72)

Such Cain-like bad marriages, Wit observes archly, will win no prizes at Dunmow for marital harmony and bliss. The Dunmow motif appears not only in all three versions of Piers Plowman but also in the Wife of Bath’s narration concerning her old, rich, and “good” first three husbands: she gave them no peace, she proudly avers, nor could any of them claim the

flitch of bacon at Dunmow (III 217-18). Modern marriages, since the plague, have been too often deplorable mismatches; and, Wit implies, the whole institution is nowadays sick. His remedy: a return to an uncomplicated pattern of wedding virgin with virgin and widow with widower. In this way he hopes that after these vicious disruptions the marriage sacrament can be restored to its rightful place of honor and reverence.

In Wit’s lecture the institution of marriage diverged from the true path—the “way” and the “life” (B 9.164; C 10.253)—when Seth’s descendants, the “sons of God,” out of lust married and coupled with Cain’s descendants, the “daughters of men.” But like Chaucer’s Harry Bailly or the pilgrim Merchant, Wit may have a special interest in the psychological and sexual dynamics of marriage since his querulous wife Studie, in a long harangue de senectute mundi, reprimands him for expending his wisdom like a naive schoolboy on a fool such as the narrator (B passus 10; A and C passus 11). Wit and Studie, in other words, might themselves be said to represent contentious modern marriages.

The second apocryphal legend of Cain is his birth “in vntyme” (B 9.189; A 10.202), a phrase that has both a specific and a larger figurative significance de senectute mundi in Piers Plowman. The specific meaning of ‘““antyme” is ‘“‘unseasonableness” or “wrong time,” as when a calf is born out of season. Hence Chaucer’s Parson speaks of “untyme” as the time for fasting during seasonal observances: “‘a man shal nat ete in untyme, ne sitte the lenger at his table to ete for he fasteth” (X 1051). “Untyme”’ in

its narrow application means the wrong time for an action. | In Piers Plowman Cain’s birth “in vntyme” has a specific historical signification, alluding to the legend that Adam and Eve conceived Cain dur-

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 211 ing their attempted penance for original sin. This story, as we have seen in Chapter 2, was exceedingly popular in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the fifteenth century. The penitential legend relates how Adam and Eve, hungry and remorseful after their disobedience, attempt to atone for their fault by standing in the Jordan and Tigris rivers, respectively, but how Eve, again tempted by Satan, fails to complete her penance. Shortly after her failure, as recorded in Canticum de creatione

(1375), she slips away to a land of “‘pesternesse,” of darkness, in “here dwellyng pat was wyld,” and gives birth to Cain.”? Since by medieval con-

sensus Cain was not conceived in Eden, he must have been conceived during or just after the time for penance: as Langland puts it, “in vntyme.” Other phrases for this untimely conception include “in cursid tyme [engendrit]” (A 10.148); “in yuel [or cursed] tyme” (B 9.123); “[Cain] conseyued was in synne / Aftur pat Adam and Eue hadden ysyneged [sinned]”’

(C 10.212-13). Adam and Eve’s guilt after the Fall, and in their failed penance, was concupiscence of the flesh;’* and Wit deplores the tendency in modern marriages toward bastardy and lechery, which he characterizes as “‘lymeyerd of helle” (B 9.184; C 10.283). Cain was both the product of concupiscence and the cause or inspiration for bad marriages. His medieval doppelganger appears in the figure of Lecherye, in the C-text parade of Deadly Sins; Lecherye gropes each maid he meets “bynethe”’ and that as willingly on “fastyng-dayes as Frydayes and heye-festes euenes,” and “in lente as out of lente, alle tymes ylyche— / Such werkes with vs were neuere out of sesoun”’ (C 6.180, 182, 183-84; cf. B 13.344-50). Wit helps define Dowel as those who live in love according to marriage bonds, ‘“‘As this wedded men bat this world susteyneth” (C 10.203). From those good types arise, says Wit, ““bothe confessours and martres, / Prophetus and patriarkes, popes and maydenes”’ (204-5). But those born in a

context of “vntyme,” “Out of matrimonye, nat moyloure [not from the lawful wife], mowen nat haue pe grace / That lele legityme by be lawe may

claymen” (209-10). Furthermore, “in vntyme” there should be no “bedbourde,” bed games, sexual intercourse (B 9.189, 190; A 10.201, 202); or, as the C text clarifies the matter, married men should “ben war and worcheth nat out of tyme, / As Adam dede and Eue”: there should be no ‘‘bed-bourde” unless both husband and wife are “Clene of lyf and in loue

of soule and in lele wedlok” (10.288-89, 290, 291). The converse of ‘““wntyme,” as defined in the C text, is “clennesse” or chastity in marriage. And the lessons of primitive history—specifically the legends of Adam, Eve, and Cain—should govern modern-day conduct. 23 Canticum de creatione, line 370, ed. Horstmann.

4For an Augustinian explanation of this term (especially appropriate here in the context of Cain), see Robertson, Preface to Chaucer, pp. 27-28. For the Augustinian ideal with respect to marriages, see Augustine’s De continentia and De bono conjugal.

212- | THE WORLD GROWN OLD For Wit, then, marriage is an important institution that forms, or should form, a large aspect of Dowel but that has fallen into decay through human misconduct. Adam and Eve sinned spectacularly in their original fall into disobedience; but Eve’s inability to carry out her new penitential

contract demonstrates a need for divine intercession in the process of atonement. Eve’s backsliding inaugurated the long struggle between evil and good, complexity and simplicity, that Langland’s narrator deplores throughout Piers Plowman. Cain is the emblem of the persistent falling into sin—and the willful, even perverse turning into sin—that hapless Eve set in motion. Moreover, the result of bad marriages in recent times, says Wit, is the “fals folk” who undermine the common profit: the wasters rather than the winners. Marriages like these will bring on a recrudescence of the evil that was arrested, temporarily, with the Flood. Such a recrudescence is doubtless what Clergye means when he says, “Caym shal awake.”

In his allusions to Cain, Langland draws upon these two well-known legendary accounts of Adam and Eve’s life to show that the legacy of Cain derives from the very roots of primitive history and that it persists in the modern day, especially in those marriages—indicative of not doing well—

that produce wasters, friars, pardoners, and their ilk. Cain existed once and historically; but his type, the bad farmer in opposition to Piers the Plowman, continues, so to speak, “in pe felde,” to destroy his brothers and to waste the land, causing the world to age further.

2. Transformations of the Felde Cain and Piers Plowman, the bad and good farmers, are the two principal figures in Langland’s fe/de. ‘The felde metamorphoses throughout the narrative as the dreamer’s pilgrimage continues by various inward and allegorical routes; but the basic framework outlined originally in and by the

“felde ful of folk” can be recognized throughout the poem. Langland keeps returning to the fe/de in its various guises because the agrarian arena is where things originally went wrong (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel). Moreover, similar battles emerge and are waged in other, related locales. The scenes shift, blur, and refocus; and Will hopes to learn more as the issues become more complex. But the struggle is essentially always the same. At the conclusion of the narrative, Will is no nearer to answering his original question of how he should save his soul; the only answer is the one he was given at the beginning: Do well. Do well and you will go to heaven; do ill and you will go to hell. Other manifestations of the fe/de include the court and kingdom (end | of Prologue), Mede and Westminster (passus 2—4), the half-acre (A and B passus 6-7; C passus 7-8), the garden of the soul and the tree of Charity

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 213 (B passus 16; C passus 18), and the barn of Unity (B passus 19-20; C passus 21-22). In each of these locales—which are grounded here on earth rather than in mystical visions—we discover how concerns of individual salvation are bound up with social issues, issues of common profit, and issues of the world’s corruption that hinder salvation.” The first two locales after the “field full of folk”—locales that seem to merge—are the ecclesiastical and royal courts (B Prologue 83-111 and 112-208 respectively). The original “field” gives way to the complaining, corrupt ecclesiastics, especially to the pardoner who sells false relics, and to those who flock to London trying to make more money after the plague. The royal court appears first when the dreamer mentions that some clerks work in the Exchequer and in Chancery serving “lordes and ladies” (95) rather than ecclesiastical overlords. When the dreamer, after alluding to

| heaven’s court, begins to describe the college of cardinals, he decides he can no longer speak of the ecclesiastical court (111). At this point, “kam per a kyng” (112), and the court becomes a secular, royal court. That this place maintains a link with the original agrarian felde may be seen in the ‘““Plowmen ordeyed / To tilie and to trauaille as trewe lif askep” (119-20) in order to advance “profit of al pe peple” (119). But shortly the scene merges into the political allegory of belling the cat and finally into a chaos of thronging citizens and street cries—“hote pies, hote! / Goode gees and grys! go we dyne, go we!” (226-27). At the beginning of the second vision (passus 5), the dreamer identifies the audience for Resoun’s speech as the “be feld ful of folk” (A and B 5.10; cf. C 5.111). The most memorable example of the fe/de in its overt agrarian mani-

festation is the half-acre. The sequence begins when Piers Plowman thrusts through the crowd after the parade of Deadly Sins and then organizes a pilgrimage to Truth (B passus 5). This pilgrimage turns into the plowing of the half-acre in B passus 6 and 7. Even a knight participates in the agrarian fe/de, although he admits that he is unacquainted with farming techniques, perhaps with driving a team of oxen (B 6.21-22; A 7.23-24; C 8.19-20). More important, the knight proclaims his willingness to work for the common good: “ ‘Ac kenne me,’ quod pe kny3t, ‘and I wole konne erie’”’ (B 6.23). Piers says he will assume the burdens of manual labor, excusing the knight from such sweaty work and also the clerisy, who, in the C text and according to Resoun, “Shold nother swynke ne swete ne

, swerien at enquestes / Ne fyhte in no vawarde ne his foe greue” (5.57— 58). Clerks should serve Christ more directly, and untonsured “knaues”’ 25 For the field of folk as this world rather than the supernatural, see the seminal work of Donaldson, “The C-Reviser and the Occupations of the Folk on the Field,” chap. 5 of The C-Text and Its Poet, at p. 121. 76 See Burrow, ‘“‘Langland’s Second Vision,” p. 82.

214 THE WORLD GROWN OLD should “carte” and ‘“‘worche” (C 5.62). Each class and vocation should attend to its responsibilities. Plowing one’s half-acre means finally seeing to one’s ethical and spiritual obligations; allegorically, it signifies working in and for the church. This allegorical reading of the half-acre as the church recurs in B passus 6, in an allusion to Christ’s vineyard parable (Matt. 20). After Piers has set the world to work, he pauses to gather more workers for his fields:

, At hei3 prime Piers leet pe plow3 stonde To ouersen hem hymself; whoso best wro3te Sholde be hired perafter whan heruest tyme come.

(B 6.112-14; A 7.104-6; C 8.119-21) , ‘“Heiz prime” is nine o’clock in the morning. It is also the second world age in the well-known exegetical commentary on the vineyard parable, as , we have seen. (Piers had previously said, alluding to the vineyard parable,

that “He [Trube] wiphalt noon hewe his hire pat he ne hap it at euen” [5-552].) In the context of passus 6, this anticipated call into the felde at harvest time foreshadows the rejection of work, since workers sit down to drink and sing songs as soon as Piers himself stops plowing. Piers’s simple and elegant communal ideal that all citizens should plow the half-acre and promote the common profit founders on the more complex reality of human will in a fallen world—a world with a complicated history of idealism and failures of idealism. While Piers might wish that every member of the commonwealth should work for the common good and the good of the church (for on some level those goods are the same), it is not to be, and

he must invoke Hunger against the Cain-like “wastours” (B 6.174). The vineyard parable recurs in Piers Plowman after passus 6 in the “concording phrase” Ite vos in vineam mean: “Go 3e . . . into myne vynezerd.”””

In the first reference to this phrase, at the end of passus 10, Will cites Scripture to Dame Scripture. In a passage de senectute mundi he praises simple folk—‘‘Plowmen and pastours and pouere commune laborers, / Souteres and shepherdes” (10.466-67)—while castigating churchmen who, he claims, do not guide the Christian flock into righteousness and salvation according to the command “Ite vos in vineam meam’ (see 4814). This phrase concludes passus 6 of the B version but does not appear in _ the corresponding place in the A or C texts. In B passus 15 Anima treats a similar theme, the obligations of priests, and joins the parable of the vineyard with that of the wedding feast (Matt. 22.1-14). Here the focus is on those who fail to appear at the wedding feast; and Anima makes it clear 27 For an analysis of the Ite vos in vineam meam formula in the context of agrarian imagery, see Barney, ‘“The Plowshare of the Tongue,” pp. 278-84.

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 215 that he means “persons and preestes” who neglect their spiritual duties. Even the pope, says Anima, fails to heed the injunction to carry the Gospel to the entire world: “Ite in uniuersum mundum @ predicate Gc.” (4g1a, from Mark 16.15; cf. C 17.191). Christ clarified his intention when he said, “Ite vos in vineam meam Oc.” (500). The specific context here is the salvation of pagans, who can enter the vineyard—that is, the church—at any “hour,” as did the thief on the cross (B passus 5, 10, 12) or Trajan (B passus 11;

C passus 13).78 But Langland also suggests that the church hierarchy guards its special interests while failing to carry through on its obligations to the vineyard. Prelates refuse the feast or show up in Hawkyn’s soiled clothing: they will not labor in the vineyards to bring forth the harvest of souls for God’s great feast. They turn away from the fe/de. In B passus 16 Langland portrays the soul’s reform to the iago Dei in yet another transformation of the fe/de: the “garden” -of-the-soul sequence from Anima’s discourse on charity. The garden of Charity is the inward version of the struggle between body and soul, or world and spirit, that occurs in larger, external theaters: in the church, in the king’s court, on the half-acre, or on the lord’s manor. This garden represents the original locus of action where humankind lost the image of God through original sin. This is, so to speak, the archetypal fe/de. Before directing others in plowing their half-acres, the husbandman of the garden of Charity must cultivate his own soul. Langland’s preparation for the garden-of-Charity sequence is important as a witness to his concern with the world grown old. In B passus 15, perhaps the most significant passage de senectute mundi of the narrative, Anima says that just as “holynesse”’ and “honeste” originate in the moral conduct of those who teach God’s laws, so “alle yueles spredeb” from “inparfit preesthode” (15.92-95; cf. C 16.241-46)—a concern of the Cleanness poet as well as of John Wyclif.’? In a passage influenced by moral-

satiric and antifraternal literature harking back to Lady Mede, Anima testifies that charity dwelt with churchmen in the past: “Ac auarice hap pe keyes now and kepep for his kynnesmen” (B 15.247).3° Anima relates a summary lives of the saints, those who imitated Christ and followed the 78 For interpretations that stress the dream aspects of the Trajan sequence rather than its exegetical aspects, see Kirk, The Dream Thought of Piers Plowman, pp. 134-36, and Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry, pp. 156-57. For a discussion of the vineyard parable and world ages in relation to Piers (applied to interpreting the pardon scene), see Trower, ““Temporal Tensions in Piers Plowman,” esp. pp. 393-94.

2? For the impure priest and the administration of sacraments in Cleanness, see Morse, “Image of the Vessel”; and Kelly and Irwin, ‘““The Meaning of Cleanness.” For Wyclif’s concern with the impure priest, see esp. De Eucharistia (written before 1382). 30 For the relation of this theme in Piers Plowman to Latin venality literature, see Yunck, Lady Meed, esp. chap. 7.

216 THE WORLD GROWN OLD way of patient poverty according to the formula “pacientes vincunt’ (15.268). To illustrate the disjunction between the earlier church saints and modern-day clerics, Anima formulates a metaphor concerning true and false coins: Ac per is a defaute in pe folk pat pe feip kepep, Wherfore folk is pe febler and no3t ferm of bileue. As in lussheburwes is a luper alay, and yet lokep he lik a [sterlyng];

The merk of pat monee is good ac the metal is feble; , And so it farep by som folk now; pei han a fair speche, Crowne and cristendom, pe kynges mark of heuene, Ac pe metal, pat is mannes soule, myd synne is foule [alayed]. Bope lettred and lewed bep alayed now wip synne That no lif louep ooper, ne oure lord as it semep.

(B 15.347-55) :

The corresponding passage in the C text shows both how important the metaphor was for Langland and also how he can gloss his own text, for he strains to make plain his comparison in the later version: Me may now likene lettred men to a Loscheborw oper worse And to a badde peny with a gode printe: Of moche mone pat is mad pe metal is nauhte And 3ut is pe printe puyr trewe and parfitliche ygraue. And so hit fareth by false cristene: here follynge is trewe, Cristendoem of holy kyrke, the kynges marke of heuene, Ac pe metal, pat is mannes soule, of many of this techares Is alayed with leccherye and oper lustes of synne, That god coueyteth nat be coyne pat Crist hymsulue printede And for pe synne of be soule forsaketh his oune coyne. Thus ar 3e luyper ylikned to Lossheborwes sterlynges That fayre byfore folk prechen and techen

And worcheth nat as 3e fyndeth ywryte and wisseth pe peple. , (C 17.72-84)

Shortly after this, the C text compares Muhammad to a Lossheborwe because (in the popular legend) he tried to become pope even though he was not truly Christian (see 17.168). In Langland’s metaphor—which Chaucer also used—men and women of the present age need charity because their ‘“‘mettles,” like Luxembourg silver coins with their impure alloys (lushburnes), have become debased. The B version above features more of a general lament de senectute mundi concerning the “folk,” “som folk,”

and “‘Bobe lettred and lewed,” whereas the C text, in more pointed anti-

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 217 clerical complaint, censures “lettred men,” “false cristene,” and “‘this techares.”’ Both versions, however, connect outer and inner by means of the coin metaphor: the coin of the realm, stamped with the king’s face, may outwardly appear worthy, but inwardly—in the soul—the actual value is

considerably less than what it seems. , The /ushburn, so called because it originated in the duchy of Luxembourg, mimicked the English silver penny. The term /ushburn became a catchall for any debased coin, silver or gold; and during the mid- to late fourteenth century, England experienced fiscal woes in part stemming from the exporting of less debased English moneys and the influx of foreign imitations such as the /ushburn}! The Rolls of Parliament include brief mentions of these coins as false and counterfeit: “De jour en autre reportent diverses fauxes Monoies appellez Lusshebournes”; and “Si homme apporte fause Monoie en cest Roialme contrefaite a la Monoie d’Engleterre, sicome la Monoie appelle Lusseburgh.” *” In Langland’s poem the Luxembourg penny impersonates the true coin, but it is false and degrades those who tender and receive it as if it were genuine silver. It symbolizes spiritual debasement and suggests, by the surface image and inward metals, a relationship between inner and outer man. As Barbara Raw has explained in her discussion of the image of God in man: “[Man] is not a perfect image, but an inferior copy, imprinted on an alien nature as a king’s image is imprinted on a coin.” »? The ideas embedded in the Luxembourg coin metaphor (which might almost have been categorized with the morphology topics discussed in Chapter 1) thematically revert to the opening moments of the poem and Langland’s first use of a concording phrase: “Reddite.” In passus 1 in all three versions, Will questions Holy Church on the significance of money; and she responds with the scriptural idea of rendering both to Caesar and to God. Christ asks the people in the temple whose image is on the coin.

31 Brooke, English Coins, who observes that “(Luxemburg was a large exporter, perhaps the largest, of the imitation sterlings” (p. 126 n. 1); Sutherland, English Coinage, 600-1900, p. 83. 32 Quotations from the MED, s.v. “lushe-burgh,” etc., from Rotuli parliamentorum for 1346 (2.160b), and for 1351-52 (2.239a) respectively. Parliamentary statutes from the time of Edward III and Richard II state that “no silver may be carried out of the realm” (“nul argent soit portez hors du Roialme’’) and that “no one should be so bold as to bring false and debased money into the realm, upon pain of forfeiture of life and limb” (‘‘nul soit si hardy de porter fausse & malveis monoie en roialme sur peyne de forfait[urje de vie & de membre’’). See Statutes of the Realm, 1:299 (statute of 1343, anno 17 Edward II]); 2:17 (statute of 1381, anno 5 Richard II); 2:77 (on the value of Scottish money, 1390, anno 14 Richard I); 2:87 (against melting down money and against foreign currency, 1393, anno 17 Richard II). 33 “Piers and the Image of God in Man,” pp. 150-51. Raw traces the coin metaphor to Augustine, Bede, Anselm, and Aquinas.

218 THE WORLD GROWN OLD They say, “Caesaris... we seen wel echone” (B 1.51; A 1.49; C 1.47). Christ replies, ‘““Reddite Cesari... pat Cesari bifallep, / Et que sunt dei deo

or ellis ye don ille” (B 1.52—53). Langland returns often to the related concepts of debt, rendering, paying back what is owed, and redemption. Anima’s little allegory of the garden, the three temptations, and the Fall is moralized psychohistory but pared to its essentials to express Langland’s concern with the connections between temporal duration and the individual soul in the present (or his concern with diachrony and synchrony). Mary Carruthers has put it this way: “As allegory, the Tree of Charity is surely the most complex and satisfactory image in the poem. It presents the world as pure figura, uniting the individual moments of history from Fall to Redemption, uniting history with the poem through the figure of Piers Plowman, and uniting all these things with the image of charity which grows in the hearts of all men.” *4 As with Cain’s birth “in vntyme,” so in the garden of Charity there is an important historical dimension to the allegory in that Langland returns to primitive history to explore the wellsprings of sin and grace. Anima focuses on the devil as if he were some mischievous young Augustine of Hippo who shakes the tree in this garden to carry off the souls in various states of perfection, Anima’s fruit, to his home. In a formulation characteristic of Langland’s temporal style, Anima describes how the fruits drop from the tree once and forever

(the doctrine of original sin). During the first five world ages, the devil kidnapped all the fruit indiscriminately, “And made of holy men his hoord In limbo Inferni, / There is derknesse and drede and pe deuel maister” (B 16.84-85; C 18.116—17). But in the “plenitudo temporis,” when “Piers fruyt

floured and felle to be rype” (16.94; cf. C text, line 128), the devil could no longer simply hoard the good people. Eventually, Christ “jousts’’ with the devil, harrows hell, and snatches away some of the devil’s fruit cache. At the opening of B passus 16, however, the emphasis is on the soul’s inner resources, ordained at creation, for warding off the devil: God’s fashioning the soul in his own image and likeness with the threefold power, wisdom, and strength to battle against world, flesh, and devil—and the devil’s early (historical) ostensible triumphs when he carries off the virtuous pagans. In this section of Piers Plowman a different aspect of the felde appears: the interior felde, the garden of the soul, which one either cultivates or lets go to seed. The other fe/des in the narrative—the field of folk, West-

- minster, the half-acre (to the extent that we consider this as work in the field, or good works, rather than moral virtuousness), and the vineyard and field of the world (to the extent that we understand these as the literal

church)—are exterior mirrors of the inward felde of the psyche, represented in B passus 16 as the tree of Charity. 34 The Search for St. Truth, p. 133.

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 219 In B passus 19 Langland presents another transformation of the felde:

the harrowing of the field of Truth. After his vision of Pentecost (B I9.200-206; C 21.200-206), the dreamer observes the parcelling out of Grace and the distribution of various talents and abilities, virtues that will

help mankind oppose Antichrist and determine their work on earth (B 19.229-53; C 21.229-53). Grace’s depiction here of man’s diverse occupations represents for the dreamer a quick glance back to the felde of the prologue, which was also a display of mankind’s vocations colored, of course, by the dreamer’s lack of discrimination or powers of organization.

The original felde, however, appears very different now. According to Grace, some people live by their wits and their power to fashion words (preachers, priests, lawyers); others rely on their abilities to make things with their hands; and still others know a bargain from a poor buy, and so forth. Grace structures his portrait of the fe/de around humans’ God-given

capabilities, setting it not in the vague context of Tower and Dungeon but in the specific context of the Christian community in the era sub gratia. The felde then metamorphoses into the half-acre as Grace describes how Piers Plowman is its procuratour (agent) and reve, a provider and someone “to tilie trube”’ (B 19.261; C 21.261). The half-acre is no longer the social

world of winning and wasting, an alternative to a pilgrimage for Truth, but the locus of Truth itself, the agrarian field, which Piers both harrows and harvests. I do not mean to suggest that the dreamer has reached the end of his quest or that he has apprehended Truth in any absolute sense. His realization is simple and constitutes more a point of departure than a resting place, as he learns that Piers harrows Truth’s field with the evangelists and plants the seeds of virtue: prudence, moderation, fortitude,

| justice. This understanding is a symbolic, abstract apprehension of religious truth. Piers’s harrowing of the fe/de here even stands for exegetical commentary on Scripture, since the church fathers Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and Jerome follow in the evangelists’ furrows, harrowing the soil that the Gospels have plowed, making it even more fertile for the growth of the cardinal virtues. The dreamer’s vision is a glimpse of the ideal felde and the way by which mankind can recover the image of God and hence try to reverse or arrest the pernicious effects of the world grown old. The final transformation of the felde is the barn of Unitas. Here the

turn is from the interiority of the garden of Charity and the cardinal virtues to the exteriority—indeed, the anagoge—of the church in its latter days. The barn of Unity is, however, an extension of Grace and Piers’s harrowing of the soil. Piers needs a barn, “an hous . . . to herberwe Inne pi cornes” (B 19.318; C 21.319), in order to store the fruits of his exegetical agriculture. So Unitas—“holy chirche on englissh” (B 19.328)—is constructed. An allegorical building made from Christ’s Passion and from Scripture, Unity represents the fulfillment of the agrarian metaphor in

220 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Piers Plowman. ‘The social felde, the half-acre, the vineyard: these fields achieve their highest meaning in Holy Church, an institution that is both personal and collective in that each individual Christian seeking salvation and possessing grace helps compose the mystical body of Christ that is Ecclesia. What is sown and harvested in the fe/de ultimately comes to rest in Unity. Langland suggests a similar utility for the barn of Holy Church when Conscience invites all Christians into Unitas despite Pride’s wicked designs on the faithful: ‘“‘Comep,” quod Conscience, “ye cristene, and dyneb, That han laboured lelly al pis lenten tyme. Here is breed yblessed, and goddes body pervnder.

Grace, boru3 goddes word, gaf Piers power,

Myzt to maken it and men to ete it after In help of hir heele ones in a Monbe, Or as ofte as pei hadde nede, bo pat hadde ypaied To Piers pardon pe Plowman redde quod debes.” (B 19.383—g0; C 21.383-g0)

Conscience summons all Christians to Piers’s barn in a formula recalling the phrase from the parable of the wedding feast: “come 3e to the weddyngis” (Matt. 22.5). Anima recounted this parable in passus 15, where the summons to the wedding feast was for priests a call to preach to the heathens, a call into the vineyard. Here, in B passus 19, the call to dine at Conscience’s feast represents the culmination of the laborers’ work in the vineyard. Bread, the eucharistic wafer, provides the main fare in Unity’s banquet. The wafer in turn recalls Hawkyn’s worldly bread (B passus 13; -C passus 15), which actively fed the multitudes—a social good—but proved inadequate as spiritual nourishment. This bread, Piers’s ‘“‘breed yblessed,” finds its way from Truth’s fe/de into Unity’s barn, where it becomes translated, or rather transubstantiated, into a life-sustaining substance, provided the Christian render unto God according to the pardon formula “redde quod debes’” (“3elde that that thou owest” [Matt. 18.28; cf.

Rom. 13.7]).2> Conscience specifically appeals to Christians who have “loyally” worked during Lent. These Christians stand in marked opposition not only to the forces of Antichrist who rally against Holy Church, especially in B passus 20, but also to Cain and the city of man: those who historically have sinned and who continue to sin in vntyme. Unlike Cain— 35 For the importance of this formula to salvation, see Bloomfield, Piers Plowman, pp. 130-32; Frank, The Scheme of Salvation, pp. 106-9. See also Yunck, “Satire,” and his references to John Bromyard’s redditio principle (pp. 149-52).

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 221 the evil husbandman and poor tither, who was born in untyme and who violated his contract with the soil, his feldde—those called to Unity’s barn are bound together in what the Gawain poet terms “‘clennesse’’: Clennesse of be comune and clerkes clene lyuynge Made vnitee holy chirche in holynesse stonde. (B 19.379-80; C 21.379-80)

By paying back what he owes, Unity’s faithful worker fulfills the new contract between God and man and properly maintains his felde. In Piers Plowman generally the view of the felde alters from the beginning scenes, where it is social and exterior, to the later scenes, where it is individual and psychological. But it never entirely loses its social characteristics: in the dreamer’s vision of Antichrist’s attack on Unity, those with Grace and who follow Conscience draw together in their barn. They form

a beleaguered community, a fellowship, pressured from without and within by friars (hypocrisy, as in the Roman de la Rose and antifraternal literature generally),?° doubts, and backslidings. The fe/de is both where one falls in vntyme, pridefully denying one’s brother and God, and where one is saved, laboring humbly in the vineyard. It is both a place of humility, simple and active, from which one feeds one’s neighbors, and a place of learning and contemplation, where evangelists and exegetes harrow and cultivate Scripture.

A transformation of another kind may be said to occur when, in B | passus 20 (C passus 22), we understand the narrative’s actions to take place not just in exterior locales that Will beholds in dreams but in the narrator’s

own life (such is the fiction). Will describes how Elde attacks him and renders him bald and impotent: He buffetted me aboute be moub and bette out my wangteep;

And gyued me in goutes: I may no3t goon at large. And of be wo pat I was Inne my wyf hadde rube And wisshed ful witterly pat I were in heuene.

For pe lyme pat she loued me fore and leef was to feele On nyghtes namely, whan we naked weere,

_ [ne myghte in no manere maken it at hir wille, So Elde and heo hadden it forbeten. (B 20.191-98; C 22.191-98)

This transformation, coming as it does toward the end of the work and as part of closure, owes something to penitential literature, especially as re, 36 See Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, pp. 247-87, esp. pp. 276-87.

222 THE WORLD GROWN OLD | pentance was incorporated into fourteenth-century narrative literature.*’ But it also helps to define the relation between the narrator and the world grown old. As Penn Szittya has put it: “With his mowed head, his gout, his limp ‘lyme,’ his deaf ear, and his ‘wangteep’ banged out, Will stands as a fittingly battered representative of the senescence of the world.’’** Will, too, is implicated in the decay of society; his hands are by no means clean, his conscience not entirely clear. The world’s sickness unto death is advanced not by impersonal, exterior forces but by individual, personal failings, in word as well as in work. The will—and Will himself—is es-

pecially involved. For this reason (and others, involving the nature of things), it is very difficult to do well.

3. Piers, Poverty, and the World Grown Old I have already alluded to the current split in studies of Piers Plowman between those who would interpret the narrative chiefly as a social document that reflects (or masks) fourteenth-century political or economic realities and those who would regard it primarily as a theological poem or an aesthetic object. The reason for the apparent polarity may have as much to do with Langland’s practices of composition as with a meaningful division between modern critical camps. Langland has a pronounced tendency to cast spiritual issues in social terms and images’’ and to cast social, material issues in spiritual terms and images. Nowhere in Piers Plowman

can this practice be better seen and understood than in the sections on poverty and work. A number of Langland scholars have recently argued that Piers, as a plowman (bovarius), cannot be truly representative of the indigent classes because he owns a team of oxen as well as a (very) small plot of land. In Piers Plowman B passus 6, Piers acts as an employer, hiring workers and setting them to work on the half-acre. According to this argument, which depends for its force on extrinsic historical evidence—actual fourteenth37T discuss this trope in Boccaccio, Mandeville, Deguileville, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer, in “Chaucer’s Repentance.” Of this passage, which has sometimes misleadingly been called “autobiographical,” Pearsall has written in his edition of the C text: “Though the dreamer has no proper part in the action, and though, in a larger way, it is not possible to relate the poem’s sequence to the chronology of the dreamer’s life (see XI 189, XII 1, and cf. J. F. Adams, ‘P.P/. and the Three Ages of Man,’ JEGP 61, 1962, 23-41), the interlude gives a poignant personal focus to the vision of the world running down to destruction” (p. 369). Salter regards Will’s so-called “autobiographical” sequence as conventional and compares it with a similar passage in Poemma Morale (“Contexts of Piers Plowman,” p. 23). See also John Bowers, The Crisis of Will in Piers

Plowman, chap. 7, and Middleton, “Langland’s Lives.” 38 Antifraternal Tradition, p. 274. 39 Simpson, “Spirituality and Economics.”

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 223 century husbandmen—Langland’s Piers misrepresents the poor or oppressed estates: he is relatively prosperous, not unlike the “capitalist farmers,” in R. H. Hilton’s phrase, who took active roles in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Moreover, as Elizabeth Kirk has shown so well, it was by

no means inevitable that Langland should settle upon a plowman as a virtuous figure for the peasantry, since literary plowmen before (and sometimes after) Piers Plowman could be portrayed as Cain-like symbols of earth and earthiness. John Gower, for example, denounces plowmen in Vox clamantis as “sluggish” and “grasping.’’*!

The evidence from the poem itself (and from some other fourteenthand fifteenth-century responses to it) suggests that Langland drew up Piers the Plowman to represent an ideal of the virtuous peasantry. I do not mean to say that Langland regarded the peasant class as ethically or morally upright, only that he could conceive of a theologically rooted, hardworking husbandman who would be in an unimpeachable position to denounce shiftless “wasters.” Langland’s fictional Piers is not an accurate reflection of late-fourteenth-century English farmers any more than the “housbonde man” of the vineyard parable offers an authentic portrait of farmers in Christ’s time. The same might be said of Langland’s depiction of poverty generally in Piers Plowman. The narrative may contain allusions to postplague economic and political conditions in England, as David Aers and others have maintained,” but it is not a social document in the sense of a treatise de paupertate. (Nor, for that matter, is it a religious tractate de vera religione.) Langland’s near contemporaries received Piers the Plowman as both a peasant worker and a spiritual ideal. Chaucer’s Plowman, a dung carter, in lines that seem to echo Piers Plowman B 6.140-42, wolde thresshe, and therto dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every povre wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in his myght. (General Prologue I 536-38)

Just as Chaucer’s narrator extols the Plowman as ‘“‘A trewe swynkere and

a good,” a man who lives “in pees and parfit charitee,”’ so Langland’s narrator celebrates | Alle libbynge laborers pat lyuen by hir hondes, That treweliche taken and treweliche wynnen © Bond Men Made Free, p. 235.

4! Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, pp. 31-32. Kirk, “Langland’s Plowman,” esp. pp. 3-9. # Aers, “Piers Plowman and Poverty’; Pearsall, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman.”

224 THE WORLD GROWN OLD And lyuen in loue and in lawe, for hir lowe herte

Hadde pe same absolucion pat sent was to Piers.

| (B 7.61-64; A 8.63-66; cf. C 9.58-60)

The narrator of Piers the Plowman’s Crede (written between 1393 and 1401)—a work heavily influenced by Langland’s poem—goes out of his way to represent Piers as an indigent but spiritually righteous peasant, a man so poor that he guided his meager plow team in a coat “of a cloute . bat cary was y-called.”’* His hood is full of holes, and his toes poke out from his shoes. He has three children who cry out from cold and hunger. Nonetheless he has time to teach the narrator the Apostles’ Creed. Langland’s Piers, Chaucer’s Plowman, and Piers of Piers the Plowman’s Crede

, all embody the notion that “Blessed ben pore men in spirit, for the kyngdom of heuenes is herne” (Matt. 5.3; see Piers Plowman B 14.215a).“ Langland’s Piers tends a scripturally reduced plot of land (the half-acre, from 1 Kings [1 Sam.] 14.14) rather than anything like an actual field for plowing. His hiring of laborers—rather than a reference to the privileged

status of fourteenth-century plowmen—alludes to the husbandman of Christ’s parable of the vineyard, who calls workers into the vineyard at various hours for spiritual labor. The true nature of Piers’s work may be seen in his testament, which emphasizes redemption and paying back what one owes. The persons who best tend to spiritual matters (the soul) will “win” the most, says Piers, for so I bileue, Til I come to hise acountes as my crede me techep— To haue relees and remission, on pat rental I leue. The kirke shal haue my caroyne and kepe my bones + Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, ed. Skeat, line 422. For the entire passage in question, see lines 423-41, pp. 16-17. Henceforth quotations from Piers the Plowman’s Crede are taken from Skeat’s edition. Derek Pearsall is correct to argue that Piers the Plowman’s Crede depicts poverty “to reveal the hypocrisy of the so-called poor friars” (“Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” p. 169), but the portrayal of Piers and his family comes close in spirit to Langland’s “concern for the sufferings of poor people” (p. 167). * In most B manuscripts spiritu (“‘in spirit”) is omitted. Kane-Donaldson’s text of this line reads, “Beati pauperes quoniam ipsorum est regnum celorum.” Some medieval Vulgate copies apparently contained this reading, since it also appears in Dives and Pauper A.3: “‘Beati inquit pauperes quoniam ipsorum est regnum celorum [Mt. 5:3], Blyssid be the pore folk, sey3t he, for to hem longgy3t the kyngdam of heuene” (2-4). The omission emphasizes the poor rather than the spiritually humble. Later on in the same chapter, Pauper quotes the same passage from Matt. 5, but this time it includes the reading “spiritu”: “And perfore sey3t Crist in the gospel: Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum est regnorum celorum [Mt. 5:3], Blissyd been pey pat been pore in spyry3t and in wy] for here is the kyngdam of heuene” (A.3.78-80, ed. Barnum, 1:54, 56).

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 225 | For of my corn and my catel he craued pe tipe; I paide hym prestly for peril of my soule.. .. (B 6.88-93; A 7.80-85; C 8.97-102)

There is a smooth transition between remissions of sins in the Book of Life (“pat renta?’) and the tithes Piers renders to the parish priest. Piers’s work, that is, is a version of “vedde quod debes’’; and to the extent that the

laborers undermine the common profit by failing to perform necessary manual labor, they subvert the spiritual enterprise. On the issue of “common profit” and work, David Aers has argued vigorously against the theological interpretation of work in Piers Plowman,

an interpretation that he believes fails to acknowledge that the appeal to custom and tradition—the work that laborers used to do—was “‘a contested category in a field riven by struggles between social groups” (Aers’s em-

phasis). He quotes Robert Jordan, disapprovingly, to the effect that, in late-fourteenth-century culture and literature, “one must realize that ‘all things were theological’ and that ‘the layman’s philosopher was . . . Boethius.’ ”’*5 Aers is most persuasive concerning the contradictions in the text’s stance on the poor: on the one hand it seems open to hardships visited on the indigent, but on the other hand it manifests a strong work ethic, including denunciations of the idle poor and those who market their labor to the highest bidder. Drawing on Michel Mollat’s findings on attitudes toward the poor and poverty in the late Middle Ages, Aers situates Piers Plowman in a cultural transition from the “sanctification of poverty” to the “glorification of property.” In Defensio curatorum (1357) Richard FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh and scourge of the begging friars, could claim that “pouert is be effect of synne.”” He argues the point from Adam and primitive history: “Pat pouert is pe effect of synne, y preue hit, for 3if oure forme fader & moder hadde neuer y-synned, schuld neuer haue be pore man or oure kynde.” On the other hand, “riches is good hauyng & worpi to be loued of God, for he is richest of alle, & pouert is contrarie & ys priuacioun of riches; panne pouert is evel; panne pouert is no3t worpi 45 Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, pp. 30, 31. For Aers’s further discus-

sion of tensions and contradictions in Langland’s depiction of the poor and the ruling classes, see Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination, chaps. 1 and 2. Aers argues,

for example, “The significant presence of merchants in Langland’s world had been vividly refracted in the poem, yet the traditional ideology the poet wished to affirm could not integrate their practices and basic motivations” (p. 23). Also: “in the last resort Langland was to remain the poet of incarnate man, of the existence of individual spirit in the social and material world” (p. 24). 46 Aers, “Piers Plowman and Poverty,” p. 8, quoting from Gordon Leff, who in turn was characterizing the sentiments of Pope John XXII. For the significance of Mollat’s work and the Sorbonne school, see Aers, ibid., p. 5, and Pearsall, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” pp. 170-73 and n. 11.

226 THE WORLD GROWN OLD to be loued for hit-silf aloon.”’*’ Aers is less convincing in his arguments

that the text arises largely from cultural conditions and “mentalities” in | Langland’s specific historical moment, since this argument requires that Aers downplay and even assail the poem’s spiritual elements while at the same time superimposing historical sources on the poetic text, as if the latter were determined by the former. This method tends also to obscure or distort Langland’s use of Scripture and monastic sources. Derek Pearsall, too, has emphasized the social, economic, and political elements of work in C passus 8 (B passus 6); and he is quite correct to say that the “spiritual dimension” in passus 8 is “inexplicit” and that it appears most strongly in the later plowing scene (C 21.258), “which is exclusively spiritual and totally non-literal.”’** I would argue, however, that it is very

| difficult (if not impossible) to separate the nonliteral, social or economic dimension from the spiritual dimension (as in the example of the Luxembourg coin). Langland represents work and the work ethic in Piers Plowman as a version of the spiritual ideal of paying back what one owes (“‘redde quod debes’’ or the reddite ethic). One helps pay back a debt when one works, whether this work is manual labor (plowing) or praying, the ways of Martha and Mary (or Hawkyn and Patience) respectively. Langland seems uninterested in bracketing social scenes as different in kind and quality from spiritual interpretations of those scenes, although some representations (as in C passus 21) better lend themselves to allegory than others. The work ethic in Piers Plowman echoes sentiments in the Distichs of Cato, the poetic aphorisms first compiled about a.p. 200 and later attrib-

uted to Cato the Censor (Cato the Elder), which intertwine simple morality with the common profit: Sipen dredful is dep, diliueret In eorpe to al monkunne,

Do pi labour eueri day | Sum good forte winne.

Do well on earth, and the reward will be eternal life. Similarly, bear poverty patiently, and the reward will be the kingdom of heaven, as in the phrase ‘“‘Paupertatis onus pacienter ferre memento” (B 6.315; C 8.338):

Sipen pat kynde hab be formed A luytel naked chylde, 47 From John of Trevisa’s translation of FitzRalph’s Defensio curatorum, in Dialogus, ed. Parry, p. 80. I derived this material from David Aers, “Piers Plowman and Poverty,” . 8.

° 48 Note to C 8.2 in his edition of the C text, p. 146.

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 227 Pe charge of pouert loke pou bere,

And beo bobe meke & mylde.*? In Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, as I tried to demonstrate in Chapter

3, false poverty—manifested through the fraudulent mendicant Faussemblant—was an important issue de senectute mundi. The lover had to win his Rose through the hypocrisy and deceit of the friar. Langland tackles the issue of false poverty from a slightly different perspective, although there might well be affiliations between Jean’s and Langland’s representations. Jean depicts Faussemblant as a teacher riddled with self-contradictions, a threat to charity and to true Christians. Langland concerns himself instead with the corruptions of the ideal of work and the deceits that arise through sloth. In B passus 6 Langland portrays the laborers’ work stoppages as something like massive civil disobedience against Piers the Plowman (the ideal of work) and against Truth itself. In the C version, passus 9, Langland attacks false hermits and other “lollers,” including mendicant friars with “fatte chekes”’ (line 208), who break obedience with their rules and thus break faith with the work ethic and the principle of reddite. This passage features an unusual critique of bishops who fail their congregations, al-

lowing the “sheep” to become “‘scabbed” and the wolf to befoul the “wool.” Langland demands of such prelates, in Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon theme, ‘“‘Redde racionem villicacionis or in arrerage fall” (line 274); and he develops the reddite theme in an eschatological sequence:

Thyn huyre, herde, as y hope, hath nat to quyte thy dette Ther as mede ne mercy may nat a myte availle, But “‘haue this for pat tho bat thow toke Mercy for mede, and my lawe breke.” Loke now for thy lacchesse what lawe wol the graunte, Purgatorye for thy paie ore perpetuel helle,

(C 9.275-81) |

| For shal no pardon preye for 30w there ne no princes [lettres]. The failures and corruption exist not only among the higher clergy but also, as the narrator implies, in the three estates generally. The entire social fabric has deteriorated through disobedience and laxity; all—‘‘religious of religioun,” “LLewede men,” and “lordes”—reject the dictates of 49 Liber Catonis, in The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript 1.61 and 1.49, ed. Furnivall, pp. 572 and 568. Burrow emphasizes the importance of the Distichs of Cato to Ricardian literature in relation to confession and penance after Lateran IV (Ricardian Poetry, pp. 106-11). The texts in various editions were much admired and earnestly studied. As Richard Hazelton has put it, “few books have been so attentively read by so many readers” (““The Christianization of ‘Cato,’ ” p. 157).

228 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Holy Church (see lines 220-39 for the social ideal). Moreover, as Geoffrey Shepherd has demonstrated in “Poverty in Piers Plowman,” there are three

| groups who do not fall into the traditional three-estates categories; and these groups—merchants, lawyers, and beggars—“are socializing and institutionalizing the characteristic acquisitiveness of the times.” Of these

the beggars are “totally excluded from the Pardon [of Piers the Plowman].’’*°

These three groups—caterpillars of the commonwealth—swirl around key moments of the narrative. When Pride observes that Piers the Plowman has sowed the four cardinal virtues, he gathers his henchmen around him and determines to introduce sophistication and complexity into the world so that Conscience will not know who is Christian and who is hea-

then, ‘Ne no manere marchaunt pat wip moneye delep / Wheiber he wynne wip right, wip wrong or wip vsure” (B 19.349-50; C 21.350-51). One of the most shocking figures of greed, the Brewere of B passus 19, not only rejects Conscience and Justice (one of the four virtues) but also proudly describes how she will cheat her customers, diluting the good ale with the thin. She attacks the whole notion of justice, the basis of “redde quod debes,” and proclaims that she refuses to “‘hakke after holynesse” (B 19.396-4o1; C 21.396-qo1). When Kynde Wit oversees the construction

| of a moat for Unity, most Christians repent except prostitutes, assizers, and summoners (B 19.367-69; C 21.368-70). A small army of priests, allied with Sloth and Coueitise and dressed “In paltokes and pyked shoes, purses and longe knyues” (B 20.219; C 22.219), assault Conscience. An

, Irish priest declares that he thinks no more about Conscience when he piles up his money than when he drinks ale. The beggars, particularly the “clamorous” or aggressive beggars, are - most symptomatic of the decay of society. I have already mentioned the passage, unique to the C text, in which supposedly holy hermits stake out begging sites on the highway, live in taverns, and beg in churches (C passus g). These “lollares, lache-draweres, lewede ermytes’’ learned their false trade from the friars, who, they note, have “fatte chekes”’ (line 208). In a gruesome passage from B passus 7, Langland describes how such false beggars fornicate, bring forth bastards, then break their bones to render them crippled and hence more pitiable for begging (lines 91-99; C 9.16670). The C text moralizes: For he pat begeth or biddeth, but yf he haue nede, He is fals and faytour and defraudeth the nedy And also gileth hym pat gyueth and taketh agayne his wille.

(9.6365)

50 “Poverty in Piers Plowman,” p. 170.

AGRARIAN METAPHOR IN PIERS PLOWMAN 229 Later on, after a discussion of the worthy poor and judgmental almsgiving,

he condemns the able-bodied who profess beggary and who seek alms under false pretenses:

| Ac beggares with bagges, pe whiche brewhous ben here churches, But they be blynde or tobroke or elles be syke, Thouh he falle for defaute pat fayteth for his lyflode, Reche 3e neuere, 3e riche, thouh suche lollares sterue. For alle pat haen here hele and here ye-syhte And lymes to labory with, and lollares lyf vsen, Lyuen azen goddes lawe and pe lore of holi churche. (C 9.98-104)

This denunciation of the able-bodied, as others have noted, echoes the sentiments and even the language of the Statute of Laborers. In his concern with the forms of begging and poverty, Langland harmonizes with Wycliffite condemnations of poverty. Margaret Aston, using Jack Upland as a point of departure, has identified three kinds of begging: innuitiva, or “tokening,” begging, Christ’s form of living or apostolic poverty; insinuativa, or “showing,” begging, the form of living adopted by maimed, crip- | pled, or severely afflicted beggars; and declamatoria, or “clamorous,” beg-

ging, adopted by assertive, demanding beggars.*! Langland extols “tokening”’ poverty as embodied in the lives of Benedict, Francis, Dominic, and other saints; but he censures displays of misfortune, doubting the sincerity of the ostensibly afflicted individuals and especially of those whose demands for alms are loud and aggressive. Works in the Piers Plowman tradition, including Piers the Plowman’s Crede, fack Upland, and Uplana’s Rejoinder to Friar Daw’s Reply extend and elaborate Langland’s critiques of false poverty. These later writings focus

their attacks squarely on the friars, however. In his attack on the four mendicant orders, Piers the Plowman condemns the hypocritical friars, and adds, Whereto beggen pise men . and ben nou3t so feble; (Hem failep no furrynge . ne clopes at full), But for a lustfull lif. in lustes to dwellen? (603-5)

Piers, in imitation of Langland’s poem (B 7.100—106; C 9.175-86), says he pities the truly needy and the infirm—those who cannot care for themselves—but not the grasping friars whose wrath he compares to the wasp’s: 51 “Caim’s Castles,” pp. 57-58.

230 THE WORLD GROWN OLD “per is no waspe in pis werlde . pat will wilfulloker styngen, / For stappyng on a too . of a styncande frere!”’ (648-49). Worse, the social climbing of beggars has brought about a deterioration of the social order, for a cobbler’s son may go to school while a lord’s son may have to kneel to a bishop who is the offspring of a beggar (744-53). Piers’s fellow rustic, Jack Upland, also finds nothing good to say about friars, who, he claims, are

“not obediente to bisshopis ne lege men to kyngis, neper pei tilien ne sowen, weden ne repen, nether whete, corn, ne gras, ne good pat men schal help but oonli hem silf.’’*? In his series of interrogatory accusations, Upland asks, Frere, sip in Goddis lawe suche clamerous beggeynge is vttirli forfendid, on what lawe groundist pou pee pus for to begge, & nameli of porer pan pou art pi silf? For sop it is pat no man schulde pus begge; for if a man suffice to hym silf bi goodis or bi strengbe, he synneb for to begge; & so if he be pore & unmy3ty panne pe peple synnep but pei visite hym or pat he begge. (275-81)

Shortly after this he questions friars: Frere, if bou pinkist it a good dede to begge for pin idil briperen at hoom,

pere eche oon of 30u hap an annuel salarie eber two, whi wolt pou not begge for pore bedrede men—porer ban 3e, febeler pan 3e, bat moun not go aboute? (285-88)

The author of Upland’s Rejoinder—a work written considerably after Fack

Upland—wastes no time in denouncing the alleged poverty of the mendicants: As to verrei pouerte, who pat wil ri3t loke, %e ben be most couetouse of alle men in erpe; For with symonye, & begrye, & sellyng of shrift, 3e pillen bope gret & smal & priue him of bileue.

| Auaricia, quod est ydolorum seruitus.*?

He decries “sturdy beggyng” (begging by hardy folk), and he quotes a “clerk” —either Langland or the author of Jack Upland—who says, “euel mote he spede / pat beggip of pe puple more pan is nede” (344-45). *2 Fack Upland, lines 72-75, ed. Heyworth, p. 57. Jack Upland probably dates from 1395-I40!I. 3 Upland’s Rejoinder, lines 142-46, in fack Upland, Friar Daw’s Reply and Upland’s Rejoinder, ed. Heyworth, p. 106. This poem exists as a marginal gloss to Friar Daw’s Reply, and the scribal hand dates to about 1450.

AGRARIAN METAPHORIN PIERS PLOWMAN 231 IF MY ARGUMENT IN THIS CHAPTER has merit, Piers Plowman should be re-

garded as more of a spiritualized historical narrative in a tradition of cler-

ical reform and the world grown old and less of a political treatise in a tradition of social realism. The chief images of the poem, expressed frequently in agrarian metaphors, are offered as if they occurred in the present time; the past and a sense of history are important forces in the narrative for establishing value and for understanding mankind’s estate. The dreamer-narrator witnesses, and the major speakers testify, that men and women in the present have abandoned the ethics associated with the com-

monwealth and the common profit. Piers Plowman and the communal work ethic—the honest work in the field of folk or the toiling in the | vineyard—may be the ideal in the narrative. Yet the narrator beholds a society in disarray, a field of folk who reject the work of the fe/de, turn away from the common profit, attack the barn of Unity, and help build Cain’s city of man through marriages contracted and births conceived “in

_-vntyme.” Langland never discovers how to satisfy the demands of the spirit (‘““How I may saue my soule”) and the demands of a Christian society in a world grown old. But like Chaucer, Gower, the Cleanness poet, Wyclif, and others, he recognizes the importance of invoking the humble ideal, Piers the Plowman, the ideal with a human face defined in large measure by his relation to his work and to the commonwealth. What I find most significant in comparing Piers Plowman with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is that the questions about self and society are juxtaposed—and left unanswered—in both: Chaucer’s Parson, Plowman, and Knight ride toward Canterbury accompanied by the Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner; Langland’s Piers, Holy Church, Reason, Conscience, Patience, Clergy, Hawkyn, Long Will, jongleurs, lawyers, assizers, friars, brewers, false hermits, and pardoners all work the same field.

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6 Social Deterioration and the Decline of Love in John Gower’s Narratives

The world empeireth every day. (Confessio amantis, Prologue 833)

JOHN GOWER, LIKE LANGLAND, claims to witness a world in decay through

all its parts. In his three major narratives—Mirour de l’omme (mid- to late 13708), Vox clamantis (completed about 1385), and Confessio amantis (first

edition about 1390; revised edition 1392-94)—he chronicles the sorry state of things and laments the world’s decline from former, better eras.' Senectus mundi is a major, recurring theme in Gower’s oeuvre; and it provides one of the chief structural elements for his trilingual writings, which concern, as George Coffman and Russell Peck have both emphasized, “‘a philosophy of living.”? In Gower we find a strong concern with ethics, morality, and didacticism, which Janet Coleman has identified as significant components of late-fourteenth-century literature.* His works, more than those of other Ricardian writers, are cast in an admonitory or hor' Quotations from Gower’s works are from Macaulay’s four-volume edition, cited by book and line numbers for each poem. Translations from Mirour de l’omme (hereafter Mirour) are from the Wilson translation as revised by Van Baak; translations from Vox clamantis (hereafter Vox) are from the Stockton translation. Henceforth Confessio amantis will be abbreviated Confessio. ? Coffman, “John Gower,” p. 61; Peck, Kingship and Common Profit, p. xix. > Coleman, Medieval Readers and Writers, p. 124: “There developed an increasing

concern to write didactically and to be personally instructive and exhorting.” Paul Strohm has demonstrated that Jean of Angouléme, a fifteenth-century reader of Chaucer’s writings, preferred familiar stories along with an “‘avoidance of extremes of solace and sentence’”’—the approach to storytelling that John Shirley approved and that Gower consistently achieved; see ‘“‘Jean of Angouléme,” pp. 74-75. For valuable observations on how Gower transcends the traditional complaint writings, see Clogan, “From Complaint to Satire.”

233

234 THE WORLD GROWN OLD tatory tone; and he, more than other late-medieval writers, offered broadbased theories concerning the world’s senescence. It might be helpful, even if oversimplified, to characterize his three narratives, in French, Latin, and English respectively, as an anatomy of humankind (Mirour); an anatomy of contemporary society (Vox); and an anatomy of love (Confessio). In each the idea of the world grown old plays

a crucial role; all three are analytic and owe more than a little to the sermones ad status, sermons analyzing the estates, such as Wimbledon’s sermon on the theme ‘“Redde racionem villicacionis tue” (“3elde reckynyng of thi baili’’). In the Mzrour the narrator traces the root condition of the three estates—corruption—to human sin; in the Vox the narrator conjures up a world in crisis and utter disarray as a result of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; and in the Confessio the lover Amans learns that human sins are to blame for love’s decline. Gower endeavors to situate individuals within the broadest possible contexts. He is most effective when he includes his own character, the narrator, within those narrative structures;

but this narrator is set apart from his fellow humans. Gower portrays himself—his narrative “T’’—as an observer of human folly in love (Mirour),

as a prophetic voice crying out in the wilderness (Vox), or as a solitary lover-student who must be instructed in love’s ways (Confessio). In each work this lonely voice must oppose the forces of social, institutional, and personal decay while championing traditional moral and ethical values.

1. The Social Consequences of Sin: Mirour de l’omme Gower’s Mirour resembles Langland’s Piers Plowman in its depiction of

social deterioration throughout the three estates. From lines 18421 to 27360 Gower provides a social anatomy de senectute mundi, beginning with

the court of Rome and the clergy, through the nobility, and finally to the commonalty. “Je voi peril en toutz estatz,” says the narrator. (“I see peril in every estate.”) In certain ways Gower’s treatment of the estates recalls

the Latin, French, and earlier English traditions of venality satire and poems such as The Apocalypse of Golias and The Simonie. But although there

is a plangent tone to the Mirour, it is not so much extended complaint as something more akin to satire—or, as I want to call it, anatomy (or meditation). Gower titles the Mirour “Speculum Meditantis” in a colophon to the Confessio,t which reveals that he thought of his French narrative as a

work in the tradition of “mirror of human life.” As a “mirror” it is remarkably complete and abstract, a contemplation of the human condition + The Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, 3:479. The phrase “Speculum Meditantis” occurs in the last colophon: ““Titulusque libelli istius Speculum Meditantis nuncupatus est.” The earlier colophon reads, ‘Speculum hominis.”

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 235 in its relation to divine justice that seems to owe more than a little to preaching and sermones ad status.’ Humans in each of the estates fail to live

up to their callings; and the narrator stresses the importance of “legal justice and regal responsibility for all the estates, defined in terms of ‘le bien commune.’ ”’® Few would argue that Gower’s portrait of society is meant to be realistic or drawn from actual contemporary conditions. It is schematic: a hierarchical “field full of folk,” with the estates proceeding in their traditional order—clergy, nobility, commonalty—not, as in Chaucer, nobility, clergy, commonalty. Gower attacks both the pope and the papal curia, saying that the church is disfigured and ruined by a two-headed “monstre” (18830), the papal schism of 1378. (The Great Schism will become a prominent topic in the Confessio.) The cardinals, he says, are so venal that they look for more than their annual salaries: they require additional profits from business deals and graft. In The Simonie, which dates from about 1321 and which was a source for Piers Plowman, the pope’s clerks have determined among themselves that they will slay Treuthe if he should ever come to the curia: Among none of the cardinaus dar he noht be sein, For feerd, If Symonie may mete wid him he wole shaken his berd.’

Bishops, archdeacons, and deans act no better, in Gower’s portrayal. Of the dean, for example, Gower says, Le dean, qui son proufit avente, Par tout met les pecchés au vente A chascun homme quelqu’il soit, Maisqui’il en poet paier le rente. (20101-4) (The dean, who follows after his profit, puts sins on sale everywhere to

, any man whatever, provided he can pay the price.) These lines might be compared with The Simonie, lines 193-98, which emphasize the dean’s susceptibility to bribery and corruption: 5 Fisher, Jobn Gower, pp. 141-47. For a recent comprehensive examination of Gower’s oeuvre from historical and rhetorical standpoints, see Yeager, John Gower’s Poetic. Yeager’s work supplements and extends Fisher’s groundbreaking study; Fisher, Yeager, and others have altered our view of Ricardian literature through their focus on Gower’s achievements. ‘Fisher, fohn Gower, p. 178. 71 quote from lines 16-18 of my edition of The Simonie in Medieval English Political Writings, p. 193. All quotations from The Simonie refer to this edition.

236 THE WORLD GROWN OLD And officials and denes that chapitles sholden holde, Theih sholde chastise the folk, and theih maken hem bolde. Mak a present to the den ther thu thenkest to dwelle, And have leve longe i-nouh to serve the fend of helle To queme.

, For have he silver, of sinne taketh he nevere yeme. In sequences that anticipate Chaucer’s Parson of the Canterbury pilgrimage, Gower describes “Les bons curetz du temps jadis” (“good parish priests of olden days”), who would give their rent to their parish church and to the poor, retaining only a third for themselves. “D’oneste vie ils essampleront / Et leur voisins et leur soubgitz” (20447—48; “They gave - an example of honorable life to their neighbors and their subjects’). Priests of his own day—so the narrator alleges—either leave their parishes for the sake of economic gain or remain and chase after women. Gower models many passages on the rhetorical construction of “jadis . . . mais ore.” For example,

Jadys le nombre estoit petit Des prestres, mais molt fuist parfit, Et plain d’oneste discipline Sanz orguil ne fol appetit; Mais ore ensi comme infinit Om voit des prestres la cretine, Mais poy sont de la viele line; Ainz, comme la vie q’est porcine, Chascun se prent a son delit, Barat, taverne et concubine: Ce sont qui tournont la doctrine Du sainte eglise a malvois plit. (20509-20) (In olden times the number of priests was small, but they were very perfect and full of honest discipline, without pride or wanton appetite. But now a flood of priests is seen as if infinite in number, but there are only few of the old lineage. On the contrary, for his delight each one—in swinish living—takes on decettfulness, drinking, and a concubine. These are the ones who bring the teaching of Holy Church to evil plight.)

Gower devotes one of the longest sections in the Mirour to mendicant friars (21181—780). His emphasis on friars confirms their important place in discussions de senectute mundi: late-medieval writers characterize the mendicant orders as the most hypocritical and corrupt institutions in a vicious society. The narrator records all the antifraternal charges of the

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 237 later Middle Ages: the friars’ fabled hypocrisy and rapacity, their love of sumptuous food and wines, their ornate convents, their rejection of the saintly forms of living of Francis and Dominic in favor of creature comforts and materialism, their consorting with the powerful and rich rather than the poor, their recruitment of inappropriate young people, their arrogation of powers of confession and burial (to the detriment of priests), their fraternization with women, and their increasing numbers. He laments the decline of the institution of mendicancy as he says, in a formulation de senectute mundi (one of many such), Jadys les freres du viel temps Molt plus ameront en tous sens A estre bons q’a resembler: Mais si cils q’ore sont presentz Soient semblable as bonnez gentz, Del estre soit comme puet aler.

Poverte scievont bien precher

As autres et soy avancer: Ce piert par tout en les coventz, Car cil qui ne sciet profiter Al ordre du bien seculier Ne serra point de les regentz. (21505-16) (In olden days the friars preferred in every way to be good rather than to seem to be good. But nowadays if they look like good people, they do not care whether they really are. They know how to preach poverty to others while advancing themselves. This shows up everywhere in the monasteries, for he who does not know how to make the order profit from

worldly wealth never becomes one of its officers.) ,

In a passage on nobles that anticipates Chaucer’s concerns with the gentility trope (inner virtue, not inherited riches, determines true gentility), Gower touches upon the subject of John Ball’s sermon theme; he observes that all people stem from Adam and that blood is blood. His

irony is keen: “ja nasquist si riches nuls / Qui de nature ot un pigas” (23393-9094; “No rich man was ever born naturally wearing pointed shoes’’). He does not hesitate to claim that, in terms of material composition (flesh as matter), there is no difference between noble and villein: Seigneur de halt parage plain, Ne t’en dois faire plus haltain, Ne lautre gent tenir au vil; Tous suismes fils de dame Evain.

238 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Seigneur, tu qui me dis vilain, Comment voes dire q’es gentil? Si tu le dis, je dy nenil: Car certes tout le flom de Nil Ne puet hoster le sanc prochain De toy, qui te fais tant nobil, Et du vilein q’en son cortil Labourt pour sa vesture et pain.

(23401-12)

(O noble full of high rank, you should not make yourself more haughty, nor consider other people to be vile; we are all children of lady Eve. Noble, you who call me villein, how can you say that. you are gentle? If I should say it, you are not gentle at all; for indeed all the River Nile cannot separate your blood—which makes you so noble—from the blood of the villein who labors on his farm for his clothing and food.)

This sequence comes after his singling out of Lombard tyrants as examples of highborn men who lack noble qualities: Trestous les vices ont au mein, Mais ore, helas! trop communer

S’en vait par tout leur essampler; Dega et pardela la mer Chascuns s’en plaint, pres et longtein, Qe la malice en seigneurer Confont le povre labourer, Et le burgois et le forein. (23249-56) (They have absolutely all the vices at hand; and nowadays, alas, their examples have spread everywhere. On both sides of the ocean, everyone far and near complains that wickedness in the lords brings the poor working man, the burgher, and the foreigner alike to ruin.)

These issues—Lombard tyrants, true gentility—are precisely the ones that Chaucer treats in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and Gentilesse.2 Of the fighting class—the chivalers and the gens d’armes—he notes 8 See Olsson, “Gentilesse in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis’; and Saul, “Chaucer and Gentility.” In The Wife of Bath’s Tale the narrator cites Dante but not Gower or Jean de Meun. Fisher in his edition, after noting the parallels to be found in Dante’s Convivio 4, Boece 3, and the Roman de la Rose 18577-916, comments, “But none of these puts the medieval commonplace about natural gentilesse in the context of marriage the way Gower does in Mirour de ’omme 17329ff. As in choosing to retell the tales of Constance and Florent in the first place, Chaucer may have been influenced by his old friend to include the gentilesse motif in the marriage argument” (p. 124 note to The Wife of Bath’s Tale III 1109).

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 239 that knighthood has more to do with social advancement than with virtue; knights have abandoned fighting in favor of lucrative commerce. These types have brought the world into a topsy-turvy state:

| Sur tout se pleignt la gent menour En disant que du jour en jour Le siecle s’en vait enpirant; Mais qui voet dire la verrour, Ly chivaler de son errour Et l’escuier de meintenant, Ascuns qui s’en vont guerroiant, Ascuns a l’ostell sojournant, Le covoitous et l’orguillour, Sont en partie malfesant, Par quoy trestout le remenant Du siecle est mellé de folour. (24169—80)

(Espectally the little people are complaining, saying that the world ts getting worse day by day. But, to tell the truth, the knights with their ~ misdeeds, along with the squires of nowadays—some going off to make war, others staying home—the proud and the covetous, are, in part, the evildoers through whom all the rest of the world is embroiled in madness.)

Gower seems to indicate here that the grans seignours and the knightly estate are more responsible for the decay of society than are the lower estates. The failures of powerful social leaders and institutions such as the law provide an important index of the world grown old in both Gower and Chaucer.’ Gower’s depiction most resembles Langland’s in his treatment of the acquisitive, mercantile classes—the “wasters,”’ as Langland would put it. Gower’s narrator discovers Fraud (Triche) among merchants and the trades. The tavernkeeper mixes new wine with old, and people fall sick from his enterprise. And the brewer—like Langland’s Brewere (B passus 19)—cheats his customers by making bad ale from bad grain or pricing good ale much too high, as high as wine (25993-26017). The baker, like Chaucer’s Miller, has a “thombe of golde.” If there were real justice in the world (“droiture en juggement’’), thieving bakers would be hanged, says the narrator, since bread is one of life’s necessities. The shopkeeper (regratier or regratour) scrutinizes weights and measures when he buys ° For Gower’s impeachment of the law, see 24806-14, which begins, “Om dist que tout estat enpire, / Mais certes nuls est ore pire / Des tous les seculers estatz / Qe n’est

la loy....”

240 THE WORLD GROWN OLD retail goods; but when he—or especially she—sells them to povertystricken customers, “La tierce en falt de son certein” (26321; “A third part is surely lacking’’). The narrator moralizes, Trop vait le mond du mal en pis, Qant cil qui garde les berbis Ou ly boviers en son endroit Demande a estre remeriz

| Pour son labour plus que jadys Le mestre baillif ne soloit: Et d’autre part par tout I’en voit, Quiconque labour que ce soit, Ly labourier sont de tieu pris, Qe qui sa chose faire en doit, La q’om jadys deux souldz mettoit, Ore il falt mettre cink ou sis. (26437-48) (The world is going from bad to worse when the shepherd or the herdsman demands to be paid more for his work than previously the overseer used to receive. And on the other hand, one sees everywhere that laborers of all sorts are so high-priced that whoever has to have something done must invest five or six shillings in what previously cost two shillings.)

Invoking something like a golden-age ethic, the narrator complains that workers used to content themselves with bread made from coarse grains or beans while drinking water, but now they demand wheat bread, cheese, and milk. They once wore clothing of “gray material” (“Du gris’’): “Lors fuist le monde au tiele gent / En son estat bien ordiné” (26459—60; “At that time the world was well-ordained for people of their estate”). But the old ways, he says, have been turned upside down: “Ore est tourné de sus en jus” (26462). Throughout the estates—and indeed throughout the Mirour—Gower measures the modern instances against the ancient models and finds the

moderns wanting. The construction “jadys ... mais ore,” as has been noted, is one of the most common (if not the most common) rhetorical constructions of the poem. Although the sentiments are conventional and in some cases antiquated, Gower provides instances of abuses drawn from his own society to illustrate the deterioration (as he characterizes it) in the social fabric. I would even term his indictments daring, for he does not hesitate to castigate the rich and powerful, from venal prelates, to the king, to the English magnates, and down to the local haberdasher and retailer. He is quite willing to portray—often in a way reminiscent of Langland— _ the viciousness of the estates as they prey upon one another.

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 241 Once the narrator chronicles the estates, he turns from symptoms to disease, locating the problem (as he will do in his other narratives) in individual humans (chascuns) and in sin. He concludes his section on the estates with a more general focus on evil: Les uns diont, “Le siecle enpire,” Les uns, “Le siecle est a despire.”’ Chascuns le blame en son endroit, Chascuns le siecle vient maldire, Mais je ne sai ce q’est a dire, Qe l’en le siecle blamer doit; Et pour cela, si bon vous soit, Je pense a demander le droit Pour quoy le siecle est ore pire Qe jadis estre ne soloit: Car chascun de sa part le voit, N’est qui les mals poet desconfire.

(26593604) (Some say, ‘“The world is getting worse’; others, ““Ihe world 1s to be despised.” Each one blames it in his turn, each one curses the world, but I know not what is to be said nor what in the world ought to be blamed. And therefore, if you agree, I am thinking of asking why the world ts now worse than it used to be formerly. Everyone for his part sees this, and there is no one who can defeat evil.)

His question is somewhat disingenuous (or rhetorical), since he returns to this theme of the world grown old and human responsibility in both the Vox and the Confessio.

2. The World Upside-Down: Vox clamantis and Cronica

tripertita The Vox clamantis (the ‘“‘vois of a crier [in desert]’’) is a plaintive analysis of the spiritual significance of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (book 1) followed by a general anatomy of human sin (books 2-7), while the Cronica tripertita offers reflections on the career and downfall of Richard II. Both works were executed in Anglo-Latin elegiac couplets; and both use occa-

sions—the revolt and Richard’s deposition and death—as opportunities for moralizing and for reflection on the human condition. Although the Vox adopts the Peasants’ Revolt as its point of departure, Gower may have written book 1 in the mid-1380s and then attached it to the beginning of the Latin narrative as a prologue. Gower completed books 2-7 probably between the time of completing Mirour (about 1377)

242 THE WORLD GROWN OLD and 1381. The narrator of book 1 is much less interested in telling the story and getting the historical facts straight than in moralizing upon the events and explaining what they mean from a larger perspective. He assumes everyone agrees that the revolt, whatever the failings of King Richard and his ministers, was an unmitigated horror, the animalistic frenzy of an unruly mob of peasants (“seruiles rustici”) that rose up against “‘free men and nobles of the kingdom” (“ingenuos et nobiles regni’’). He constantly speaks of his anxieties; Janet Coleman has termed Gower “a remarkable spokesman for the emergent gentry and bourgeoisie, fearful of

the traditional world being turned upside down by the rising third estate.” !° His characterizations of the peasants, in other words, correspond both in language and in conception to those of the chroniclers, including Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Jean Froissart, the Westminster Chronicle, and others; all of those histories cast the insurgents as demons and regard the revolt as a great evil that descended on the land like the plague. Gower’s testimony differs from the chronicle versions in that he frames the story in imitation of scriptural dream-vision form (with the narrator as Daniel or John of Patmos), and he adds classical turns of phrase drawn from Ovid.'! Although he mentions a number of specific personalities and events—Richard II (chap. 1), Wat Tyler (chaps. 9, 19), the burning of John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace and of St. John’s Priory at Clerkenwell (chap. 13), the grisly execution of Simon Sudbury (chap. 14), the storming of the Tower of London (chap. 18)—book 1 remains remarkably

| unexplicit and tenebrous.” ,

In the copy of the Vox in All Souls College, Oxford, MS 98 (the manuscript upon which G. C. Macaulay based his edition), Gower frames his _ narrative with a dedicatory epistle to Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in which he emphasizes his infirmities—his advanced age (he was probably in his mid-fifties but had experienced considerable illness) and

his blindness. In the headnote he speaks of himself as “‘senex et cecus Iohannes Gower” (“John Gower, an old and blind man’’). Then in the verse epistle proper, he says: Cecus ego mere, nequio licet acta videre,

| Te tamen in mente memorabor corde vidente. Corpore defectus, quamuis michi curua senectus Torquet, adhuc mentem studio sinit esse manentem.

| (17-20)

10 Medieval Readers and Writers, p. 129. Andrew Galloway explains what Gower has to fear from the rebels in “Gower in His Most Learned Role.” '' For the prophetic strain, see Peck, “John Gower and the Book of Daniel.” For Gower’s imitations of Ovidian lines, see the The Major Latin Works of fohn Gower, trans. Stockton (citing Macaulay), pp. 26-28; and Yeager, John Gower’s Poetic, pp. 48-51. 12 Fisher, John Gower, pp. 172-73.

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 243 (I am virtually blind, but granted that I cannot see what ts going on, I shall still remember you in my heart through my mina’s eye. However much halting old age racks me, the defect of my body has up to this time allowed my mind to remain active.)

He insists on his debilities, as he will again in the Confessio, where he presents himself finally as an aged, sick lover: senex amans.? Old age and the world grown old were significant, related themes in Gower’s writings. In the Vox Gower portrays a deteriorating society and a world turned upside down. The narrator professes amazement at the transmogrification of citizens into men who behave like beasts, and he worries that the order of things has been changed permanently and for the worse. The sentiments and imagery may be commonplace (at least this is how modern readers of the Vox sometimes characterize them), but the accumulation of details in the narrative is impressive. Eric Stockton has pointed out that the entire Vox contains about as many lines as Virgil’s Aeneid.'* (Book 1, on the Peasants’ Revolt, has 2,150 lines, about the same length as Aeneid 1-3.) Two points merit special attention: first, the occasion of book 1; second, Gower’s treatment of that occasion. The fact that Gower devoted 2,150 lines to an identifiable historical event, the Peasants’ Revolt, is unusual in Ricardian narrative. The only narrative precedent for this exploitation of occasion in narrative (as opposed to in anonymous lyric) is Langland’s

belling-of-the-cat episode in passus 1 and perhaps the episode of Lady Mede at Westminster. But Gower’s occasion is unmistakable, whereas Langland’s fictionalized incidents have been matters of scholarly debate. Chaucer probably alludes to contemporary occasions in The Parliament of Fowls and The House of Fame, but modern scholars have argued about the

historical events. The Gawain poet keeps the focus on biblical history (Patience, Cleanness), on romance fiction (S7r Gawain and the Green Knight),

or on apocalyptic vision (Pearl). After Gower, at least one Ricardian poet was willing to venture into the arena of narrative occasion, namely, the author of Richard the Redeless. Some short quasi-narrative poems should be mentioned in this context: a poem on Richard II’s ministers (“There is a busch that is forgrowe’’); a poem addressed to Henry IV warning of | “false reportours” and “‘tale-tellere” (“For drede ofte my lippes I steke”’); and a poem on Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard sympathies (Lo, he that can be Cristes clerc’’).' 3 On old age in Gower, see Olsson, Structures of Conversion, chap. 19, and pp. 245-47. PO The Major Latin Works of fobn Gower, p. 11. 15 The poem on King Richard’s ministers, edited by William Hamper, appears in _ Archaeologia 21 (1827), 88-91; “For drede ofte my lippes I steke,” in Twenty-Six Political and Other Pieces, ed. Kail, pp. 9-14 (MEV 817); and “Lo, he that can be Cristes clerc,” in HP XIVth & XVth, ed. Robbins, pp. 243-47 (MEV 1926).

244 THE WORLD GROWN OLD The early sections of the so-called Visio of the Vox concern the dreamstate transformation of the peasants—“‘Diuersas plebis sortes vulgaris iniquas”’ (“various rascally bands of the common mob’’)—into “formas ... feras” (“wild beasts”; 1.171, 176). The dreamer beholds some metamorphosed into asses, others into oxen that leave the farming implements on

the ground (1.277-98), others into swine, and still others into barking dogs, cats, foxes, assorted birds, frogs, flies, and so forth. The techniques are familiar from beast fable and perhaps inspired Chaucer, in his only clear allusion to the Peasants’ Revolt, to compare the fox’s capture of Chauntecleer at the end of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale with the confusion and noise associated with “Jakke Straw and his meynee”’ (VII 3394).

Gower also represents his account to be in the tradition of Old and New Testament apocalyptic writings. He characterizes himself as “one crying out in the wilderness” (from Isa. 40.3); and he deliberately introduces biblical-like enigma when he partly hides and partly reveals his name within the Latin verse (prologue 19-24). Russell Peck has suggested that Gower pondered Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image from the Book of Daniel, the image with feet of clay (Vox, book 7), as he wrote the Visio: “Indeed,

it is just that figure of degenerative time implicit in the clay feet of the statue that lurks so boldly in Gower’s mind as he composed the nightmarish vision of the Peasants’ Revolt, that time of crisis which precipitates book 1.”!6 At the close of the prologue he mentions that his given name is the same as the author of the Apocalypse. An apocalyptic, visionary tone governs the Vox and lends urgency to his description of political events, including his description of the revolt’s leadership. In chapter 9 Gower describes Wat Tyler, who stirred up the rebels at Maidstone with his talk of class warfare. The narrator portrays Tyler as a

learned jackdaw (“graculus”), a bird credited with mimicking human speech, who was nonetheless skilled in oratory (‘“‘in arte loquendi’’). (Later on the author of Friar Daw’s Reply will say his name is ‘Friar Daw Topias’’;

he replies to “Jack Upland.” Together they form a Jack-Daw sequence.) As is typical of the chroniclers as well, Gower brings all his rhetorical skills

to bear on representing Tyler as a devilish leader. His facial expression was “‘fierce,” and he resembled a death’s head (“‘mortis ymago”’), as if he

were one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. According to the narrator, Tyler spoke ‘“‘such words” (‘‘talia verba’’) as these to incite the mob: O seruile genus miserorum, quos sibi mundus Subdidit a longo tempore lege sua,

Iam venit ecce dies, qua rusticitas superabit, 16 “John Gower and the Book of Daniel,” p. 167. For Gower’s forma prophetials in the Vox, see Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, pp. 168-77.

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 245 Ingenuosque suis coget abire locis. Desinat omnis honor, periat ius, nullaque virtus, Que prius extiterat, duret in orbe magis. Subdere que dudum lex nos de iure solebat,

. Cesset, et vlterius curia nostra regat. (1.693—700)

(O you low sort of wretches, which the world has subjugated for a long time by its law, look, now the day has come when the peasantry will triumph and will force the freemen to get off their lands. Let all honor come to an end; let justice perish; and let no virtue that once existed endure further in the world. Let the law give over, which used to hold us in check with its justice, and from here on let our court rule.)

As others have noted, Gower may have been at quite a remove in time when he wrote the Visio; the words he assigns to Tyler are clearly the gentry’s interpretation of what ‘Tyler said rather than anything he is likely

to have uttered. The words are vaguely reminiscent of John Ball’s harangue to the rebels at Blackheath as reported by Walsingham and Knigh-

ton. Only in his Langland-like Visio does the narrator say he heard the speech, and saw and heard everything else in book 1. After this specific reference to one of the chief leaders of the rebels, Gower describes a nightmarish—but more abstract—vision of the devil and Satan; and he characterizes London (““New Troy”) as a doomed city taken over by an alien mob. In a moral-botanical metaphor, he says, “‘Roreque sic baratri fuerat tellus madefacta, / Crescere quod virtus ammodo nulla potest” (1.73 3-34; ‘““The earth was so thoroughly soaked with the dew of hell that no virtue could flourish from that time forth”). In chapter 10 he mentions the “seven races” from Cain (presumably the seven deadly sins), but the reference to Cain is characteristic of the late-medieval English concern with the origins of human crimes and reminiscent of techniques of allusion in anticlerical lyrics. The narrator identifies the races from Cain under the apocalpytic names Gog and Magog (1.767-68). He compares the execution of Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury (on Friday, 14 June), with Cain’s murder of Abel; and he concludes that the murder of the archbishop was worse because he was the “father” whereas Abel was the brother (1.1117—18). At the close of chapter 13, he fashions an O altitudo to castigate noua Troia, his London: O denaturans vrbis natura prioris, Que vulgi furias arma mouere sinis! O quam retrograda res est, quod miles inermis Expauit, que ferus vulgus ad arma vacat! (1.979-82)

246 THE WORLD GROWN OLD (O the degenerate nature of our former city, which allowed the madly raging rabble to take up arms! O what a backward state of affairs it is that the unarmed knight shakes with fear and the barbarous mob has the leisure for fighting!)

Gower changes his narrative technique in chapters 16-17 of book 1; he includes testimony that, although still partaking of the dream format, is meant to seem more personal. ‘The headnote to this section, which is probably authorial rather than scribal, states that the material it contains is written “quasi in propria persona”—as if the events described actually happened to the author. The dream material in these chapters may well owe something to Langland’s Piers Plowman, for the combination of autobiography, dream, and history is quite similar. The narrator describes how he was forced to leave his own home and how he roamed the woods, unwilling to risk the unsafe roads: “‘Perque dies aliquot latitans, omnemque tremescens / Ad strepitum, fugi visa pericula cauens” (1.1445-46; ‘Hiding for some days, and quaking at each and every noise, I took flight, all the while guarding against the perils which I had seen”). This personalseeming testimony is an instance of one of Gower’s narrative techniques: the illusion of autobiography framed in literary and historical references. Through this technique we are meant to experience narrated events as if they were real but at the same time to understand, through the style and the allusions to Ovid and other writers, that they are also archetypal—that other exiles from their homes will experience what the narrator of Vox reports.!” At the same time Gower means for readers to experience the decay of society and the world grown old—the idea that, in other forums, might remind people of the classroom or the pulpit. The narrator almost anticipates the Elizabethan retirement motif as he describes how, fleeing the urban mob, he seeks the thickest part of the wood: Silua vetus densa nulla violata securi Fit magis ecclesiis tunc michi tuta domus.

Tunc cibus herba fuit, tunc latis currere siluis Impetus est, castra tunc quia nulla iuuant (1.143 5-36, 1451-52) (An ancient, thick wood, unviolated by any axe, then became a safer

, dwelling place for me than a church. ... The grass was then my '? Burrow, with his customary astuteness, characterizes this technique of making , meaning as “exemplification.” He distinguishes exemplification from allegory. See Medieval Writers and Their Work, pp. 108-9 (citing Gower on p. 109).

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 247 - nourishment. At that time there was a powerful impulse to run through the spreading forests, since, at this juncture, castles were not of any use.)

The narrator describes how he turned inward as he understood the mean- | ing of exile. He uses the occasion of his Ovidian-like tristia to meditate on death and human fate. Wisdom (Sophia) consoles him with the thought that he is experiencing the “wrath of God” (“numinis ira”’). There is not space enough in this study for a complete examination of the Vox, only time to mention that in books 2-6 he anatomizes society as

in decay. For example, in 2.1 the narrator observes, et ecce modo Turpiter extincta sunt nostra beata vetusta Tempora, nam presens torquet amara dies. Quam cito venerunt sortis melioris honores, Tam cito decasum prosperitatis habent: Nos cito floruimus, set flos erat ille caducus, Flammaque de stipula nostra fit illa breuis. (2.26-32) (And behold, our happy times of old have been rudely wiped out, for a bitter day afflicts the present. As fast as honors of a superior kind came, they underwent a loss of good fortune. We flourished quickly, but that flourishing was short-lived, and our brief fire was but of straw.)

In an extended whi sunt? passage from book 6, the narrator laments the downfall of just men from the past and the rise of the wicked: Decidit in mortem Noé iustus, surgit et ille Nembrot in arce Babel, spernit et ipse deum: Mortuus estque Iaphet, operit patris ipse pudenda, Set modo deridens Cham patefecit ea. Mortuus est Ysaac, oritur genus vnde beatum, Set modo degenerans [Chaym] obstat ei. Sic capit exempla nullus de lege vetusta, Quo testamentum defluit ecce nouum. (6.1215-18, 1221-22, 1239-40) (Noab the just has fallen in death, and Nimrod arises in the Tower of Babel and scorns God. faphet, who concealed the sins of his father, is dead, but the scoffing Ham now exposes them. . . . Isaac is dead, from whom the chosen race sprang, but the degenerate Cain now stands in its

248 THE WORLD GROWN OLD way.... Thus no one follows the examples of the Old Testament, so that the New Testament is becoming lost.)

These and other laments de senectute mundi are thoroughly conventional and yet given a new context by the account of the Peasants’ Revolt and Gower’s insistence throughout the Vox that there are modern applications to the ancient tropes. Throughout his narrative writings Gower implies

that modern men and women live their lives according to archetypal scripts, ways of behaving and speaking instanced in ancient scriptural and classical texts and reenacted in modern conduct. If there is anything au-

tobiographical in the Vox, it is mediated and understood through old books.

After his discussion of the estates and society in books 2-6, Gower focuses in book 7 on a prominent scriptural emblem of the world grown , old: Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image from Dan. 2. This is the same (or a similar) symbol that Dante treated in canto 14 of the Inferno in the Old Man of Crete sequence; but whereas Dante wrote of the statue in the “allegory of poets,” Gower returns to what he regards as the ancient biblical significance of the Book of Daniel:

Quod solet antiquis nuper latitare figuris, Possumus ex nostris verificare malis: Quod veteres fusca sompni timuere sub vmbra, Iam monstrat casus peruigil ecce nouus. (7-1-4) (We can establish from our own evils what is wont to lie concealed in ancient symbols. The ever-active misfortune of modern times reveals what the ancients were fearful of under the dark shadow of sleep.)

The investigation of the old symbol has special resonance because of Gow-

er’s analysis of his own times in book 1 and the anatomy of society in books 2-6. The golden head of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue has been cut off, he says, and only the feet of iron and clay remain. He describes how his

modern age has been vitiated through lust and avarice and how the virtues , of the golden age have been replaced by a lust for gold coins. ‘This last | world age—the age of clay—is a world upside-down, where the female has become the master, and the male has become weak and submissive (7.15 1-

| 52). Moreover: Fit sacer ordo vagus, fingens ypocrita sanctus, Magniloqus sapiens, stultus et ipse silens: Confessor mollis peccator fit residiuus, Verba satis sancta, facta set ipsa mala. (7.221-24)

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 249 (Holy orders become vagrant, the feigning hypocrite a saint, and the eloquent wise man a mute fool. The gentle confessor becomes an inveterate sinner: his words are saintly enough, but his actions themselves are evil.)

A consideration of the world generally occasions the mundus immundus trope (chap. 5); and Gower includes considerable material on the con-

tempt of the world, including the corruption of the body in sin and through death. All of this material, especially the meditation on the feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, prepares for the prologue of the Confessio. Also preparatory for the Confessio is the Cronica tripertita, or “tripartite chronicles,” Gower’s political narrative on the events of Richard II’s deposition by Henry IV. The focus is squarely on Richard’s faults, the conse-

quences for the kingdom, and the moral lessons to be drawn from bad kingship. The Cronica follows hard upon the Vox in the early manuscripts,

and a colophon serves both to conclude the Vox and to introduce the Cronica. The evidence suggests that Gower regarded the Cronica as at least

a companion piece to the Vox if not a continuation of it. On the other hand, the Cronica is more boldly in the chronicle tradition than anything in the Vox, the style of which is both more literary and more consciously visionary and prophetic than the historical narrative about Richard. Gower’s stated theme for the Cronica is love (broadly conceived). He finds in Richard a lack of love, or wrath, whereas he discovers charity in Henry of Derby, the man who replaced Richard. The result of this loveless

condition has been, says Gower, a realm divided against itself: “in se diuisum.”” When Richard transgressed after the Peasants’ Revolt and ceased to rule with love and justice, “fortuna cadit et humus retrogreda | vadit”’ (1.6; “fortune sank down and the land went into a decline”’). This theme of lack of charity resembles a significant topic in Richard the Redeless,

an alliterative poem in four passus, formerly ascribed to Langland, that purports to have been written between Richard’s deposition in August 1399 and his death in February 1400. It offers advice to Richard, who is called Richard “without counsel”; the anonymous author suggests that Richard’s fall was brought on by “legiance without loue” (1.24). The author cites Luke 15 on the kingdom divided against itself (2.52a); and he describes a realm without “hele,” with symptoms including courtiers in sumptuous, dagged clothing and a court that neglects Witt, who is dressed “in the olde schappe.” !® The English poem, like Gower’s Cronica, alludes to the great lords under their badges: the Swan for Thomas of Woodstock, \8 Richard the Redeless 3.213, ed. Skeat. Some courtiers cry out, “‘Lete sle him!”’ because he “‘was of the olde schappe”’ (3.236). The narrator also denounces the practices of livery and maintenance, including the wearing of badges, since they lead to lawlessness and abuse.

250 THE WORLD GROWN OLD duke of Gloucester; the Bear for Thomas, earl of Warwick; the Horse for Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel; the Boar for Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford; and the Sun for Richard himself. Gower records and comments on the events leading to Richard’s deposition; and although he turns all his rhetoric against Richard and his ministers, he ascribes the outcome of the events to God’s providence. He acts like a cheering section for the Wonderful Parliament of 1386, the Appellants, and the fates of Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk; Simon Burley (Richard’s tutor and chamberlain); John Beauchamp; Nicholas Brembre; and Robert Tresilian, chief justice of the King’s Bench. He characterizes Beauchamp, for example, as “Fallax, versutus, quasi vulpis fraude volutus, / Inuidus et paci lingua . . . loquaci’”’ (1.150—51; “False, cunning, versed in trickery like a fox, envious, and with a tongue ever prating of peace”’). As

part of what came to be regarded as the Lancastrian reform program, Gower mentions the purging of “ungodly friars” (““Absque deo fratres’’), who had served as Richard’s confessors: Fraudis in exemplum sic errat ab ordine templum, Nec cauet ille status solita de sorde reatus: Sunt ita transgressi fratres ab sacra professi, Quod personarum deus extitit vitor earum.

(1.194-97) |

, (Thus the church strayed from its path into a pattern of wrongdoing, and that institution, guilty of its customary baseness, did not beware. Thus did friars vowed to holy things transgress, so that God became the avenger upon their persons.)

| During these proceedings, according to Gower, the three just lords— Gloucester, Arundel, and Derby—stood firm and maintained the right. In the Cronica tripertita Gower offers a chief example and root cause of a senescent world. His theory, bolstered by well-attested literary and ex-

egetical traditions, is that individual malfeasance, particularly in the mighty, has a direct effect on the moral and physical climate of local con-

ditions. In the Vox Wat Tyler and the raging peasants provided the ex- | ample—an instance of a kingdom out of control and upside-down. The actions of the 1381 mob and of Richard later on manifest a lack of charity, what other writers in other works might characterize as a “cooling” of

charity. ,

3. Divided Love and the Senex Amans: Confessio amantis In this great English narrative Gower includes a profound meditation on

the world grown old as part of his anatomy of society. This setting of

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 251 senium mundi occurs in a context of the narrator’s quest to understand himself—to know, in the sentiments of popular lyrics of his day, that he is mortal. As Gower portrays the situation, both the macrocosm and the microcosm—“‘himself”’ as narrator—have decayed, and they grow feebler

every day. The world’s decay can be seen in institutions, especially the church, and in human relations, especially love.'? Gower includes many subtopics de senectute mundi, from contempt of the world and clerical satire

through almost all the literary subtopics described above in Chapter 1. His depiction is more analytical and didactic than most Ricardian settings of the idea—than those of Langland, the Cleanness poet, or Chaucer—but it is also more complete and rigorous.

Gower features the world grown old, and specifically the decline of | love, as the governing idea—related to his ordinatio—tor his compilation of exemplary tales. The ordinatio is the seven deadly sins; and Gower includes specific books on all the sins except lust (/uxuria), since the whole

work is about love and its decline. A. J. Minnis has demonstrated that Gower adapted the Aristotelian academic prologue form for his extrinsic prologue (concerning sapientia) and his intrinsic prologue (concerning hu~ man love).?° Gower includes a distinction between his own voice (as authority or sapiens) and the character Amans, who is named toward the end as “John Gower”; and with regard to his story collection, he seems, in Kurt Olsson’s words, to work “between roles of authoring and compiling.”?! In a marginal notation to his original opening of the prologue, Gower says that he diligently compiled (“‘compilauit’’) his book from various “chronicles, histories, and sayings of poets and philosophers.” In his Ovidian, classicizing sequence of tales Gower revisits the scene of the Roman de la Rose, the garden of Love; but Amans, who seeks his own version of the Rose, receives help from a patient guide, Genius, who tells him a multitude of edifying stories loosely grouped around the seven deadly sins. The stories Genius tells are sometimes classical, sometimes biblical, and sometimes medieval-exemplary. Three tales, which illuminate subtopics of pride (the deadly sin of book 1), reveal Gower’s didactic

storytelling technique. Genius relates the classical story of the Trojan horse to illustrate hypocrisy, the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar’s mad-

19 Emphasized first by C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, p. 200. Some of Lewis’s criticism of Gower holds up remarkably well to the present day, including his stress on the importance of the Roman de la Rose and on Gower’s architectonics of composition. Modern Gower scholars will perhaps quarrel with Lewis’s value judgments (he disparages Gower for what he regards as Gower’s retrograde medieval tendencies) as well as with his commonsense approach (and his positivism) generally. 20 Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 180. For Gower’s ordinatio—the scheme of seven deadly sins—see Olsson, Structures of Conversion, p. 7. 21 Thid., p. 5.

252 THE WORLD GROWN OLD ness to illustrate vainglory, and the medieval-exemplary story of the Trump of Death (taken from a collection such as the Gesta Romanorum) to illustrate arrogance. As Genius turns to each deadly sin—pride (book 1), envy (book 2), wrath (book 3), sloth (book 4), avarice (book 5), gluttony (book 6), and lust (book 8)—he “confesses” to Amans regarding the sin. Book 7 concerns ethics and the education of Alexander; and book 8, on lechery, presents the lengthy story of Apollonius of Tyre concerning in-

| cest. Although Gower scholars have questioned the appropriateness of individual tales within the books as illustrations of particular sins, Gower’s

, moral, didactic intentions are clear enough. Tales and storytelling have an important social function: to entertain but also to instruct. Gower makes these intentions manifest in the prologue; and he returns to these themes throughout the work, especially at the end, where he demonstrates his own role in the issues depicted in the prologue. In the prologue to the Confessio Gower depicts a society in chaos and

decline, much as he did in the Vox and would do in the Cronica. But whereas the Vox and Cronica are partly occasional works illustrating the chaotic effects of specific political actions, the Confessio prologue is a general social and psychological anatomy de senectute mundi. The prologue traces the causes of the world’s reduced condition back to the original division of Adam and Eve’s fall, which Gower represents as the exemplar for later political and spiritual divisions, including the Norwich crusade, the Great Schism, and the Babylonian Captivity. The Confessio prologue is largely deductive, working from general premises to specific events, while the Vox and especially the Cronica are more inductive, starting from political events and moving toward general pronouncements. The chief point is that the Confessio should not be read in isolation from Gower’s other writings on the world grown old. ‘The prologue may reflect Gower’s knowledge of traditional “‘sapiential” introductions, as Minnis proposes; more important, it reveals Gower’s persistent, strong concern for moral and terrestrial decline and particularly for the individual’s responsibility

| in the decay. While others might be content merely to observe that the world has grown old or to blame some specific institution or class as malefactors, Gower was more interested in analyzing the connections between individual corruption and general decline. Moreover, the evidence of colophons suggests that Gower revised the prologue and conclusion of the Confessio to strengthen its links to the Mirour and the Vox.” One of the chief similarities between the Confessio prologue and the visions in the Mirour, Vox, and Cronica is the presence of a reporting nar-

rator: a narrative voice. In the French and Latin writings, it is a voice crying out, a Langland-like dreamer who anatomizes the estates, recounts

, 22 Kisher, John Gower, p. 126.

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 253 his political nightmares, or chronicles the fall of an incompetent monarch. In the Confessio a similar narrator undertakes, more humbly and less rhetorically, to describe a world grown old:

Thus I, which am a burel clerk, Purpose forto wryte a bok After the world that whilom tok Long tyme in olde daies passed:

Bot for men sein it is now lassed, , In worse plit than it was tho, I thenke forto touche also The world which neweth every dai,

| So as I can, so as I mai. (Prologue 52-6o)

It is important to Gower’s conception that the narrator be a “burel clerk” —a simple clerk, not a grand chronicler of world events—and that he be representative of clerks generally. He casts himself as a sober observer and man of reflection, an ““Everyclerk” who undertakes the traditional clerical function of explaining how society no longer works harmoniously for the common profit and how the world has declined through

the degeneration of love. Later on in the prologue he will say that his voice embodies “The comun vois, which mai noght lie” (124). This is the public voice that Gower claims to derive from his reading, his experience, and the wisdom of old age. Toward the end of the prologue, after anatomizing the estates and interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image for his own times, the narrator explains the world’s condition in terms of the end of history: Thapostel writ unto ous alle And seith that upon ous is falle Thende of the world; so may we knowe, This ymage is nyh overthrowe, Be which this world was signified,

That whilom was so magnefied, ,

And now is old and fieble and vil, Full of meschief and of peril, And stant divided ek also Lich to the feet that were so, As I tolde of the Statue above. (Prologue 881-91)

Gower structures the prologue around the three estates, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream statue, and the translation of empire. Within that overall

254 THE WORLD GROWN OLD structure he includes a number of subtopics, such as the wheel of Fortune, , schism in the church, and the rise of Lollardy. Uniting the topics and subtopics is Gower’s notion of love, or rather the divided state of love (charity): the cooling of charity that has brought about a divided condition of society. Gower’s exposition of the estates owes much to his previous work in the Mirour and Vox. But in the prologue to the Confessio he presents the large picture of temporal rulers (“De statu regnorum’’), the church gen-

erally (“De statu cleri’’), and the commonalty (“De statu plebi”). The stories that Genius will later relate present specific instances of the theory

outlined in the prologue. In each of the estates, says Gower’s narrator, there is a lack of charity, which has caused them to deteriorate in egregious ways. Of kingdoms he testifies that once humans enjoyed wealth and pros-

perity (he is not specific as to which realms he means) and “Tho was knyhthode in pris be name” (99). People observed law, and a natural order inhered in human institutions. But now, he says (echoing his “‘jadys .. . mais ore” formula from the Mirour), “stant the crop under the rote, / The world is changed overal” (118-19). He especially singles out the decline

of love as the root cause of a world upside-down: “And therof most in special / That love is falle into discord” (120-21). Rulers should guide themselves by wise counsel; and councillors should gather around the ruler

for the good of the commonwealth. “But now,” the narrator observes, men tellen natheles

, , That love is fro the world departed, So stant the pes unevene parted With hem that liven now adaies. (Prologue 168-71)

In his section on the clergy Gower’s narrator becomes more specific as

to the symptoms of ecclesiastical decline. He singles out the Lombard practice of selling church preferment and the willingness of the church to engage in warfare, which in turn causes taxation for that purpose. In a version of the world upside-down he charges that the church key has been

turned into a sword and holy beads into cursing (rather than bidding) beads (272-74). Envy, including national rivalries, has caused the Great Schism of the papacy between Rome and Avignon; the principle of schism has created, the narrator alleges, ““This new Secte of Lollardie” (349), along with other heresies. Preachers do not heed their own teaching about

charity. Ironically, the Lollards for their part denounced the schism of 1378 as the devil’s work and Urban V1 as the one in whom “omnia misteria

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 255 antichristi fuerunt impleta” (“all the mysteries of Antichrist were fulfilled”’).?3

The narrator claims that the commons everywhere say the world has gone astray—‘is al miswent” (517). But whereas everyone freely gives advice as to who and what are to blame, no one is willing to accept responsibility. God, of course, is not at fault: In him ther is defalte non, So moste it stonde upon ousselve Nought only upon ten ne twelve, Bot plenerliche upon ous alle, For man is cause of that schal falle. (Prologue 524-28)

changes.

Gower provides a transition to his section on Nebuchadnezzar by mentioning Boethius and the vicissitudes of fortune. Kingdoms, too, he says, are “muable,” although humans are responsible (‘‘coupable’’) for the Gower’s great symbol for division and the world grown old is Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image from Dan. 2, mentioned prominently in the colophon to the Confessio. This is no mere rehash of the Old ‘Testament, nor is it a reprise of Dante’s gran veglio di Creta from Inferno 14. Gower’s

narrator moralizes the statue at greater length than did Daniel, and he interprets it for the later Middle Ages, not just for the ancient kingdoms. While Dante’s veglio is a symbol for the world grown old, it is, as noted above, a specifically Virgilian, pagan emblem, with tears and a Romeward gaze never contemplated by Daniel or earlier scriptural commentators. Gower’s version of the great statue, like the veg/io, with the fissure through its body, and unlike the biblical dream image, embodies a sharp break or

distinction between a golden past and later much inferior ages. ‘That Gower regarded the dream image as central to the design of the prologue may be seen in the manuscript illustrations, whose exemplar Gower himself may have supervised or even drawn (see Fig. 5).”* Gower’s narrator offers two interpretations of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, the first moral-historical, the second political. This partitioned exegesis of the image was not unprecedented in medieval commentaries: Phi?3 As quoted in Hudson, The Premature Reformation, p. 334. See also Hudson’s analysis of Gower’s anticlerical writings in the Confessio, pp. 409-10. 24 Peck, Kingship and Common Profit, p. 21; Porter, “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and

: Political Macrocosm,” p. 143. For a different view, see Griffith, “Confessio Amantis,” esp. pp. 174-75. Griffith reproduces an illustration of the dream image from the Robert H. Taylor Collection, Princeton, N.J., on p. 164.

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JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 257 lippe de Harvengt provided three explanations of the statue, and there were other schemes, as John Fisher has shown.?°

In his moral-historical interpretation (595-662) Gower departs from the biblical narrative in four ways. First, he states that the image stood upon a “Stage,” although no such theatrum mundi is mentioned in Dan. 2. Second, he says that the image “Betokneth how the world schal change / And waxe lasse worth and lasse”’ (628-29). In Daniel the reference is to political kingdoms—empires—not to quality of life or spirituality. Third, Gower alleges that the golden neck and head “betokne scholde / A worthi world, a noble, a riche, / To which non after schal be liche” (632-34). But Daniel says only that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is the golden head and that lesser empires will arise after his: Thou art kyng of kyngis, and God of heuene 3af to thee rewme, strengthe, and empire, and glorie; and he 3af in thin hond alle thingis, in whiche the sones of men, and the beestis of the feeld, and the briddis of the eir dwellen, and ordeynede alle thingis vndur thi lordschip; therfor thou art the goldun heed. And another rewme lesse than thou schal rise aftir thee. .. . (2.37-

38) ,

Gower’s interpretation is not at all unusual in medieval commentary on Daniel. It is quite plausible, even predictable, given the medieval preoccupation with the fall of man and early history. But it is not scriptural. Finally, Gower understands the stone’s smashing of the image as the second rather than the first Advent of Christ (1037-44). The gloss to Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams in the Wycliffite Bible interprets the stone cut out of the mountain without hands as Christ’s first Advent: “Fyue the firste visiouns perteynen principali to the firste comyng of Crist... .” Gower’s narrator claims that the overthrow of the image is of this world the laste, And thanne a newe schal beginne, Fro which a man schal nevere twinne; Or al to peine or al to pes That world schal lasten endeles. (658-62)

If my understanding of these lines is correct, Gower refers to the “newe”’ world of Rev. 21 and not to the establishment of the Christian religion at the first Advent. He alludes, that is, to a world utterly changed in a reformatio in melius that will renew a world grown old and corrupt. ‘The writer 25 Fohbn Gower, pp. 186-87.

258 THE WORLD GROWN OLD of Daniel envisioned a messianic kingdom but not the end of the world and the renovatio elementorum.

Gower’s second interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image (663-880) is explicitly political and draws upon the translatio imperii com-

monplace. Gower tiptoes here around the moral issues that he had confronted in the first interpretation. Here Babylon constitutes the reign of

| gold, “the ferste regne of alle” (670). But the Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar and Balthazar could not last. Cyrus, Cambyses, and the Persians “‘ayein the pes” challenged the Babylonian Empire, and then, according to Gower’s exposition, “the world began diverse” (677). Gower is not specific about the nature of this diversity; it seems to be related linguistically but not conceptually to division. When Balthazar is slain and Babylon conquered, ““The world of Selver was begonne / And that of gold was passed oute”’ (688-89). Similarly, the Greek Alexander “put under” the Persians, ““And tho the world began of Bras” (699), and the Roman Julius Caesar succeeded to the world empire (of steel). These transmutations of earthly kingdoms seem to be governed chiefly by fortune, even though individual kings misbehave. The driving forces of change seem to be large and impersonal, as in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale. Gower does not dwell on the early Roman Empire but moves on to the Christian Roman

| Empire, especially of Charlemagne and the French. This is all the fourth empire, “the world of Stiel.” But division and dissension occurred, as Gower’s narrator explains, with the Lombards and with the Germans, especially the ““Alemaine Princes sevene.” The narrator says that the empire was strong under the Romans and Franks but that this strength dissipated with the Germans. In this interpretation the Roman Empire is not an evil institution, at least not in comparison with the politically divided and divisive Germans, who ruin the cohesiveness of the kingdom. In an

interesting passage Gower invokes the ruins of Rome as evidence of a once-great empire that has decayed. From the Germans down to the present day, says the narrator, things have declined: For alway siththe more and more The world empeireth every day. Wherof the sothe schewe may, At Rome ferst if we beginne: The wall and al the Cit withinne Stant in ruine and in decas, The feld is wher the Paleis was,

(832-39) |

The toun is wast....

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 259 These lines celebrate Rome as orbis (world) and urbs (city);”° the decay of the urbs after Charlemagne and the Franks is the degeneration of the orbis.

Of special interest is the fact that Gower does not praise Rome for its great martyrs, Paul and Peter—as in the tenth-century “O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina / cunctarum urbium excellentissima”—nor does he lament

the moral downfall of Rome, as in Walter of Chatillon’s well-known moral-satiric lyric, ““Propter Syon non tacebo, / sed ruinas Rome flebo.”’2’ The narrator’s real concern is with the downfall of a great political state. Gower places special responsibility on each individual for the general worldly decline; and he theorizes the decline by comparing what he calls

the “‘lasse world” (947: the microcosm, or humans) with the “greater world” (the macrocosm, or all of God’s creation). There is nothing especially new or startling about this comparison of microcosm and macrocosm in a context de senectute mundi. Cardinal Lotario dei Segni (later Pope Innocent III) made the same comparison in De miseria condicionis humane (or De contemptu mundi), a work written in about 1195, which survives in nearly five hundred manuscripts. In a formulation which draws © upon the disease-of-the-world trope as well as the theory of correspondences between the world and humans, Innocent says, De die in diem magis ac magis humana natura corrumpitur, ita quod multa fuerunt olim experimenta salubria que propter defectum ipsius hodie sunt mortifera. Senuit iam mundus uterque, megacosmus et microcosmus, et quanto prolixius utriusque senectus producitur, tanto deterius utriusque natura turbatur. (From day to day human nature 1s corrupted more and more, so much so that many things were formerly healthy experiences that are today deadly things because

of the failing of human nature itself: Each world has already grown old, the macrocosm and the microcosm, and the longer the old age of each is extended, the more severely the nature of each is disturbed.)**

The point of Innocent’s theory is that humans, through individual acts of sin (but on a collective level), have caused the world to grow old but also, reciprocally, the world’s viciousness has created a climate of sin that is worse than in the past. Gower likewise depicts the malignant effects of human sin on nature: 76 Curtius, European Literature, p. 28. See also Herbert Bloch, “The New Fascination with Ancient Rome,” esp. pp. 630-33 (““Mirabilia Urbis Romae’’). , 27 Both Latin poems are published in Medieval Latin Verse, ed. Raby, pp. 140 and 282-88. For relevant English poems on contemporary conditions that help illuminate Gower’s complaint, see Peck, Kingship and Common Profit, p. 188 n. 9. 28 De miseria condicionis humane, ed. and trans. Lewis, pp. 137, 136.

260 THE WORLD GROWN OLD For ferst unto the mannes heste Was every creature ordeined, Bot afterward it was restreigned: Whan that he fell, thei fellen eke, Whan he wax sek, thei woxen seke; For as the man hath passioun Of seknesse, in comparisoun So soffren othre creatures. (910-17)

Gower attributes instability in the heavens, including eclipses, to human sin (918-20), and he alleges that the “purest Eir . . . alofte” has been and

, is even now “corrupt” (921, 922). Later on he will repeat the idea: “whan this litel world mistorneth, / The grete world al overtorneth” (957-58). Sin, says the narrator, has caused seasonal changes and all the vicissitudes in the natural world. He even locates the seeds of human destruction in man’s material composition, his “complexion”: the four humors “Of cold, of hot, of moist, of drye” (977), which cause internal “debat” and death to everyone. Gower never confronts the moral implications of a human body apparently created for decay and death. As Peck notes, Gower here incorporates current scientific theory on human composition and decay derived from Arabic philosophers and ultimately from Plato’s Timaeus.”° The chief medieval (European) spokesman for this theory, as noted above, was Engelbert of Admont (Chapter 1, under 4a). Gower includes the decay-of-humors idea in his microcosm section of the Confessio prologue

| because it embodies division. Gower wants to make the point forcefully that the division that leads to death is a structural element of the human condition. In the Ricardian period Gower, Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain poet—influenced perhaps by penitential movements, anticlerical calls for reform, and writings on lay piety—all concerned themselves with exemplary lives and the consequences of individual acts. The author of Cleanness, for example, begins his narrative with the unclean priest who handles

God’s body (the communion wafer) every day with “dirty” hands. The priest, the “little world,” is immundus. The Confessio prologue skillfully anatomizes the world grown old but with an eye toward human, personal responsibility for the macrocosmic decline. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image accomplishes two things: it sym2° Confessio amantis, ed. Peck, p. 499 n. 20. Another major source for this medieval war of humors was Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, book 2.

, JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 261 bolizes the larger world grown old but in a specifically human image.*° In the Bible the human shape of the dream image underscores the point that

no human or kingdom is greater than God. For Gower the human form is an emblem of mankind’s original and continuing culpability for the world’s “health” and for the mutations of empire. While there is a certain didacticism in the prologue, it is more artful than that in the Mirour or the Vox, which also treat microcosm and macrocosm. By including the dream image and by focusing on human sin and division in the prologue, Gower prepares for the story of Amans and his confessor, Genius. The prologue, as Minnis has pointed out, is “extrinsic”: it is an “outer” frame that brackets the inner frame of Amans and Genius.

Book 1, for its part, begins with a prologue of its own. But there is a fundamental connection between the dream image and issues of human responsibility and sins, on the one hand, and Amans and the exemplary stories, on the other. If, as Minnis says, Gower places “‘love-stories in a moral context,’’?! he also sets moral precepts in a context of love. In the prologue the world has grown old through a decline of love; in the Confessio

as a whole, Gower has grown old through defective loving. Gower’s use of the decline of love seems to be related to the “cooling of charity” motif (Chapter 1, sections 3d3 and 5c), to which he alludes in | a Latin marginal note at the beginning of book 1. Although the prologue is not especially eschatological (it does contain eschatological suggestions), Gower intimates that a charity characteristic of earlier ages has vanished from his modern world and that much depends on restoring the original charitable harmony. After tracing division from Adam and Eve through the antediluvian generation and the division of languages at Babel, the narrator alludes to the cooling of charity of Matt. 24: For so seith Crist withoute faile, That nyh upon the worldes ende Pes and acord awey schol wende And alle charite schal cesse, Among the men and hate encresce. (1032-36)

In hell, he archly observes, there is no “loveday,” no arbitration for disputes. In a penitential mood he urges everyone to make peace with his fellow, ‘And loven as his oghne brother” (1050). Gower’s narrator does 30 For an extended discussion of microcosm and macrocosm in the Confessio, along with a proposal that Gower drew primarily on the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum

and Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, see Porter, “(Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm,” pp. 135-62. 31 “Moral Gower,” p. 57.

262 THE WORLD GROWN OLD not harangue his audience or try to frighten them, as would a Peter Damian, Bernard of Cluny, or Pope Innocent III. Yet he does testify, in a Latin headnote, that the sacred law has grown cool (“lege tepente sacra’”’), and he specifically links the old, feeble, and vile world with “lacke of love” (892) and with division, which is “moder of confusioun” (852, 893). There is another important link between prologue and frame in book 1: the theme of poetry. At the close of the prologue Gower speaks of Arion,

the semimythical poet of Lesbos who, thrown overboard from a ship, allegedly was borne on a dolphin’s back after having charmed the creature

with his song (1053-86). Gower adopts the fable as an example of the power of poetry to bring concord to a disordered, disharmonious world. In an optative and patriotic vein he wishes that England might produce someone like Arion, who would make the lion lie down with the lamb:

| “But wolde god that now were on / An other such as Arion .. .” (105354). Arion, the narrator claims, brought about what the Peasants’ Revolt could not: He broghte hem alle [mutually hostile creatures] in good acord; So that the comun with the lord, And lord with the comun also, He sette in love bothe tuo And putte awey malencolie.

(1065-69)

Robert Yeager has argued that Arion occupies a key place in Gower’s mythmaking—that Gower becomes a “mythographer” through the Arion theme—and that Gower used Arion to express the hope for “universal peace” through “a poetry of appropriately convincing characters and fictions, expressed in a vernacular of increasing stature and availability for presenting serious subjects.” ?

At the beginning of book 1, in what has been called the “intrinsic” frame because the narrator is now a character (Amans) who will listen to stories, Gower speaks of his own modest poetic capabilities. The contrast with Arion the poet is striking, and the proximity of Arion at the end of the prologue to Gower as poet at the opening of book 1 seems intentional 32 Fobn Gower’s Poetic, p. 241. For an exhaustive reading of the significance of Arion

as a theme in Gower’s poetic, see Yeager’s chapter 5, “Arion’s Final Song.” Yeager examines and unifies the “apparently divergent themes of social and emotional health, or love and right rule, which occur variously (though not always obviously) throughout the Confessio Amantis as parts of an extended treatment of marriage, envisioned both as sacrament and as metaphor” (p. 230). See also Olsson, Structures of Conversion, pp. 3536 (on poetry, Arion, and the cures for melancholy).

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 263 and significant.? The connection—and distinction—between Arion the poet and Gower the “maker” appears best in the concept of “mesure.” Arion’s harp was of such good “tempre” and Arion himself sang with such “mesure,” says the narrator, that he brought an Orphic or Apollonian concord to the land. This “mesure” partakes of the divine arithmetic by , means of which God first created the world. According to Solomon, God has disposed (or ordained) “‘alle thingis in mesure, and in noumbre, and in weizte” (Wisd. of Sol. 11.21). This principle of cosmic measure, especially after the school of Chartres, formed the basis of harmony in the soul (microcosm) and of music, according to medieval theoreticians.** But

the narrator at the beginning of book 1 specifically disavows such “mesure” in himself. In a version of the humility topos, he states that he cannot stretch his hand up to heaven, nor can he serve as an earthly Libra, setting

things to rights. The reason that things are unbalanced, he says, is that loves lawe is out of reule,

That of tomoche or of tolite Welnyh is every man to wyte. (1.18-20)

There is no right “mesure,” no sense of a mean or right conduct in love generally, for ther is noman

In al this world so wys, that can , Of love tempre the mesure. (1.2 1-23)

Arion was able to temper the measure; and the narrator hopes that someone—a new Arion—might accomplish this for England. But he acknowledges that he is not the “maker”’ for the job.

As Gower moves from the prologue to the opening of book 1, the meaning of “love” changes somewhat (or is augmented) from a philosophical principle to an emotional force that tends to dominate humans. In the prologue love also means “charity,” the theological virtue that Christ identified as growing cool in the world’s latemost days. But in book 1 love signifies a more terrestrial principle, although often with overtones of the higher love. In a Latin marginal note to book 1 Gower articulates the transition between the kinds of love: 33 See Confessio amantis, ed. Peck, pp. xvili-xix and 499 n. 21. 34 Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, chap. 2.

264 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Postquam in Prologo tractatum hactenus existit, qualiter hodierne condicionis diuisio caritatis dileccionem superauit, intendit auctor ad presens suum libellum, cuius nomen Confessio Amantis nuncupatur, componere de illo amore, a quo non solum humanum genus, sed eciam cuncta ani-

mancia naturaliter subiciuntur. (P. 35) |

(Because how the divisiveness of our condition has overcome the love of charity has already been treated in the prologue, the author intends now to compose his book, whose.name is the Lover’s Confession, concerning that love to which not only humans but also all living things are naturally subject.)

logue.

In this gloss there is a shift, an announcement of a new emphasis, and yet a continuity with the division and cooling of charity outlined in the pro-

The narrator of book 1 is an example of improper loving. “I am mi-

selven on of tho,” he says (1.62); and he identifies himself as an “‘ensample”’ for the world (86). He says he will tell his own story to teach people about

love; and he indicates in this inner-frame prologue that he has spent considerable time learning the lesson himself. I mention this because one critic has proposed that the narrator is an example both of youthful folly and of love folly in old age (senex amans).*> It might well seem to be the case, as J. A. Burrow has argued (against a well-known essay by Donald Schueler), that Gower provides no special clues—no pointing—throughout the narrative that he is old and feeble. Burrow believes the revelation of old age should come as “a shock,” since we rightly expect Amans to be a young man. On the other hand, Amans emphasizes his “sickness” at the opening of book 1; he has had this “maladie,” this lovesickness, for a long time: For certes such a maladie As I now have and longe have hadd, It myhte make a wisman madd, If that it scholde longe endure. (128-31)

By the end of the confession and the close of the narrative, this long endurance becomes something like a droll joke. But the moral themes of the prologue—division, sickness, the world grown old—become translated into erotic and individual terms in the Confessio proper. | 35 Porter, “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm,” pp. 144-45. 36 “The Portrayal of Amans.” See also Schueler, “The Age of the Lover.” Olsson agrees with Burrow and argues that Gower’s strategy involves conversion (Structures of Conversion, pp. 230-31).

} JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 265 On occasions within the stories and in Genius’s explanations, Gower returns to his moral framework de senectute mundi. In his discussion of sloth (book 4), Genius traces the origins and demise of wisdom. Explaining

that, after the Fall, all people must work for their daily bread and that wisdom is a form of labor, he says that God originally gave humans wisdom but that it has declined. Here Gower exposes his reverence for ancient learning and old books. Genius names the early discoverers and inventors, but he does not condemn them or their inventions. He is either thankful for the knowledge or neutral about its provenance. Of Ham, for example, Genius says, Cham, whos labour is yit in minde, Was he which ferst the lettres fond And wrot in Hebreu with his hond: Of naturel Philosophie He fond ferst also the clergie.

| (4.2 396-400) Medieval exegetes usually regarded such inventions as regressive, as steps away from spirituality toward the city of man. Genius seems neutral even about Saturn’s “Chapmanhode” and his coining of money (4.2447-48), although he will elsewhere attack Saturn and money (book 5). (Chaucer reveals similar biases. In The Book of the Duchess the Black Knight neutrally

reports the origins of music as either “Lamekes sone Tubal” or “Pictagoras”’; but the narrator of The Former Age denounces Jupiter and Nimrod

for ending the early age of innocence.) Genius also describes the three alchemical stones and names the early alchemists, including Hermes Trismegistus. But he says that today “fewe understonde” the books written by those earlier philosophers: Bot yit to put hem in assai Ther ben full manye now aday, That knowen litel what thei meene. (4.2615—17)

The ancients, however, who “grounded” their “parfite medicine” on nature, understood alchemical works. Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman says much the same thing (VIII 1394-401, 1428-71), as does the anonymous author of The Book of Quinte Essence, who traces the ancient alchemical secrets back to “‘hermys be prophete,” ‘Noe, fadir of philosophris,” and finally to a didactic angel. The author claims that he preserves the old knowledge so “bat pe wisdom and be science of pis book schulde not perische, but be

266 THE WORLD GROWN OLD kept and preserued vnto be ende of be world.”’?” In Gower’s book 5, which

treats avarice, Genius describes the golden age in a passage sandwiched between a version of the Midas story and the legend of ‘Tantalus. Before gold was melted into coins, according to Genius, “Ther was welnyh noman untrewe” (5.336). Towns existed without walls, nor was there “brocage’’—mediation, agency, lawyering. Later in book 5, in his analysis of sacrilege (a species of covetousness), Genius launches a moral-satiric attack

on modern-day clerics for robbing the church (6961-94). These last examples reflect the division that Gower analyzes and decries in the prologue. Sometimes Gower pauses to explain that things were different in earlier times, as when he explicates justice (7.2695-764) or gives an example of earlier righteousness in Gaius Fabricius, consul of Rome, who

| scornfully refused a bribe. Genius moralizes, Ther be nou fewe of suche, I gesse; For it was thilke times used, That every jugge was refused Which was noght frend to comun riht,;

| Bot thei that wolden stonde upriht For trouthe only to do justice Preferred were in thilke office To deme and jugge commun lawe: Which nou, men sein, is al withdrawe. To sette a lawe and kepe it noght Ther is no comun profit soght. (7.2818—28)

The exemplary stories themselves may owe more to “lust” than “lore,” more to mirth than morality; but often Genius finds ways to link the stories and their applications with moral pronouncements de senectute mundi.

The connections between the old, feeble, and vile great world of the prologue and the lovesick representative of the “lasse world,” Amans, become clear in book 8. ‘Toward the close Amans relates how previously he

could not absorb Genius’s teachings because of a division between his reason, which could understand, and his will, which would not accept what his reason understood: Mi resoun understod him wel,

| And knew it was soth everydel , 37 The Book of Quinte Essence, ed. Furnivall, p. 1.

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 267 That he hath seid, bot noght forthi Mi will hath nothing set therby. (8.2 191-94)

According to well-known medieval faculty psychology, this split between reason and will occurred first at the Fall, when Adam obeyed his wife (who listened to the serpent) rather than God. Ever afterwards men and women have often given their rational consent (the third stage of the three temptations) to their prideful will rather than to their better counsel; and human reason itself has fallen victim to human will.?* Although we lose sight of Amans’s infirmities throughout the middle portions of the Confessio, they make a strong reappearance at the end of the work, when we discover that the narrator, like the macrocosm of the prologue, is old and feeble and vile. Here, too, we learn that Amans is not

some anonymous everyman but a particular person: when Venus asks Amans who he is, he replies, “Ma dame . . . John Gower”’ (2321). This naming of the senex amans seems to be an elaborate and sophis-

ticated joke, at the author’s expense, with the poet’s well-documented physical incapacities as referent and occasion. Gower mentions his blindness (“‘cecus’’) and illnesses (“corpore defectus’’) as early as the dedicatory verse epistle of the Vox (1382-85).?? In Quicquid homo scribat in the All Souls manuscript, Gower testifies that nature has put an end to his career

as a writer because he is blind (“sum quia cecus ego’’). He mentions “shadows” and a desire for God’s “light,” as well as “blindness,” in his Latin verse Tractatus de lucis scrutinio, though that “blindness” seems to be metaphorical; and he chronicles the various ills of society—especially the Lollard sect—in his Carmen super multiplici victorum pestilencia.* In his

Latin and English works, Gower insists on characterizing himself as sick and infirm, although it is also clear that this sickness has metaphoric overtones. The world is sick unto death, and the poet’s life, too, is one long disease. He is a literary exemplar of St. Paul’s vetus homo and an example, as Olsson has demonstrated convincingly, of conversion: “The figure of 38 See Howard, The Three Temptations, pp. 57-65. 39 See the Epistola before the Vox, in The Works of fohn Gower, ed. Macaulay, 4:1,

lines 17 and 19. 40 The Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, 4:365. In a later version of this poem, addressed to Henry IV (and which begins, ‘“‘Henrici Regis annus fuit ille secundus’’), Gower revises the verses slightly. The headnote includes the following: “Et nunc, quia tam grauitate senectutis quam aliarum infirmitatum multipliciter depressus. . . .” In the Trentham Manuscript version of the poem, he mentions that he is “vir cecus” and asks

| that God grant him “sanctum lumen” (ed. Macaulay, 4:366, lines 15, 17). ! Tractatus de lucis scrutinio and Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, in The Works of Fohn Gower, ed. Macaulay, 4:355-57, and 346—54 respectively.

268 THE WORLD GROWN OLD old age provides a precise and focused way of talking about the moment when ... conversion occurs.” ” , In book 1 of the Confessio the narrator’s disease is thought to be lovesickness, the malady of young, aristocratic lovers—Constantine the African’s “disease touching the brain,”’ Andreas Capellanus’s “inborn suffering,” Chaucer’s eight-year sickness in The Book of the Duchess, or the ‘loveris maladye / Of Hereos.”*? The narrator (whose name is withheld at this point) claims he suffers from a “maladie” that he has endured for a long time (1.128-29). But in book 8 the illness has become something like a bad joke, as Venus must explain to the narrator that he is too old to love: “Mi medicine is noght to sieke / For thee and for suche olde sieke” (2367-68). If the lover’s “maladie” at the beginning of the Confessio seemed to be a love sickness (and it was), here it is more generally a literal sickness

arising from Amans’s infirmities, the illness and blindness he chronicles in some of his Latin writings. If the great world has grown old through division, improper loving, and a cooling of charity, so has Gower. He can achieve health through confession, self-awareness, ethical poetry,“ and, in part, through his very old age: the impetuosness of youthful love (foldelit in Olsson’s term) finally releases its grip on him; Cupid withdraws his fiery dart from his breast; and Gower makes a “‘beau retret,’’ a decorous withdrawal, with as much dignity as he can muster. C. S. Lewis in The Allegory of Love emphasized the elements of parody in the Confessio, especially in relation to French romance and the Roman de la Rose. In the Roman, as noted in Chapter 3 above, the middlemen and middlewomen—those who practice “brocage’—deprived the lover of his own experience; and his climactic gesture was his “‘plucking” or “deflowering’ the Rose. The opposite occurs at the end of the Confessio. Far from storming the Castle of Jealousy, Gower’s Amans joins the parade of ger-

iatric lovers (a group that gives new meaning to the phrase “tholde daunce’’), and Cupid extracts the dart of love in something akin to a surgical procedure. Venus bestows upon Gower a “Peire of Bedes,”’ which

® Structures of Conversion, p. 231. * The pathology is fully exposed in Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages. Constan-

tine the African (died about 1087) was the author of the Viaticum, “originally a handbook for travellers without access to medical care,” which became an ‘‘authoritative text in medical curricula” around 1200 (p. xiii). Wack points out that the Viaticum and commentaries on it achieved currency at about the same time as works on “courtly love.” The passionate loves of Launcelot and Tristan can be explained as lovesickness, which was thought to be an illness of the brain related to melancholy. Chaucer mentions “the loveris maladye / Of Hereos” in The Knight’s Tale. Speaking of Arcite’s changes of mood, he says, “Nat oonly lik the loveris maladye / Of Hereos, but rather lyk manye, / Engendred of humour malencolik” (The Canterbury Tales 1 1373-75).

+4 See Olsson, Structures of Conversion, pp. 238-40. :

JOHN GOWER’S NARRATIVES 269 she places around his neck. On the beads is inscribed not “Amor vincit omnia” (as with Chaucer’s Prioress) but “Por reposer”’ (2907). Although this final episode is both witty and comic, it has a serious, penitential aspect as well. The prayer beads draped around Amans’s neck and the very notion of confession—the second stage of penitence (after contrition and before satisfaction)—indicate the penitential motif. The idea of poetry as penance was very strong not only in Gower’s poetry but in Ricardian literature generally. Elsewhere I have written about the penitential themes in Mandeville, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer; these authors portray themselves or their society as diseased and conclude their writings on a note of repentance or retraction.» The old age and penitential motif in book 8 of the Confessio is crucial to the whole poem’s inventio and dispositio. Gower is old and “‘vil,” like the larger world. And though Amans might have wished, like Amant of Jean’s Roman, to participate in the ostensibly gladsome world of youthful love, with its surface allures, he discovers—as Jean’s Amant does not—that he is a source of error and folly rather than of truth and wisdom. To underscore this old-age motif, certain manuscripts of the Confessio contain illuminations showing an aged Gower beginning his confession to Genius— this at the opening of the intrinsic frame (when Gower is not yet identified as old) rather than at the close (when his senescent identity is finally revealed). In a “‘portrait” of Gower that is conventional in other respects,

the poet is slumped over his book and on his bed rather than perched smartly at his lectern with pen and blotter, as was the convention for authorial portraiture in manuscript illuminations.*

(GOWER’S WRITINGS, IN FRENCH, LATIN, AND ENGLISH, manifest a striking con-

sistency and rigor. He reverts again and again to topics of division in human affairs, decay in the estates and in human institutions generally, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image as a metaphor for history, the Great Schism, the Peasants’ Revolt and its aftermath, the deterioration in kingship as witnessed in Richard II’s ill-managed reign, rejection of the com, 45 ““(“haucer’s Repentance.”. My argument is that the Ricardian writers participate in a group of penitential works that owe much to Deguileville’s conception of the pilgrimage of life, where the trope is especially prominent. The early “portraits’’ of Chaucer, emphasizing a moral Chaucer, the author of The Parson’s Tale, represent him with penitential beads. For a reading of the Confessio in light of penitentials (including Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne and John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests), see Kinneavy, ““Gower’s Confessio Amantis and the Penitentials.”

46 See the portrait of Gower from Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS f. 1083/29, fol. 1r, as reproduced in David Anderson, Sixty Bokes Olde and Newe, p. 100. See also the reproduction in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, ed. Minnis, p. 11.

270 THE WORLD GROWN OLD mon profit in favor of cupidity, and individual responsibility for the world’s growing old and feeble and sick. Taken as a whole, Gower’s three major narratives constitute something like a sermo ad status or an anatomy de senectute mundi. In his summary colophon to the Confessio, in which he briefly describes his writing career, he says that he composed his three books “for the sake of instruction” (‘doctrine causa’’) and to give an account of his stewardship (‘“‘donauit villicacionis sue racionem”’). The latter phrase recalls (and perhaps alludes to) Langland’s theme of “redde quod

: debes” and Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon theme, ‘‘Redde racionem villicacionis tue” (““3elde reckynyng of thi baili’’). Gower gives his accounting

through his poetry and through his portrayal of himself as an agent of the world grown old. Finally, rather than blaming everyone and everything else—failures in the three estates, wicked kings, the transmutation of kingdoms—he makes himself the butt of the joke and humbly acknowledges his complicity in the decay of society.

/ Chaucer and the Decay of Virtue

This world is nat so strong, it is no nay, As it hath been in olde tymes yoore.

, (The Clerk’s Tale 1139-40) THE MOST STUDIED RESPONSES TO THE IDEA of the world grown old appear

in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, the late-fourteenth-century English poet and member of Richard II’s faction at court. Chaucer was learned and well read—a “clerk,” “great translator,” and “rhetorician,” in the phrases of his contemporaries—and an author who professed to admire the ancient writers while keeping abreast of literary trends in his own day, particularly in French and Italian literature. He read and imitated Dante in The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, and

certain stories in The Canterbury Tales. For his own narrative and lyric writings he adapted various writings of Petrarch and, especially, Boccaccio. He was intimately acquainted with the Roman de la Rose, particularly Jean de Meun’s section; he claims to have translated the Roman, although only part of his translation—if it is in fact his—has survived. He probably read Piers Plowman; and his portrait of the Plowman in The Canterbury Tales owes something to Langland’s Piers. He knew and frequently imitated the

writings of his friend and colleague John Gower, to whom he dedicated Troilus. Chaucer, in short, was familiar with all the writers discussed in previous chapters of this book; and in his literary reaction to the corrupt, decaying world he drew on virtuous women from the past (as well as depicting certain women from his own era, notably the Wife of Bath). On occasion Chaucer’s texts offer something like nostalgia for earlier, better times; just as often, they are closer to satire or complaint. Chaucer’s complaints, however, are very different in content and tone from Gower’s characterizations of the old, vile world and from Dante’s denunciations of Florence, Pisa, and Romagna.

271

272 THE WORLD GROWN OLD , Chaucer’s writings, as Alfred David has shown, reveal a substantial concern with old age and loss.! David contrasts the bright, “young” English court world of the early 1360s with Edward’s less certain regime in the 1370s, when Lionel and Elizabeth of Ulster and Blanche of Lancaster were

dead: “Nostalgia for a lost courtliness, or rather for a lost illusion of courtly manners and courtly ethos, pervades the poetry of Chaucer’s middle period.”? Chaucer’s narrators venerate things that are old—old books, old values, old ways—while they condemn the new as “newfangelnesse.”

The Parson, who embodies the virtues of bygone eras, begins his sermonlike treatise with a quotation from Jeremiah concerning old ways and refreshment for the soul: ““Stondeth upon the weyes, and seeth and axeth of olde pathes (that is to seyn, of olde sentences) which is the goode wey, / and walketh in that wey, and ye shal fynde refresshynge for youre soules, etc.” (X 77-78). The Parson’s regard for what is traditional contrasts with the Monk’s rejection of “olde thynges” (including his monastic vows) and his embracing of “‘the newe world the space” (I 175, 176). Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims constitute a disparate group that tend

to embody fallen ideals—a fellowship in desperate need of the “hooly blisful” martyr’s help for their sicknesses. Friar Huberd, with his “plesaunt’’ absolution, “esy” penance, courtesy in pursuit of “profit,” elegant and impressive monastic habit, and lisping speech, is a pastiche of antifraternal stereotypes. He resembles the satiric targets of anticlerical goliardic complaint lyrics or of Piers the Plowman’s Crede. The Summoner bears the marks of his sins on his face: there was no ointment, says the narrator, that “myghte helpen of his whelkes white, / Nor of the knobbes sittynge on his chekes”’ (I 632-33). Similarly, the Pardoner’s fashionable (as he supposes) dress serves only to expose his spiritually barren ethics: ““‘Hym thoughte he rood al of the newe jet” (I 682). The Parson sometimes includes complaints similar to those found in ecclesiastical satire. Of the priest who disregards his vow of chastity, the Parson fulminates, For right as a free bole is ynough for al a toun, right so is a wikked preest corrupcioun ynough for al a parisshe, or for al a contree./ Thise preestes, as seith the book, ne konne nat the mysterie of preesthod to the peple, ne God ne knowe they nat. They ne helde hem nat apayd, as seith the book, of soden flessh that was to hem offred, but they tooke by force the flessh that is rawe./ | David, “Old, New, and Yong in Chaucer.” See also Steadman, “Old Age and Contemptus munadt”,; Coffman, “Old Age from Horace to Chaucer”; and Fradenburg, “Voice Memorial.” The best studies of the world grown old in Chaucer’s writings are by John Fyler: “Irony and the Age of Gold in the Book of the Duchess” (reprinted in Chaucer and Ovid); “Love and the Declining World”; and ‘““Domesticating the Exotic in the Sguire’s Tale.” 2 “Old, New, and Yong in Chaucer,” p. 9.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 273 Certes, so thise shrewes ne holden hem nat apayed of roosted flessh and sode flessh, with which the peple feden hem in greet reverence, but they wole have raw flessh of folkes wyves and hir doghtres. (X 899-901)

In The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale Chaucer provides a glimpse of modern alchemists who begin their career as idealistic seekers of truth but end up as rapacious swindlers who perpetrate sordid confidence schemes and then flee from city to city. They are aware that they have corrupted a noble search for wisdom and that the quest for “the secree of secretes” has degenerated, in the modern era, into explanations of the unknown by the more unknown (ignotum per ignocius).’ ‘The Canon’s Yeoman and most of the Canterbury pilgrims reveal an abandonment of morality and common profit in favor of personal gain and self-gratification.

Chaucer’s responses to the world grown old emerge especially in the related themes of gentilesse and the decay of virtue. His narrators and their characters often allude to the true nobility that arises from goodness and patience as well as the degeneration of patience and constancy in the modern era. He returns often to the topic of innate virtue, rather than inherited rank or wealth, as the mark of true gentility. Chaucer displays the varieties of gentility in his short lyric Gentilesse, in the pilgrim Knight (who is described as ‘“‘worthy”), in the hag’s monologue from The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and in the characters of Troilus, Grisilde of The Clerk’s Tale, Prudence of The Tale of Melibee, St. Cecilia of The Second Nun’s Tale, and the principal characters from The Franklin’s Tale. Moreover, Chaucer helps define the world grown old for the late fourteenth century (albeit in a less moral-satiric way than Langland or Gower) in his short lyrics The Former Age, Truth, and Lak of Stedfastnesse, in his corrupt ecclesiastics from

the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, and in the perceived difference between the earlier eras of St. Cecilia, Custance, and Grisilde on

the one hand and his own age on the other. Of the bygone world of | Grisilde, the Clerk says, “This world is nat so strong, it is no nay, / As it hath been in olde tymes yoore”’ (IV 1139-40). In the remainder of this chapter, I wish to explore Chaucer’s treatment of gentilesse and the decay of virtue, first through an examination of his short lyrics and then through an analysis of male and female figures from The Canterbury Tales, including the Wife of Bath, Harry Bailly and Goodelief, St. Cecilia, Custance, and Grisilde. The lyrics, composed in Chaucer’s 3 T analyze this somewhat neglected tale at greater length in “Dismantling the Canterbury Book,” esp. pp. 749-52. The connections between and among Chaucer’s final tales have been explored by Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition, pp. 213-21; Rosenberg, ‘‘Contrary Tales”; Grennen, “St. Cecilia’s ‘Chemical Wedding’ ”; Glending Olson, “Chaucer, Dante, and the Structure of Fragment VIII (G)”’; and Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, pp. 288-08.

274 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Gowerian public and didactic voice, outline a program of values that define

Chaucer’s ethics of human conduct and attitudes, while The Canterbury Tales, on the issue of marriage, reveals the ethos of the world grown old in a specific ancient and contemporary institution.

1. The Short Moral Lyrics and the World Grown Old The idea of the world grown old appears in various guises in Chaucer’s short lyrics on moral or Boethian subjects: The Former Age, Truth, Gentilesse, and Lak of Stedfastnesse. These texts, which date probably no earlier than the middle 1380s, afford meditations on the differences between past and present as well as insights into Chaucer’s language of idealism. They are, like Chaucer’s short lyrics generally, conventional and somewhat derivative; doubtless they should not be used as “‘control” texts by which to judge Chaucer’s statements about past and present in his narrative writings. Yet taken together these four moral lyrics provide something like a reading or interpretation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. They address the issue of how the present has diverged from the past; they posit or assert values that would—such is the lyric fiction—restore ancient, ne-

glected ethics. | | The Former Age, a sixty-three-line paraphrase of Boethius’s fifth poem in book 2 of the Consolation, considerably expands and elaborates upon the thirty-line Latin poem. There are two extant versions of Chaucer’s poem,

in Cambridge University Library, MSS Ii. iii. 21 and Hh. iv. 12. The former is executed as a gloss to both the Latin poem and Chaucer’s translation of it in an edition of the Consolation/Boece.* Chaucer expands Boethius’s Latin (and his own prose Boece version) by embellishing each line or idea, often into a separate stanza of eight lines, and he sometimes paraphrases for effect. The Former Age is very much a literary treatment of the past and present. As Derek Pearsall has put it, ‘““The theme [of the Saturnian golden age] needs its context in Boethius to make proper sense.”’5

| Chaucer translates the opening line, ‘Felix nimium prior aetas,” as “A blisful lyf, a paisible and a swete, / Ledden the peples in the former age.” (In Boece he renders this same line, “Blisful was the firste age of men.’’) In Boethius’s Latin the force of “nimium”—“too much,” “excessively”— brackets the entire lyric, as if the excessive happiness could not possibly 4 Skeat believed that the Ii version was “copied from Chaucer’s [own] copy’; and modern editors use this as the basis for their texts of The Former Age. See Chaucer, The Minor Poems: Part One, ed. Pace and David, pp. 93-94. > The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 165. John Norton-Smith also examines The Former Age in the context of Chaucer’s “Boethian” poems (““Chaucer’s Etas Prima’’). He argues

that the poem is less nostalgic and “Boethian” than has been claimed for it; he also suggests a date in the 1390s rather than the 1380s.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 275 last, and it does not. Chaucer withholds that sense until later in the poem, when the downfall of the golden age becomes a lament for human degeneration. The seven lines on war of Boethius’s lyric become almost two stanzas in Chaucer’s, with the subtopic of covetousness joined to the denunciation of war. And Chaucer expands Boethius’s suggestions of moral decay—who first dug up gold and brought about avarice?—into expanded testimonials about quarrels, pride, envy, and even taxation: Unforged was the hauberk and the plate; The lambish peple, voyd of alle vyce, Hadden no fantasye to debate, But ech of hem wolde other wel cheryce. No pryde, non envye, non avaryce, No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye; Humblesse and pees, good feith the emperice. (49-55)

In that penultimate stanza Chaucer continues the anaphora on “‘no”’ (the so-called negative formula) begun in stanzas 2 and 3, and he extends the connection between imperial conquest and the discovery of gold detailed in stanzas 3-5. Chaucer’s major alteration of Boethius’s lyric occurs in the final stanza, which introduces the Jupiter who brought an end to the golden age (asin _ Jean de Meun’s section of the Roman de la Rose) and the Nimrod who

constructed the Tower of Babel but who also was said to be the first emperor:

Yit was not Jupiter the likerous, , That first was fader of delicacye, Come in this world; ne Nembrot, desirous

To regne, had nat maad his toures hye. | Allas, allas, now may men wepe and crye!

, For in oure dayes nis but covetyse, Doublenesse, and tresoun, and envye, Poyson, manslawhtre, and mordre in sondry wyse. (56-63)

This extraordinary stanza might be compared with Chaucer’s translation in Boece, with its extended tautological gloss on digging for gold: I wolde that our tymes sholde torne ayen to the oolde maneris! But the anguysschous love of havynge brenneth in folk more cruely than the fyer of the mountaigne of Ethna that ay brenneth. . . . Allas! What was he that

276 THE WORLD GROWN OLD first dalf up the gobbettes or the weyghtes of gold covered undir erthe and the precyous stones that wolden han be hydd? He dalf up precious periles. (That is to seyn, that he that hem firsst up dalf, he dalf up a precious peril; forwhy for the preciousnesse of swich thyng hath many man ben in peril). (2 met. 5,

28-40) :

In The Former Age, his verse paraphrase or “imitation,’”’ Chaucer omits Etna while introducing the two tyrants who figure so prominently in medieval primitive histories: Jupiter, whom Chaucer characterizes as the patriarch of lustful sexuality, and Nimrod, whose lust was for governance,

, power, and prideful self-assertion, as in the Glossa ordinaria, Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, Cursor mundi, or Higden’s Polychronicon. ‘The

poem’s last line is startling for its hypermetricality (it is something like an Alexandrine), as the text seems to strain with the violence of modern-day

human sins. ,

The mention of “oure dayes” in line 61 of The Former Age has led some

to speculate that Chaucer alluded to contemporary political or material conditions. But given the extended treatments of Boethian themes (including contrasts between the golden-age past and a fictionalized “present’’), the speculation remains unpersuasive. The “politics” of this poem are literary rather than grounded in fourteenth-century material circumstances.

In Truth, a short lyric in rhyme royal, Chaucer defines the pre-Jupiterian values and suggests an idealistic program for recovering them. The solution to a world grown old, in this and other lyrics, is a turning away from the world altogether, a contentment with one’s lot, a recognition of the alien nature of the world as an Augustinian “region of unlikeness,”’ and a reliance on Christ as the source of truth and freedom: That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse; The wrastling for this world axeth a fal. Her is non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:

Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal! Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al; Hold the heye wey and lat thy gost thee lede, And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede. (15-21) Whereas The Former Age was written in a classical (or Boethian) style, with

no explicit mention of Christian issues, Truth concerns a Christian struggling with problems of using as opposed to enjoying the world. Rather than decrying the world grown old, the narrator of Truth tries to rouse the sleeping reader to spiritual action. The program for recovering value,

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 277 although emphasized in the above stanza and in the envoy, is only half the point of the lyric: the other half, just as important, is the “‘wildernesse”’ that is the world grown old, a world to be shunned and contemned. This lyric, according to Russell Peck, offers a model for political reform as latemedieval writers understood it. In Chaucer’s refrain “trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede,” Peck finds an echo of John 8.32 (“and 3e schullen knowe the treuthe, and the treuthe schal make 30u fre’’) but also the call for personal and political reform in John Ball’s 1381 petition: “helpe truth, and truth shall helpe you.” Any political change—any general reformatio in melius—must begin with the individual’s self-reformation.® There is another signification of trouthe—not incompatible with Christian truth—

which Chaucer often draws upon in his writings: the ethical virtue of maintaining one’s vows, specifically marriage vows. At the end of Troilus and Criseyde the narrator regrets having to write about the “untrewe”’ Criseyde; he would be happier, he says, to write about ‘‘Penolopeés trouthe and good Alceste” (5.1778). Penelope remained faithful to Odysseus dur-

ing the course of his long homecoming; and Alceste, tutelary genius of The Legend of Good Women, died in her husband’s stead when nobody else would.

Gentilesse takes up the question of true nobility, a vexed topic in the fourteenth century. The topos virtus non sanguis could have two applications: first, that those who are nobly born should strive to be worthy of their positions; second, that those who are not nobly born may aspire to

gentility through noble conduct. Chaucer constructs his Clerk’s Tale around gentilesse; he also places the idea in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, where

the loathly damsel lectures the rapist knight on inherited wealth versus nobility of soul in a homily derived in part from Dante and Jean de Meun. There is also a spiritual dimension to the issue of gentility. An especially interesting Chaucerian context for this topos occurs in “De superbia” of

The Parson’s Tale. The narrator discredits mere “gentrie of the body” while extolling that ‘“‘manere gentrie” which “apparailleth mannes corage

with vertues and moralitees” (X 461, 463). He explains the “generale signes of gentillesse”’ as ‘“eschewynge of vice and ribaudye and servage of synne, in word, in werk, and contenaunce, / and usynge vertu, curteisye, and clennesse, and to be liberal—that is to seyn, large by mesure, for thilke that passeth mesure is folie and synne” (X 464). For the ungentil person, the narrator has in mind a vi/lein or churl of the spirit; and the truly gentle man is he who gives freely but in moderation. The Parson regards gentilesse

as a spiritual quality that governs conduct. He gives the example of the king—a ruler very different from the Clerk’s Walter—who governs benignly and with regard to the “bountee” he has received from others. Such 6 Peck, “Social Conscience and the Poets,” p. 115.

278 THE WORLD GROWN OLD a ruler must express gentility through “debonairetee and pitee,”’ he says, citing Seneca. “And therfore thise flyes that men clepen bees, whan they maken hir kyng, they chesen oon that hath no prikke wherwith he may

| stynge” (X 467-68). The moral topic of gentilesse—a literary topos—had political ramifica-

tions in the fourteenth century. Whether John Ball did in fact deliver a sermon to the 1381 insurgents on the theme “Whan adam dalf & eve span, / Who was then a gentil man?” is here less important than that Thomas Walsingham says he did. In the specific context of the 1381 Rising, Ball’s reported sermon theme had explosive, leveling implications— implications that the chroniclers spell out in horror and revulsion. The chroniclers allege that Ball meant to eliminate (or at least blur) class distinctions; and Wat Tyler’s insolence before King Richard at Smithfield (15 June)—his demands and his body language as recounted in the Anonimalle Chronicle—seems to translate Ball’s sermon theme into the realm of political speech and action.’

This topic, then, had profound social and political implications in Chaucer’s time; and Gentilesse reveals Chaucer’s continuing interest in those implications. The lyric itself is didactic and voiced, like Chaucer’s other moral ballades, in a public style.* The refrain, ‘Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe,” emphasizes that those in high positions—bishops, kings, or queens—must earn their gentility through their conduct. Dignity of position does not by itself guarantee the qualities implied in the notion of gentilesse: righteousness, truthfulness, seriousness, pity, benevolence, generosity, purity, good deeds, and a love of virtue for its own sake. According to Gentilesse, the fidelity outlined in Truth plays a role in determining gentility as well. The person of gentility must follow virtue and flee vices because “unto vertu longeth dignitee / And noght the revers” (5-6). As in John Ball’s sermon theme, nobility is not passed down from parent to offspring: “That is,” says the narrator of Gentilesse, ‘“appropred unto [appropriated by] no degree” (18). It is not a privilege of rank but a function of inner qualities bestowed by “the firste fader in magestee”’ to those who please him (19-20). The poem does not argue that members of the nobility are disqualified from true gentility, only that gentility must be earned rather than inherited. The Clerk’s Tale will dramatize what happens when the most nobly born tyrant of Lombardy weds the poorest, yet most virtuous, woman of the realm, the very embodiment of earthly gentilesse. Yet as George Pace and Alfred David observe of Gentilesse, ““Cer-

tainly no tinge of democratic sentiment adheres to the short poem.”’? The ” Robertson, Chaucer’s London, pp. 147-48.

® For this sense of public voice, see Middleton, ‘“The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II.” ° The Minor Poems: Part One, ed. Pace and David, p. 67.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 279 lyric’s sentiment is directed toward those already in power, not toward those who would overturn the established order. If The Former Age, Truth, and Gentilesse help define golden-age qualities that have been lost or abandoned in the modern world, Lak of Stedfastnesse

chronicles the “permutacioun / Fro right to wrong, fro trouthe to fikelnesse”’ that has occurred since that time when the world “was so stedfast and stable.” There is a well-crafted “Lenvoy” (“envoy’’) addressed to a “prince” (Richard II, according to John Shirley) suggesting the moral grounds for social and political reform. The narrator traces the upsidedown world to a lack of truth, to hypocrisy, to false reward (“‘mede’’) and “wilfulnesse,” so that “al is lost for lak of stedfastnesse” (7). Paul Strohm has recently demonstrated how the language of Lak of Stedfastnesse mirrors the language of contemporary chronicles regarding the social conditions of livery and maintenance, “collusioun,” and “oppressioun.”!° Whether Chaucer intended his lyric to voice contemporary circumstances is less the point than that chronicle and verse exhibit a harmony of discourse, a common language. Finally, the lyric is not so much topical or politically occasional as moral—‘“‘a ‘moral ballade’ with a political slant” !!'—and a Boe-

thian outline of the world grown old. Taken together, The Former Age, Truth, Gentilesse, and Lak of Stedfastnesse offer a moral trajectory de senectute mundi. The Former Age asserts the

ideal values of moderation and simplicity, necessary for human felicity. There is brief mention of the modern age and its abandoning of ancient ethics, but the poem focuses chiefly on the happiness in austerity of the early races of humans. 77uth offers a more Christian perspective on human conduct and attitudes, yet one that unites the classical golden age with the

modern era. The ethic of troth—fidelity, steadfastness, keeping one’s word—underwrites both golden-age principles and Christian morality, since maintaining fidelity is the basis of truth (what is true and substantial) and salvation (deliverance): “And trouthe the shal delivere, it is no drede.”’

10 See “‘Chaucer’s Lak of Stedfastnesse,” esp. pp. 134-40. Strohm also raises important

questions about the tone and audience of Chaucer’s short poems generally in Social Chaucer, pp. 71-83. J. E. Cross argues for the connections of Chaucer’s lyric with the Latin planctus genre, and he argues against a too quick acceptance of Richard II as the recipient of the poem, especially on Shirley’s testimony (“The Old Swedish Trohetsvisan and Chaucer’s Lak of Stedfastnesse,” esp. pp. 301-2).

\1 The Minor Poems: Part One, ed. Pace and David, p. 77. See also Derek Brewer’s fine article on the “anti-Ricardian” nature of Chaucer’s literary writings (including certain features of Lak of Stedfastnesse, whose advice, says Brewer, “is not unfriendly and is political in a general way’’): ““Chaucer’s Antu-Ricardian Poetry,” p. 121. Brewer’s

essay offers excellent summaries of recent scholarship on public and private forms of discourse in Chaucer’s poetry. P. M. Kean argues that the minor “Boethian” poems often contain material presented more in a Senecan than a strictly Boethian fashion (Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry, 1:38-39).

280 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Similarly, Gentilesse emphasizes that humans, on the example of “the firste

stok,” must be “Trewe” of their word and active “Ayeinst the vyce of slouthe.” There is an implicit contrast between those of former ages, who expressed true gentility through virtuous conduct, and those of the present era, who try to claim gentility through birth but, like Lombard tyrants, do not deserve their noble titles. Lak of Stedfastnesse, with its appeal to the “prince” in the envoy, stresses the lamentable decline from earlier righteous eras such that “‘al is lost for lak of stedfastnesse.” ‘The poet complains

that ‘““mannes word” is no longer “obligacioun,” that ““Trouthe is put doun,” and that the world has experienced a “‘permutacioun. . . fro trouthe to fikelnesse.”” He urges the prince to “love trouthe” and “worthinesse”’ (gentility, as in Chaucer’s pilgrim Knight) and to “wed thy folk agein to stedfastnesse.”” The tone of that appeal is urgent and plaintive but not despairing; it resembles somewhat Gower’s search for a new Arion (prologue to Confessio amantis). At the same time the poet insists that the situation is serious and will require both Christian charity (“Cherish thy folk’’) and stern justice (“Shew forth thy swerd of castigacioun’’) in order to restore the antique values outlined in The Former Age and Gentilesse. In this way the downward spiral de senectute mundi might be arrested.

2. Modern Marriages in ‘Vhe Canterbury Tales Although women play no role in the four Boethian moral ballades—all the people mentioned are male—women are prominent in The Canterbury Tales as both negative and positive models of the world grown old. Whatever Chaucer’s motives might have been—and there has been no little speculation about them—the fact remains that he devoted considerable attention to female morality, idealizations of women, and antifeminist sentiment throughout the latter part of his literary career. Beginning with his

| portrayal of Criseyde and continuing in The Legend of Good Women and The Canterbury Tales, he explored feminine psychology (from a masculine viewpoint) and depicted women as victims and exemplars.!? ‘Those women

who suffer patiently, embodying Boethian virtues, triumph and serve as models for their own and later generations. Those who manifest greater psychological complexity or moral ambiguity, such as Criseyde and the Wife of Bath, provide negative patterns. Derek Pearsall, while acknowledging “noticeable limitations to [Chaucer’s] sympathetic understanding of women,” has argued that Chaucer’s presentation of women was special in Ricardian literature: “What is very clear is that he was preoccupied with women, and with their role in their relationships with men, to a degree '2 Cooper observes that Chaucer was “clearly occupied” with the “subject of female suffering” in the 1380s; see The Canterbury Tales, p. 125.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 281 quite remarkable in his day, as compared, for instance, with Gower, Langland, and the Gawain-poet.” ? In The Canterbury Tales the positive female constructions include Custance of The Man of Law’s Tale, Virginia of The Physician’s Tale, Grisilde of The Clerk’s Tale, and St. Cecilia of The Second Nun’s Tale. These are mirrors of patience and gentilesse from earlier ages, women who were steadfast in adversity and who maintained their word, their trouthe, despite great suffering and hardships. Of these types the Wife of Bath says, For trusteth wel, it is an impossible That any clerk wol speke good of wyves, But if it be of hooly seintes lyves. (III 688-90)

A virtuous woman, according to Walter Map and other medieval clerks, is indeed a rara avis—trarer than a phoenix. Certain women from classical antiquity may have embodied such moral rectitude, but they are no longer to be found. Says Valerius to Rufinus in a formulation that Jean de Meun will echo, “Lucretia, Penelope, and the Sabine women carried the banners of chastity and (with few followers) brought back their prizes. My friend, there are no Lucretias, Penelopes or Sabine women now: beware them all.” 4 The chief representative of the world grown old in The Canterbury Tales

is the thoroughly modern Alison of Bath, cloth-maker and professional wife. An estates figure (the wife or woman),!° she champions the very attributes condemned in antifeminist literature; and in certain ways she seems to confirm, even to glory in, misogynistic proverbs. Nonetheless, her viewpoint on marriage relations reverberates through the middle portions of The Canterbury Tales. No fewer than six males interrupt or try to answer her. She constitutes a literary and English version of the via moderna, so to speak, providing a model for women’s conduct directly counter to the exemplars of patience in adversity, ethical rectitude, and quiet humility—the via antiqua of female conduct—in The Legend of Good Women 13 The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 138.

14 From Map’s Letter of Valerius to Rufinus, Against Marriage (about 1180), included in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, ed. Blamires, p. 106. See also the Le roman de la Rose 8621-24: “Si n’est il mes nule Lucrece, / ne Penelope nule en Grece, / ne preude fame nule an terre, / se I’en les savoit bien requerre”’ (“And if one knows how to beseech women, there is no Lucrece, no Penelope in Greece, nor any worthy woman on earth’’). '5 The ambiguity occurs in Latin estates literature as well because of the dual mean-

| ing of mulier, “woman,” specifically “wife.” See Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, pp. 121-22.

282 THE WORLD GROWN OLD or in The Canterbury Tales. In contrast to the women of the via antiqua— meritorious women in classical literature (Penelope, Alcestis, etc.)—the

| Wife presents the newer way of archwives who dominate the marriage relationship, who frankly and proudly offer their opinions on issues traditionally reserved for male discussion (including clerical authority), and who seek gratification in and through sexuality. The Clerk regards her as representative of the modern era in contrast to his own Grisilde, and she constitutes a potent threat to clerical attitudes about the role of women and the institution of marriage. The Wife inhabits a role traditionally regarded as the essence of womanhood. She is a weaver and spinner; she presides over the distaff. The distaff was a medieval emblem of female obedience and patience, chiefly

lier fortis): ,

because of a well-known scriptural passage on the ‘“‘virtuous woman”? (mu-

Who schal fynde a stronge womman? the prijs of her is fer, and fro the laste endis. The herte of hir hosebond tristith in hir; and sche schal not haue nede to spuylis. Sche schal 3elde to hym good, and not yuel, in alle the daies of hir lijf. Sche sou3te wolle and flex; and wrouzte bi the counsel of hir hondis. . . . Sche putte hir hondis to stronge thingis [gloss: to stronge

| thingis; in Ebreu it is, to the wherne; and the lettre suynge acordith wel herto], and hir fyngris token the spyndil. (Prov. 31.10-13, 19)'®

The distaff or spindle was an iconographic motif as well as a linguistic symbol identifying womanhood (the “distaff side,” spinelhealf, as opposed to the male “spear side,” sperebealf).’ In the words of the proverbial couplet, ““Whan adam dalf & eve span, / Who was then a gentil man?” The Wife herself underscores the alleged relationship between spinning and '6 The gloss to “a stronge womman” reads, “Cristen doctours expownen comynly this lettre, til to the ende, of hooly chirche, which bi figuratif speche, is seid a strong womman; hir hosebonde is Crist, hir sones and dou3tris ben Cristen men and wymmen; and this is the literal vndurstonding, as thei seyen; and this exposicioun is resonable, and set opinly in the comyn glos. But Rabi Salomon seith, that bi a strong womman is vndurstondun hooli Scripture; the hosebonde of this womman, is a studiouse techere in hooly Scripture, bothe men and wymmen; for in Jeroms tyme summe wymmen weren ful studiouse in hooly Scripture.” The phrase “stronge womman” translates the Vulgate “mulierem fortem.” For extended treatment of the mulier fortis with reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury wives, see Biscoglio, The Wives of the Canterbury Tales. For examples of iconography of the mulier fortis, see Miller, ed., Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, figs. 14 and 15, pp. 392 and 394 respectively; for iconographic discussion, see Emerson Brown, “Biblical Women in the Merchant’s Tale,” pp. 402-3. '7 See Miller, ed., Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, figs. 2 and 3, pp. 24 and 29 respectively. In fig. 3—from the famous Luttrell Psalter—the woman wields a distaff over the kneeling man, who is begging for mercy.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 283 the female psyche when she observes, “Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive / To wommen kyndely, whil that they may lyve” (III 401-2).

On the assumption that the Wife is speaking in character here (in the manner of Jean de Meun’s Faussemblant), she claims that women naturally and proverbially are inclined to fraud and emotional manipulation. In her

self-justifications she seems to corroborate representations of women in antifeminist literature, although she puts a different construction on the meaning of those representations, and she documents her own manipulations in her autobiographical statements. There is a considerable gap between the mmulier fortis of Prov. 31 and the spinning, garrulous Wife of Bath; and the distance between the two provides one index of the moral slide from the alleged ages of virtuous women to Chaucer’s day. It is ironic that The Wife of Bath’s Prologue contains a rebuttal, delivered by the Wife herself, to the mirrors of strong, virtuous women contained in The Legend of Good Women and the Merchant’s and Franklin’s tales.'® She describes at some length Jankyn’s Book of Wikked Wyves, which contains, as she says, ‘mo legendes and lyves / Than been of goode wyves in the Bible” (686-87). Jankyn’s book is either a miscellany of other books “bounden in o volume” or a florilegium culled from well-known antifeminist treatises, including St. Jerome’s Adversus fovinianum, ‘Theophrastus’s De nuptiis, and Walter Map’s Epistola Valerti ad Rufinum. Jankyn would

read to the Wife of Bath from this “cursed book” (789) each night. She remembers, and briefly cites as examples, Eve, Delilah, Dejanira, Xantippe, Pasiphaé, Clytemnestra, Eriphyle of Thebes, Livia, and Lucilia (wife of Lucretius). Contrary to Chaucer’s usual collections of women, this list consists of willful, lustful, independent thinkers, some of them poisoners, some murderers, some bad counselors, and others husband-beaters—the

kind of women that Chaucer represents his narrator as opposing in The Legend of Good Women.

The Wife’s teachings resonate beyond the fictions of her tale, something that can be said of no other pilgrim narrator. In The Merchant’s Tale Justinus, counseling January that marriage may not be the paradise _ he imagines, cites the Wife’s experience (ironically enough) as an authority on marriage (and on the tradition of dissuasio): The Wyf of Bathe, if ye han understonde, Of mariage, which we have on honde, Declared hath ful wel in litel space. (IV 1685-87) 18 Mann has characterized the Wife’s tendency to include male criticisms of her life “the double structure of the Wife’s tirade” (Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 79).

284 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Justinus’s argument seems to be that the Wife has provided ample evidence why an old man should think twice about marrying. Similarly, the Wife becomes an authority in Chaucer’s charivaresque lyric advice to Bukton de conjuge non ducenda:'”

The Wyf of Bathe I pray yow that ye rede Of this matere that we have on honde.

: God graunte yow your lyf frely to lede In fredam, for ful hard is to be bonde. (Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton 29-32)

The Wife’s original argument was not primarily that marriage causes woe, although she begins her “sermon” by claiming that her experience allows her to speak authoritatively about “wo ...in mariage” (III 3), and she fends off the Pardoner’s interruption by saying she will tell of “tribulacion in mariage.” ”° Her actual point—developed in both her prologue and tale—was that the marriage partnership will be more harmonious if

| the wife achieves mastery and then shares power with her husband. (The “woe” arises as a sort of by-product of marital struggles.) Nonetheless, the Wife, according to Bukton’s narrator, suggests that marriage entails a lamentable loss of freedom; and both the Clerk (in ‘““Lenvoy de Chaucer’’)

and the Merchant will develop the notion that marriages with modern

women are a very misery. :

The Wife herself boasts of her powers to make her husbands miserable, at least with respect to her first four husbands. Her intent may have been mercenary rather than malicious, yet she gleefully chronicles how she “pitously a-nyght ... made hem [first three husbands] swynke”’ (202); how she bore her ‘‘olde housbondes on honde” (380) and “quitte hem word for word” (422); and how she made her fourth husband (who had a “paramour’’) fry in his own grease “For angre, and for verray jalousye” (487'9 For this lyric as a “‘self-destructing” dissuasio aware “of its own pointlessness,” see Mann, Geoffrey Chaucer, pp. 57-58. Robert P. Miller says, ““Chaucer’s ‘Envoy a Bukton’

makes use of this form [dissuasion from marriage], and it seems clear from lines 29-30 of that poem that he thought of the ‘matere’ of his Wife of Bath’s Prologue in a similar context, perhaps as an ironic ‘suasio’ ” (Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, p. 437). Curtius identifies the topic “Ought a man to marry?” as a medieval commonplace of “fictitious deliberative speech (suasoria or deliberativa),” specifically the category dissuasio (European Literature, p. 155). 20 Patterson argues that the Wife’s “sermon” should be regarded as a sermon joyeux, a festive genre related to the feast of fools (and cross-dressing) engaged in by La Vieille in the Roman. See Chaucer and the Subject of History, p. 307 n. 44. For further remarks on this genre, see Galloway, ‘““Marriage Sermons.” On the Wife and the issue of crossdressing (“a man pretending to be a woman” or “a transvestite travesty’), see Ganim, “The New History,” p. 221.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 285 88). She proclaims that her old husbands would sing ‘““Weilawey!” each

night; and she is proud that they could never claim the Dunmow flitch for harmonious marital relations, “For, God it woot,” she says, “I chidde hem spitously” (223). Appearing to thrive on conflict, she takes pleasure in deceiving all of her husbands in one way or another. Before her fourth husband dies, she has her eye on Jankyn, the sometime Oxford clerk who becomes her fifth husband, telling him that she would wed him if she “were wydwe” (568). She admires Jankyn’s legs and feet as she carries her

fourth husband’s bier to the grave. She claims to love Jankyn best of all her husbands even though he, like Jean de Meun’s Le Jalous, abused her verbally and physically. The fact that the Wife has gone to school with five husbands provides her with a certain authority both for lecturing the pilgrims on male-female

relationships and for representing modern marriages. The institution of

marriage receives attention, directly or indirectly, in the tales of the Knight, Miller, Reeve, Cook, Man of Law, Clerk, Merchant, Franklin, Shipman, Chaucer (Melibee), Nun’s Priest, Second Nun, and Manciple, as well as the Wife of Bath. But the Wife has more experience with mar-

riage than the other pilgrims (the Clerk, Nun’s Priest, and Second Nun know it only through books). The Wife, unlike most of the others, describes contemporary marital relationships rather than distant legends or mirrors of husbands and wives who existed in earlier eras. The picture of marriage that emerges from the “moderns,” so to speak, is not a happy one. The Miller’s fabliau, which exposes the proverbial folly of the old, rich, jealous man who weds the young, beautiful wife (an archetypal fabliau situation), also reveals a fact of life about modern mar-

riages, which all too often can match inappropriate mates (as might be said of Richard II and Isabelle of France, who was seven when wedded to Richard for political reasons). The merchant of St. Denis and his wife in The Shipman’s Tale (which doubtless was first assigned to the Wife of Bath) constitute a better match than John and Alison, but the merchant’s wife confesses to John the monk (who has already made advances to her) that her marriage is a misery: ““Myn housbonde is to me the worste man

/ That evere was sith that the world bigan” (VII 161-62). Simkyn the miller and his wife (The Reeve’s Tale) seem content enough, although the Reeve makes a point of showing how a Cambridge clerk has had his way sexually with the wife: “So myrie a fit ne hadde she nat ful yoore’”’ (I

4230). This rather unattractive pair constitutes the best that may be said for modern marriages in The Canterbury Tales; the nadir may be said to have been reached in The Cook’s Tale—the only tale set in Chaucer’s London—since we learn that Perkin Revelour’s accomplice “hadde a wyf that heeld for contenance / A shoppe, and swyved for hir sustenance”’ (I 4421-22). The Cook’s narrative breaks off at that point.

286 THE WORLD GROWN OLD A spectacle of modern marital wretchedness appears in The Merchant’s Prologue and in the bitter irony of the “praise” of marriage in The Merchant’s Tale. Although the Merchant seems perfectly capable of generalizing from his own unhappy experience, which is based on a two-month record, it is difficult to find counterexamples from the modern age in The Canterbury Tales. According to the Merchant, who picks up his thought exactly where the Clerk left off in “Lenvoy de Chaucer,” he has known only wretchedness since the moment he married: ‘““Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe / I knowe ynogh, on even and a-morwe’’; “and,” he adds, “‘so doon other mo / That wedded been” (IV 1213-16). He claims

that his wife is “the worste that may be” (1218), that she would defeat even the devil. If the Wife of Bath’s manipulations of her husbands were based on specific ends—such as acquiring treasure or permission to travel—the Merchant’s spouse (again, according to him) is spiteful and rebarbative by nature: “She is a shrewe at al.” He accuses her of “hye malice” (1222); and, although he seems to concede that there may be some

exemplary marriages, he has nothing good to say about the institution from his own experience: Were I unbounden, also moot I thee, I wolde nevere eft comen in the snare. We wedded men lyven in sorwe and care. Assaye whoso wole, and he shal fynde That I seye sooth, by Seint Thomas of Ynde, As for the moore part—I sey nat alle. (1226-31)

The so-called “ironic encomium” of marriage at the beginning of The Merchant’s Tale sets up the unusually bitter and cynical tale of January and May, which deconstructs—or, better, savages—each idealistic statement in the encomium.’! The story will demonstrate that it is scarcely a “glorious thyng”’ to take a wife and especially ‘whan a man is oold and hoor” (1269). Of this allegation the Wife might well say, ‘“The experience woot wel it is noght so.” Moreover, in the context of the pear-tree episode, to characterize a wife as “the fruyt of [an old man’s] tresor” (1270) invites ridicule. ‘The example of May gives the lie to such blithe testimonials as, For who kan be so buxom as a wyf? Who is so trewe, and eek so ententyf To kepe hym, syk and hool, as is his make? (1287-89) 71 For an excellent examination of the bitter complexities of The Merchant’s Tale see C. David Benson, Chaucer’s Drama of Style, pp. 116-30, esp. p. 126.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 287 The Merchant narrator has only scorn for the institution of marriage; but his views, together with those of the Wife of Bath and Harry Bailly, govern the debate on marriage in The Canterbury Tales. The low state of modern marital relations is exemplified in both Chaucer and Langland by the notorious side of bacon at Dunmow in Essex: the

| so-called Dunmow flitch. A couple that could take an oath that they had not quarreled for a year could claim the bacon. Of her first three husbands—the old, rich ones, whom she characterizes as “good” because she could manipulate them—the Wife says, ““The bacon was nat fet for hem,

I trowe, / That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe’” (III 217-18). She gives her husbands constant grief. In Langland’s Piers Plowman, the Dunmow flitch comes to represent all that is wrong with modern marriages: In Ielousie, ioyelees, and ianglynge on bedde, Many peire sipen pe pestilence han plizt hem togideres. The fruyt pat pei brynge forp arn manye foule wordes; Haue pei no children but cheeste and choppes bitwene. Thou3 bei do hem to Dunmowe, but if pe deuel helpe To folwen after be flicche, fecche pei it neuere; But pei bope be forswore pat bacon pei tyne.

(B 9.169-75; C 9.269-75) The more important point about the Dunmow flitch, in both The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and in Piers Plowman, is that married couples who could

maintain harmonious (not to mention blissful) relations for a year were rarer than Grisildes in any given town. ‘The flitch is as much an acknowledgment of failure as of triumph; and the couple who claimed it had to make a solemn vow that they were telling the truth. Doubtless, considerable worldly skepticism and jocularity surrounded those who made bold to claim the prize. Expectations about the married estate, however, are better exemplified in the testimonies of Amis concerning Le Jalous, of La Vieille, of the Wife of Bath, or of the Merchant than in the existence of the Dunmow flitch. The Wife, as has often been noted, is in part modeled on Jean de Meun’s La Vieille (the latter herself modeled on Ovid’s anus and the pseudoOvidian De vetula).?? She speaks with the same candor about herself and 22 Ovid’s anus is Dipsas (Amores 1.8). Circa 1259 Matthew (or Mahieu) of Boulogne wrote the verse Liber lamentationum Matheoluli (Lamentations of Matheolus). About the

same time another writer, identified as Robert de Fournival, chancellor of Amiens, composed De vetula, which purports to be by Ovid. See the edition of Paul Klopsch: Pseudo-Ovidius de vetula, pp. 78-99. Jean Lefévre adapted and translated this (about 1370) as La vieille. See Matthews, “The Wife of Bath,” pp. 422-23, 426-27; Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, pp. 290-96; and the introduction to Lefévre in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, ed. Blamires, pp. 177-78.

238 THE WORLD GROWN OLD her desires; and she is, like La Vieille (an entremetteuse), unsentimental about the institution of marriage. The Wife arouses scandal in the manner of successful fabliaux or the outrageous words for sexual organs in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, which inspired the Querelle. The Wife takes the idea of the marriage debt seriously, and she likens the marriage bond to

a commercial contract: _ With daunger oute we al oure chaffare; Greet prees at market maketh deere ware, _ And to greet cheep is holde at litel prys: This knoweth every womman that is wys. (521-24)

She assesses herself honestly, acknowledging that she no longer has the same commercial value she once did:

, But age, allas, that al wole envenyme, Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith! The flour is goon; ther is namoore to telle; The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle. .. . (474-78)

But the Wife may be most scandalous—and arguably most herself— when she speaks with utter frankness about her sexual relations. Not for her the timid dames of yesteryear. She exists in a different age—not the age of St. Cecilia, Custance, or Grisilde but the age of Goodelief and the pilgrim Merchant’s wife—and she dominates her husbands through sexual manipulation and even intimidation. She judges what each of her husbands desires and then either gives it or withholds it, according to what she can

get in return. “In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument,” she explains, “As frely as my Makere hath it sent” (149-50). She refuses to be coy in most situations; she will make love to her husband—pay him his debt—“‘bothe eve and morwe”’ (152). She explains the Pauline relationship between husband and wife as one of mutual debt but also of sexual servitude: An housbonde I wol have—I wol nat lette— Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral, And have his tribulacion withal

(154-57) |

Upon his flessh, whil that I am his wyf. , She allows her old husbands (‘‘bacon’’) to fulfill their lusts on her body while she pretends to enjoy it; but she does this, as she says, only “For wynnyng” (416). She knows how to manufacture “a feyned appetit” (417).

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 289 Her husbands can mount few arguments about women that the Wife has not heard before; and she, a modern, canny woman, has an answer for each one. She skewers male double standards by exposing how women

can never win. If the wife is beautiful, then the husband’s life will be miserable because her virtue will be constantly tested; if she is ugly, then nobody will want her and she will chase after every man she sees. If she is rich, then she will be arrogant and insufferable; if she is poor, then it is dishonorable to wed her. The Wife even turns clerical arguments against husbands when she observes, slyly and disingenuously, that women must be indulged because they are the weaker sex: Suffreth alwey, syn ye so wel kan preche; And but ye do, certein we shal yow teche That it is fair to have a wyf in pees. Oon of us two moste bowen, doutelees, And sith a man is moore resonable Than womman is, ye moste been suffrable. (437-42)

The modern Wife knows by nature—or by virtue of her gender—how to deceive her husbands; and she is willing to instruct other women in her practical knowledge: Now herkneth hou I baar me proprely, Ye wise wyves, that kan understonde. Thus shulde ye speke and bere hem wrong on honde, For half so boldely kan ther no man Swere and lyen, as a womman kan. (224-28)

The only “wyves” (“women’’) that Alison can refer to on the pilgrimage are the Prioress and the Second Nun. The Prioress and Nun, who both relate saints’ lives, seem an inappropriate audience for the Wife’s practicum, which includes accusing husbands in order to mask her own actions, avoiding even the keenest surveillance through stratagems, and feigning affections she does not feel. Her mother, she claims, taught her a special, Ovidian ruse (“‘soutilitee’’): to pretend she had dreamt that her would-be husband had killed her and that her bed became full of blood, the blood

symbolizing gold. “And al was fals,” she adds; “I dremed of it right naught” (582). She tells this ersatz dream-vision to Jankyn as they walk in

the fields before her fourth husband dies. Through this alleged dream Alison seeks to influence Jankyn’s conception of her and at the same time to break down the barriers of reserve and modesty between confidantes

290 THE WORLD GROWN OLD of the opposite sex, who may have enjoyed a flirtatious, but not openly sexual, relationship. Alison and Jankyn may have known one another since

the time Jankyn was an apprentice associated with one of the rich old husbands (see 303, 381-82), or since the time he (or perhaps another Jankyn) boarded with the Wife’s gosstb, also named Alison.?? The Jankyn who lodged with the gossib became the Wife’s fifth husband; he is described as leaving Oxford to return to the Wife’s town near Bath (525-29). It is

not clear from the text to what extent the Wife shared her intimate and embarrassing confidences with him—the ones that would cause her fourth

husband’s face to become “reed and hoot” (540)—but she at least was comfortable enough with him to take a Lenten-time stroll in the meadows with Alison and him while her fourth husband was away. It was on this outing that the Wife related her spurious dream. The content of the dream suggests that the Wife, who can be formidable in some situations, has a

vulnerable aspect to her personality; and the copious blood in the bed suggests a kind of sexuality—and loss of virginity—that Freud would understand.** The blood may betoken both the experienced, proverbially

uninhibited sexuality of the older woman and the destruction of sexual innocence in the maidenhead’s rupture.”*> The Wife offers her dream to Jankyn as revealing something intimate and inward about her desires; it represents an opening, a kind of invitation to be acted upon should the time become right later on (as it in fact does). Alison’s bogus dream-revelation may be the most shocking instance of her sexual manipulations, but it is not the only such extended example. The best-known stratagem occurs when she pretends to be seriously injured in her altercation with Jankyn over his Book of Wikked Wyves. Angered and frustrated by her husband’s nightly misogynist browbeatings, she rips three pages out of the book, striking him on the cheek at the same time, with the result that Jankyn clubs her in the head. The blow is serious,

since it causes her partial deafness, but with her usual resourcefulness Alison sees an opportunity and plays dead. Overcoming his impulse to flee a crime scene, a guilty Jankyn hears his wife ask, “O! hastow slayn me, false theef? ... / And for my land thus hastow mordred me?” (800-801). As quick-witted and emotionally manipulative as ever, Alison manages to

declare, “Er I be deed, yet wol I kisse thee” (802). A contrite Jankyn | apologizes and begs forgiveness, but the Wife makes a remarkable deathbed recovery and cuffs him. After some marital negotiations that she does 23 On the plurality of Jankyns, see Leicester, The Disenchanted Self, pp. 96-97. ?4 For a different reading of the dream passage based on its possible truth or falsity, see ibid., pp. 101-7. ?5 For the ambiguous nature of the Wife’s sexuality, see Patterson, Chaucer and the

, Sulyect of History, pp. 286-96.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 291 not go into, Jankyn agrees to let the Wife be in charge, to have “al the soveraynetee” (818), which, she claims, results in a relationship that could win them the Dunmow flitch. The Wife not only manipulates spouses and potential mates; she also exploits terms for the sexual organs. Her outspokenness on sexual issues generally must have caused a succés de scandale for her prologue (upon which the authors of The Merchant’s Tale and Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton trade);”¢ and her pet names for sexual organs, along with fragments of her

| intimate conversations with spouses, provide a window into one aspect of fourteenth-century social life. To a limited degree the Wife’s scandalous freedom in discussing sexual terms derives from La Vieille’s sermon joyeux on the arts of love. La Vieille’s ruminations on con (13893—905) help advance the poem’s controversial aspects, although Raison’s mention of testicles (5507) and the narrator’s euphemistic references to “relics” (213 16-37) were the proximate cause of Christine de Pizan’s objections.”” Moreover, Christine must have been displeased to read about La Vieille’s willingness to fornicate with all classes and kinds of males: je n’en met hors prelaz ne moines, chevaliers, borgois ne chanoines, ne clerc ne lai, ne fol ne sage, por qu'il fust de poissant aage (14093-96) (I do not except prelates or monks, knights, burgers, or canons, clerical or lay, foolish or wise, as long as they were at the height of their powers.)

Chaucer’s Wife goes beyond La Vieille in her willingness to talk about sexuality and sexual organs, albeit in terms that are less self-pitying and less adversarial than La Vieille’s. She discourses on the use of sexual organs as part of her opening “sermon” on the theme of experience versus authority. From her experience, she says, she knows that these organs play

a greater role in human life than “purgacioun / Of uryne” (120-21) or simple identification of gender. She asks how authors in books can speak ?6'This “success” did not extend to the manuscript anthologies apparently, since extant miscellanies include tales such as The Clerk’s Tale, Melibee, The Parson’s Tale,

The Man of Law’s Tale, and The Prioress’s Tale but not (for example) The Wife of Bath’s Tale or The Miller’s Tale (see The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, pp. 1118-19).

If the latter were included in miscellanies, they must have been reserved for special drawers or cabinets (hence not preserved in the usual ways). They were certainly not “household books.” 27 See her letter to Jean de Montreuil, in La Querelle de la Rose, ed. Baird and Kane, pp- 48-49.

2Q2 THE WORLD GROWN OLD of a husband’s paying his sexual debt to his wife if the sexual function of the organs are to be discountenanced: “Now wherwith sholde he make his paiement, / If he ne used his sely instrument?” (13 1-32). The Wife expresses fondness for female and male genitalia and uses affectionate diminutives in referring to them. She explains that the perfection of virginity is not for her; rather, “In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument / As frely as my Makere hath it sent” (149-50). She calls the penis a “‘sely” instrument, a word that seems to embrace meanings such as “innocent” (in the sense of it knows not what it does); “imprudent” (in the sense of rash); or even “lucky” or “prosperous’”’ (in the sense of dumb luck: Old English selig). She speaks of being “refresshed”’ through lovemaking as if it were a kind of renewal or a feast to be savored (38); moreover, she prefers a man in bed who is both “fressh and gay” (508). She testifies—somewhat in the manner of La Vieille—that she will bestow her

: sexual favors without prejudice: For God so wys be my savacioun, I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun, But evere folwede myn appetit,

, Al were he short, or long, or blak, or whit; I took no kep, so that he liked me, How poore he was, ne eek of what degree. (62 1-26)

A significant difference is that La Vieille emphasizes virility or potency whereas the Wife stresses “liking.” The Wife is uninhibited in her references to sex organs. She calls them ‘“oure bothe thynges smale”’ (121), using here and often throughout her prologue what J. A. Burrow has termed “a variant of the colloquial idiom known as the ‘domestic our,’”’ which Burrow identifies as ‘“‘a generic marker, suggesting the world of the village or small provincial town.” ”® The Wife offers several terms of endearment for them, including “‘bele

chose’ (447, 510), “harneys” (136), “chambre of Venus” (618), and ‘“queynte”’ (332, 444), although the last term is less euphemistic than the others. She boasts that she “‘hadde the beste guoniam myghte be” (608)— “quoniam’”’ glossed, drolly, as “whatsit” in The Riverside Chaucer.*? The Latin expression, which means “because” or “whereas,” and the French 28 Medieval Writers and Their Work, p. 65. See also Larry Benson’s discussion of the

Wife of Bath’s speech, which he characterizes as “cute” rather than “dirty”: “The ‘Queynte’ Punnings of Chaucer’s Critics,” p. 43. 29 Jean Lefévre, in his fourteenth-century translation of Matholeus’s Lamentations, uses this same term for female genitalia and guippe for male genitalia. See The Riverside

Chaucer, p. 870, note to line 608. |

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 293 bele chose acknowledge and even celebrate the euphemistic nature of the

| terms (and perhaps the figurative nature of language generally). They both conceal and reveal their objects in something like a linguistic striptease. But these terms also shed light on the Wife’s intimate conversations with her spouses, as when she describes herself as saying, presumably to one of her old husbands, ““Com neer, my spouse, lat me ba thy cheke!” (433), or “Wy, taak it al! Lo, have it every deel! / Peter! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel” (445-46). The Wife’s colorful idioms, bawdy language, and intimate snatches of repartee bring to mind the Alison of The Miller’s Tale and May of The Merchant’s Tale, for Alison of Bath, Alison the wife of John the carpenter, and May almost demand comparison as fabliau characters. ‘hey all mar- | ried young, the Wife of Bath initially at twelve, and all felt confined in their marriages. The Miller describes his Alison as “wylde and yong” and

the carpenter as “old”; he feared that he might become a “cokewold” (3225-26). The Wife similarly characterizes herself and wives generally as

rebels to restraint: ““We love no man that taketh kep or charge / Wher that we goon; we wol ben at oure large” (321-22). Argus himself, she claims, would fail to be her “warde-cors” (359). Moreover, The Miller’s Tale contains terms of endearment to match The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, although the expressions and phrases occur within a reported tale rather than in simulated autobiography. The most famous example is Absolon’s

first approach to the window, when he tries to arouse Alison’s interest with stunningly inappropriate language: “What do ye, hony-comb, sweete Alisoun, / My faire bryd, my sweete cynamome?”’ (3698-99). Her retort— colloquial and idiomatic in its own way—shows how different are their

perceptions of the encounter: “Go fro the wyndow, Jakke fool .../ As help me God, it wol nat be ‘com pa me’” (3708-9). The marriage of January and May has obvious affinities with the marriage of John and Alison, or the Wife of Bath and her first three husbands; and January even rejects an older woman because she knows too much about sexuality and deception: “For sondry scoles maken sotile clerkis; / Womman of manye scoles half a clerk is” (1427-28). May seems to know instinctively how to manipulate and deceive her old, jealous husband; but January becomes the

willing agent of his own nearsightedness when he accepts May’s mythically | inspired answer to his accusations. The Wife of Bath, who has variants in

The Miller’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, and The Shipman’s Tale, is a fabliau character; her life contains many elements of fabliau, and her story, for better or worse, represents modern marriages as displayed in The Canterbury Tales.

In the fiction of the Clerk’s reply to the Wife, the latter’s position on marriages and her “doctrine” are to be taken seriously. For the Clerk, the Wife of Bath is not a fabliau character to be dismissed but an emblem of

294 THE WORLD GROWN OLD the sorry state of modern marriages. His tale of patient Grisilde evokes not only the pathos of suffering femininity but also the world grown old. The Clerk challenges the Wife in two ways: first, through his story of a wife who patiently and steadfastly endures her husband’s arbitrary will; | second, in his concluding remarks and his “Lenvoy de Chaucer.” Versions of modern marriages make cameo appearances in The Merchant’s Prologue and ‘Tale, as we have seen; they also show up in testimony

from the Pardoner and the Host. (I omit Chauntecleer and Pertelote, of _ The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, who manage to embody characteristics of both ancient and modern marriages.) The Pardoner merely suggests that the Wife’s opening remarks about experience versus authority may have been

enough to dissuade him from marriage: “I was aboute to wedde a wyf;

allas! / What sholde I bye it on my flessh so deere?” (166-67). His view | of marriage resembles that of the Merchant, although the Pardoner has as yet no actual experience of the battlefront lines.*° Harry Bailly, by contrast, is a seasoned veteran who has earned at least one purple heart. He mentions his unfortunate domestic circumstances several times, which have led some to speculate that he travels to Canterbury to escape his wife. Goodelief, Harry’s spouse, is mentioned in the _ _Host’s roadside banter three times following the Wife’s tale: after the “Lenvoy de Chaucer” (in a passage that Chaucer probably intended to cancel); in The Epilogue of The Merchant’s Tale; and especially in The Prologue of The Monk’s Tale. In “the murye words of the Hoost’” following the ‘““Lenvoy de Chaucer,” the Host alludes to his wife, but only in passing: he wishes she could have heard the story of Grisilde and Walter. The implication, particularly in light of his other remarks about Goodelief, is that Grisilde might provide an excellent model for Goodelief to emulate. “But,” he says with a certain resignation, “thyng that wol nat be, lat it be stille’” (IV 12129). The Host reveals more about Goodelief after The Merchant’s Tale, when he confesses he has a “povre” wife who, “of hir tonge,” is “a labbyng shrewe,” adding, “And yet she hath an heep of vices mo” (2427-29). As before, he says he will not expand on these remarks, but he admits that he regrets the time he married her. If he were to expose all her faults, he says, it would doubtless get back to Goodelief. (He seems to have the Wife of Bath in mind as the potential tattletale; see IV 2437-38.)

After Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee the Host seems to throw caution to the wind. Saying he wishes Goodelief had heard the legend of Prudence, he describes in vivid detail how she bullies him. The Host’s issue is man-

30 For an excellent discussion of the Pardoner, lack, absence, the ‘“‘hermeneutics of the partial,” and nostalgia for the golden age, see Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, chap. 6, at p. 176.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 295 hood and what it means to be a husband in a modern marriage relationship. If Alison of Bath loved her fifth husband best because she could not dominate him, Goodelief appears to despise Harry because he can stand up neither to her nor to the servants. When he beats his knaves, he claims, she brings out the huge knobbed clubs and screams, “Slee the dogges _ everichoon, / And brek hem, bothe bak and every boon!” (VII 1899-900). When someone insults or offends Goodelief, she expects her husband to avenge her with considerable pugnacity. She loses patience with him and calls him a “milksop” as well as “a coward ape” (1910) when his efforts are not aggressive enough for her.*! He claims to be dangerous with a knife, but even so Goodelief intimidates him, “For she is byg in armes, by my feith” (1921). She reverses the conventional order of marriage in that she will perform the man’s traditional role and force her husband to play the woman: “False coward, wrek thy wyf! / By corpus bones, I wol have thy knyf, / And thou shalt have my distaf and go spynne!” (1905-7). As he ponders his own miserable domestic circumstances, the Host turns to the Monk, whom he regards as the master of 4is domain at least;

, and he sets his own relationship with Goodelief and what he imagines about the Monk in the context of the world grown old. The Host’s somewhat playful allegation—Robert Burlin characterizes it as “‘a ‘man-to-man’ mock lament’ ?*—1s that secular folk do not have the potency of those in the first estate, who are supposedly brawny and robust. The Monk should

have been “a tredefowel aright” (1945), but all the world is lost because able-bodied people like the Monk serve the church rather than women: Religioun hath take up al the corn Of tredyng, and we borel men been shrympes. Of fieble trees ther comen wrecched ympes. This maketh that oure heires been so sklendre And feble that they may nat wel engendre. (1954-58)

Harry Bailly’s botanical metaphor of grafting becomes a biological metaphor for human degeneration over time: the stock has become feebler as 31’The ape often signified, among other things, foolishness and (false) imitation, as when an ape copies human actions, in medieval literature and art. “It even symbolizes cowardice, a quality which may have stemmed from Socrates who, in making a distinction between the lion, ape, stag, and bull, seems to imply that the ape lacked cour-

age” (Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, p. 11). , 32 Chaucerian Fiction, p. 182. Since he calls into question his own masculinity vis-avis Goodelief, it is ironic that the Host impugns the Clerk’s manhood by characterizing the scholar as riding “‘as coy and stille as dooth a mayde / Were newe spoused, sittynge

at the bord” (IV 2-3). See also Hansen’s comments about the Host’s manhood in relation to the Clerk (Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, pp. 203-4).

296 THE WORLD GROWN OLD laymen like Harry have had to sustain the race. The Host contrasts the Monk’s alleged sexual prowess with his own puniness; and his unflattering

self-portrait is connected with his idea of manhood and his inability to control (and perhaps sexually to satisfy) Goodelief. The narrator of the General Prologue, however, describes the Host as “A large man” with bright eyes (I 753). He was “Boold of his speche, and wys, and wel ytaught,

/ And of manhod him lakkede right naught” (755-56). But perhaps this manhood differs from the Monk’s, who is depicted as “A manly man, to been an abbot able” (I 167). To characterize the sexual potency of the Monk and other clerics, the Host resorts to the false-coin metaphor discussed above in Chapter 5. Because laymen are so disappointingly small, he says, This maketh that oure wyves wole assaye Religious folk, for ye mowe bettre paye Of Venus paiementz than mowe we; God woot, no lussheburghes payen ye! (VII 1959-62)

The clerisy can deliver true sexual value rather than some debased product. They are not “counterfeit” or debased like Luxembourg coins, which contain base alloys mixed with silver; and they are, like so many fabliau clerks,

ready to be “‘assayed.”’ |

An underlying theme of Harry Bailly’s encomium on monastic sexuality, as F. N. Robinson has observed, is the goliardic dictum “‘clerus scit diligere uirginem plus milite” (“a clerk knows better than a knight how to love a maiden’’). The theme appears in A/tercatio Phyllidis et Florae, The

Love Council of Remiremont, and elsewhere; but Chaucer transforms it from the goliardic altercatio context—is the knight or clerk the better lover?—to an adjunct of Harry Bailly’s personality and his problems with manhood. Chaucer also allies the satirical topic with the idea of the world grown old. The Host regards himself as a victim of genetic decline: he is unable to stand up to Goodelief because clerics such as the Monk have withdrawn from the gene pool. The situation is complicated by the nar-

- rator’s characterization of the Monk in the General Prologue, since the narrator there praises the Monk with sexual quibbles (‘‘venerie,” “prikasour,” “love-knotte’’). The intimation—never made explicit—is that the Monk might not be so aloof from sexual activity as the Host’s mock lament 33 See Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana, ed. Walsh, pp. 82-83 (CB 82), with the refrain “amoris solamine / clerus scit diligere / virginem plus milite”; and p. 110 (4/tercatio Phyllidis et Florae, CB 92), which contains the lines ‘“‘secundum scientiam et secundum morem / ad amorem clericum dicunt aptiorem’’). See also Raby, Secular Latin Poetry, 2:294-97.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 297 later on suggests. Another possibility is that the narrator’s defamation of the Monk, who is no abbot of Cockaigne, harmonizes with or prepares for the Host’s character assassination in The Monk’s Prologue. ‘The narrator, too, sees the Monk in a context of senium mundi when he observes that the Monk rejects monastic rules and observances to pursue ‘“‘the newe world the space.” Harry Bailly’s testimony provides new material for judging modern marriages, material that seems to accord with the Merchant’s perspective that marriage is a very woe. The Clerk, too, worries that marriages in the

modern era have suffered a radical decline and that the Wife of Bath furnishes the contemporary model for woman’s role. He speaks directly about the Wife at the end of his tale and in the so-called “‘Lenvoy de Chaucer.” After the Clerk concludes the story of Grisilde and Walter, after his moral application of the tale’s content (IV 1142-61), and after his plea for everyone to “lyve in vertuous suffraunce” (1162), he includes a seeming afterthought, which begins, But o word, lordynges, herkneth er I go: It were ful hard to fynde now-a-dayes In al a toun Grisildis thre or two. (1163-65)

With these words he turns away from Lombardy and the past, the era of Grisilde, to the modern age. The focus changes to “now-a-dayes” and “now”; and the metaphor is very similar to the Luxembourg coin comparison that Harry Bailly will use to speak about sexuality and the modern layman: For if that they [modern townswomen] were put to swiche assayes, The gold of hem hath now so badde alayes With bras, that thogh the coyne be fair at ye, It wolde rather breste a-two than plye. (1166-69)

Modern women, according to the Clerk, are not pliant or compliant like Grisilde; they cannot endure the kind of testing that Walter inflicted on her.*#

** Besserman discerns references to James 5.3 (“zoure gold and siluer hath rustid, and the rust of hem schal be to 3o0u in to witnessyng, and schal ete 3oure fleischis, as fier”) and Job 23.10 (“But he knowith my weie, and he schal preue me as gold, that passith thoroug fier’’); see “Biblical Exegesis,” p. 197.

298 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Issues surrounding medieval coinage, genuine and counterfeit, involved profound questions of fidelity (trouthe) and identity.**> Commercial activity

and the late-medieval urban economy depended upon stable currency, especially when strangers or relative strangers came together for trade. The Luxembourg coin, pretty on the outside but inwardly debased, symbolizes Langland’s uncharitable postplague marriages as well as the Clerk’s unstable modern wives. When the debased coins are assayed, they break rather than bend and the false metals within are exposed; when the “‘mettles” of modern wives are tested, the Clerk implies, they cannot stand up to rigorous examination. Grisilde possesses an accommodating patience and steadfastness, which allows her to concede or yield without breaking; she is submissive, flexible, pliable yet strong. She embodies the virtues of the “‘firste stok,” including an innate gentilesse—at least as the Clerk pre-

sents her. If Grisilde is true gold (and rarely if ever to be found in the modern age), the Wife of Bath and her alleged ‘“‘secte” represent the contemporary “brassy” or “brazen” era of impatient, inconstant wives. That the Clerk intends the Wife of Bath when he mentions “they” and “the gold of hem” becomes clear in the following rhyme-royal stanza; he goes out of his way to bring in the Wife and those who would follow her ‘“‘praktike”:

For which heere, for the Wyves love of Bathe— Whos lyf and al hire secte God mayntene In heigh maistrie, and elles were it scathe— I wol with lusty herte, fressh and grene, Seyn yow a song to glade yow, I wene; And lat us stynte of ernestful matere. (1170-75)

The Clerk clearly separates the story (“ernestful matere”’) from the “song” he is about to perform, which is designated in the manuscripts ““Lenvoy

de Chaucer’ as if Chaucer were speaking in his own voice or as if the words do not belong to the Clerk. Resolving this issue is less important here than emphasizing the real links between the Clerk’s call for all to live in “vertuous suffraunce’’ and his satiric—not in earnest—attack on the Wife of Bath’s doctrine of “heigh maistrie,” a doctrine he burlesques. The narrator’s pose in the “Lenvoy de Chaucer” is one of license and approval—it is mock encomium. Gone are the subtleties of the actual tale of Grisilde; the envoy is a jeering, flouting vernacular imitation of a “goliardic”’ lyric. The stanzaic scheme appears at first to be an extension of 35 See Little, Religtous Poverty, pp. 33-34; and Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, pp. 164-74.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 299 the tale’s rhyme royal, but the ““Lenvoy’’ in fact is in six-line stanzas that

| have but three rhymes (on -ence/-ense, -aille, and -ynde). The lyric’s ingenuity provides a correlative to the Clerk’s alleged philosophical bent of mind—the proverbial sophistry and rhetorical ostentation that seem to worry the Host (“I trowe ye studie some sophyme” [IV 5]) and troubles other pilgrims and characters in their stories.*° For those who value the tale of Grisilde and its moral applications, the ‘“‘“Lenvoy de Chaucer” might seem to turn substance into accident, to threaten—as the Clerk anticipates

in his prefatory remarks—earnest with game. The arch misogyny of the lyric most closely resembles the monorhymed proverbial antifeminist lyric embedded in the Wife’s discourse (the verses beginning ‘““Whoso that buyldeth his hous al of salwes” [III 655-58]), or, in a different way, the exemplum of Socrates and Xantippe (727-32), or the proverb about the gold ring in a sow’s nose (784-85). In other words, the linguistic energy of the envoy seems best to resemble the spirited clerical antifeminism within the Wife’s prologue, which the Wife seems at once to deplore and exploit.?”

The Wife of Bath defines the institution of modern marriages in The Canterbury Tales. She has the most experience of it; she knows the subtleties of married life and feels no constraints about discussing them. The paradigms for modern marriages are also to be found in fabliaux: the old man with the young wife; the domineering wife; the henpecked or cuck-

olded husband. The testimonies of other Canterbury pilgrims, either through their own experience (Harry Bailly, Merchant) or through their fabliau tales (Miller, Reeve, Cook, Shipman), seem to corroborate the Wife’s unfortunate characterization of modern wedlock. But Alison of Bath does not have the only or the last word on marriage in The Canterbury Tales. A chorus of males also offers stories about marriage relationships; — and the men usually turn to the historical past for their models. The clas-

sical or early Christian eras provide them with mirrors for conduct in wedlock.

36 For choice observations on medieval clerks and their sophistication, see Bennett, Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge, pp. 82-83. 37 John Ganim, in the most searching recent examination of the envoy, has argued that the poem belongs to the Clerk (who yet articulates an important “poetic problem for Chaucer, and therefore speak[s] for him”) and that it embodies “a particular kind of discourse within the Canterbury Tales as a whole, a discourse marked by its grotesque,

highly personalized, exuberant, and often satirical qualities” (“Carnival Voices,” p. 113). Ganim discusses the “goliardic’’-like qualities of the envoy on pp. 119 and 126 n. 15. See also Mann, “The Satiric Tradition,” pp. 172-73, 180-83. Alford regards the clash between the Wife and Clerk as one of rhetoric versus philosophy (‘“The Wife of Bath versus the Clerk of Oxford”). If this is so, the Clerk might be said to invade the Wife’s domain in and through his envoy.

300 THE WORLD GROWN OLD 3. Answering the Wife: Virtuous Women Throughout his literary career Chaucer manifested an interest in legends of virtuous women as well as an aesthetic taste for affective piety and lay devotion. The poem that many consider his earliest extant work, An ABC to the Virgin or La preiere de nostre Dame, is a devotional meditation in praise of Mary as queen of heaven, mother of Jesus, mediatrix between God and humans, and source of mercy and pity. This alphabetical lyric from Chaucer’s Edwardian period is translated from Guillaume de Deguileville’s Le pelerinaige de vie humaine into stanzas of eight lines—the prosodic form of ‘The Monk’s Tale, The Former Age, and Lenvoy de Chaucer

4 Bukton.** In the lyric about the Virgin Mary, it is possible to discern the exemplar for virtuous womanhood (and wifely conduct) that will appear in Chaucer’s other writings, especially in rhyme-royal stories in The Canterbury Tales. If Chaucer translated Pseudo-Origen’s De Maria Magdalena, as the narrator of The Legend of Good Women indicates, then more evidence

, may be said to exist of Chaucer’s interest in piety rooted in perfervid emotion and sentimentality. De Maria Magdalena, a homily written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, concerns the suffering and grief of Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ crucifixion. Derek Pearsall characterizes the __ work as “one of the masterpieces of affective devotion”: “It is a representation of woman that is full of pathos and which yet anticipates, in its simpler hagiographical style, the image of weakness transfigured in solitary fidelity and tenacity of purpose that was to be so potent in Chaucer’s later heroines.” ?? In Chaucer’s literary universe, women occupy places of signal importance as both positive and negative models, although as a rule Chau-

cer’s characters rather than Chaucer as narrator express the judgments about them. Three women in Canterbury stories who provide models of “antique”’ marriages, in which the wives are stable, “gentle,” “trothful,” and constant in adversity despite what may be occurring around them, are St. Cecilia,

Custance, and Grisilde. These three represent different qualities or de-

38 For discussions of prosody in An ABC, see Clemen, Chaucer’s Early Poetry, p. 175, and Howard, Chaucer, p. 89. Clemen emphasizes the creative nature of Chaucer’s trans_ lations generally: “Of all medieval authors Chaucer displays perhaps the greatest skill _ in the fusion of expressions, phrases, linguistic detail—and also on a larger scale in the blending of themes, basic patterns, literary ‘genres’”’ (p. 174). He characterizes An ABC as “a first example of Chaucer’s art of free creative transposition” (p. 175). Davenport notes the elements of complaint as well as of affective piety in An ABC (Chaucer,

i“ ss i of Geoffrey Chaucer, pp. 139, 140. On the aesthetic qualities of narrative pathos, see section 3 of Hope Weissman’s “Late Gothic Pathos in The Man of Law’s Tale,” pp. 139-46. 01 omit Virginia of The Physician’s Tale because she never marries and Prudence

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 301 grees of the married estate. If Cecilia embodies the perfection of the virgin estate, Custance and Grisilde embody the perfection of the married estate. St. Cecilia, though married, remains a virgin; her story, located in early Christian times, is unblemished hagiography. Custance is twice married: first to the sultan of Syria and later to the king of Northumberland. Her story, set in the reign of King Aella of Deira (sixth century), has hagiographical elements, and she has been characterized as the protagonist of a “hagiographical romance.’’*! Grisilde, too, has often been regarded as saintlike.*? She marries once, yet she endures trials similar to those that the wicked pagan stepmothers visit upon Custance. The legend of Grisilde is set in an unspecified Christian time, probably a more modern era than that of The Second Nun’s Tale or The Man of Law’s Tale but still clearly and significantly in the past. The “whilom” that begins The Clerk’s Tale (64) is the “once upon a time” of fairy tale or romance.

St. Cecilia lived in the time of the primitive church; and the Second Nun, who recounts her legend (and in another way Chaucer the author), exploits the distance between present and past. Cecilia’s was an age of miracles and immediate conversions, without doubts, second-guessing, or apostasy. The Nun characterizes Cecilia as in the pattern of the Virgin Mary, a model of the active life of good works (hence a type of Leah) and partaking of heaven’s perfection: And right so as thise philosophres write

| That hevene is swift and round and eek brennynge, | of Chaucer’s Melibee because she is an allegorical figure. The Franklin’s Tale purports to be a Breton lai, but the relationship between Arveragus and Dorigen might be said to be modern in its emphasis on shared sovereignty; but see Pearsall, Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 248, for observations on Dorigen and trouthe. Pertelote, who is ironically compared to Andromache (an ancient, steadfast wife), has a quite modern, Wife-like personality. Grisilde inhabits the same “golden” age as Walter and, arguably, as January and May. There is a timelessness about some of the tales of ancient marriages, and most of the modern tales are fabliaux. It is appropriate to note, as David Benson has related to me in comments on a version of this essay, that the genres of saint’s life and fabliau to a certain extent govern the categories ‘“‘ancient” and “modern.” +! Clogan, “Narrative Style.” See also Paull, ““The Saint’s Legend Genre.” Strohm characterizes The Man of Law’s Tale as “a work of pseudo-hagiographical derringdo” (Social Chaucer, p. 167). The exact setting of this tale is somewhat doubtful since the sultan of Syria is Islamic but Muhammed (died 632) lived after Aella. Paul Olson says, ‘“The fictive Constance’s period must be the late 500s. Chaucer, Trivet, and - Gower all picture a Christian Roman empire still alive and governed from Rome, an Islam that has already captured Syria, and an England about to be re-Christianized” (The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, p. 95).

* For Grisilde as secular saint, see Cooper, The Canterbury Tales, p. 188; Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, pp. 195-96. Pearsall prefers the terms “example” or _ exemplum for both The Man of Law’s and The Clerk’s Tales (The Canterbury Tales, pp. 260, 262, 265, 266).

302 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Right so was faire Cecilie the white Ful swift and bisy evere in good werkynge, And round and hool in good perseverynge, And brennynge evere in charite ful brighte.

(VII 113-18)

People may perceive in her “of feith the magnanymytee, / And eek the cleernesse hool of sapience” (110-11). In bed and wearing a hair shirt on her wedding night—a scene portrayed quite differently in both The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Merchant’s ‘Tale—Cecilia reveals a secret to Valerian, her new husband: a guardian angel protects her and will slay Valerian if he touches her or makes love to her “in vileynye” (156).¥ Desiring to see this guardian angel for himself, Valerian hastens to Pope Urban for baptism and returns home to find an angel with two crowns, of roses and lilies, that ““Ne nevere mo ne shal they roten bee” (228) since they come directly from paradise. These heavenly, unseen flowers have

the odor of truth about them; they cause the almost instantaneous conversion of Valerian’s brother Tiburce, who asks of Valerian whether his conversion is true or in a dream. Valerian responds, In dremes . . . han we be Unto this tyme, brother myn, ywis. But now at erst in trouthe oure dwellyng is. (262-64)

In the age of St. Cecilia, when Christian truth opposes pagan error, new converts to the faith gladly embrace martyrdom. The prefect’s executioner, Maximus, witnesses the souls of Valerian and Tiburce leave their bodies and “glyde” to heaven, “With aungels ful of cleernesse and of light” (403). When it is her turn to die for the faith, Cecilia sits in a bath of flames for a day and a night before the executioner tries to cut off her head; and even with her head mostly severed from her neck, she manages to preach and ask for a church on the site of her martyrdom. She becomes the bride of Christ, and her marriage provides a model for righteous marriages from the past in which both partners observe trouthe, gentility, and steadfastness of purpose.” The Man of Law’s story of Custance, daughter of the Roman emperor, provides another example of a woman’s triumph through suffering with * The result is what Howard Bloch refers to as “house monasticism” in the chapter ‘The Poetics of Virginity” from Medieval Misogyny.

4 Donald Howard has argued that The Second Nun’s Tale might be regarded as the conclusion to the marriage group of tales in The Canterbury Tales. See ““The Conclusion of the Marriage Group”; The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, p. 290; Chaucer, p. 493.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 303 respect to marriage. But Custance, unlike Cecilia, achieves her triumphs within marriage, engaging in lawful sexuality and bearing a son by her second husband. ‘This story and The Second Nun’s Tale are not precisely about marriage even though the narrator says, of husbands, they are always

“goode, and han ben yoore; / That knowen wyves; I dar sey yow na moore” (II 272-73). Cecilia’s denial of her earthly marriage emphasizes her sanctity and cleanness; in The Man of Law’s Tale marriage is a vehicle to highlight the pathos of Custance’s circumstances, which on some level

are metaphoric of the human condition. Custance in her little bark adrift on the open ocean inevitably brings to mind the Christian soul in the ark of salvation buffeted by the world’s tribulations. Yet the tale does not reduce to allegory (as, arguably, The Tale of Melibee might be said to do). Elements of the story, including the castaway on the ocean and the recognition scene, occur in romance as well. Derek Pearsall prefers to call the tale of Custance “‘an extended exemplum of God’s grace granted to patience and constant faith” rather than allegory; and he places the story, along with The Second Nun’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and others, in his category of “Religious Tales.” * In the Man of Law’s version and in Chaucer’s source, the tale of Custance is set in the late Roman Empire, some three hundred years after the time of Cecilia. Yet Christianity still battles with paganism and with a new enemy: Islam. For this tale Chaucer, following Nicholas Trivet’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle, imagines a time just before Britain was re-Christianized but after the rise of Islam.*° As V. A. Kolve has demonstrated in

his magisterial study of Chaucer’s imagery in Fragments I and II of The Canterbury Tales,

The Man of Law’s Tale concerns the very period when England was converted to Christianity—often at a cost of blood and suffering and shame— and when men’s commitment to Christ partook of a corresponding vigor and integrity. Such imaginative recourse to the distant historical past, like Langland’s dream visions of Biblical past or apocalyptic future, always im: 5 ‘The Canterbury Tales, chap. 6; “extended exemplum” on p. 262. The other religious tales he includes are The Prioress’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, The Monk’s Tale, The Tale of Melibee, and The Parson’s Tale. Cooper finds that the serious tone and commentary in the tale argue against religious exemplum in favor of “secular tragedie of the Monk’s Tale type” (The Canterbury Tales, p. 133). See also Speirs, Chaucer the Maker, p. 135; Whittock, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales, p. 110. 46 See the excellent discussion by Margaret Schlauch in her introduction to Trivet’s Life of Constance, in Sources and Analogues, ed. Bryan and Dempster, pp. 158—59. Chaucer probably also used John Gower’s tale of Constance from book 2 of Confessio amantis for his Man of Law’s Tale. For a convenient summary, see Cooper, The Canterbury Tales, pp. 127-29. For Chaucer’s use of historical material in The Man of Law’s Tale see Bloomfield, ““Chaucer’s Sense of History,” pp. 306-7.

304 THE WORLD GROWN OLD plies a contemporary criticism, and risks present despair. But I think the main impulse behind Chaucer’s tale was less to offer criticism than to explore the past in ways exemplary to the present. The austerity and conviction of the early Church are at the center of this tale (as they will be again in the tale told by the Second Nun), and its purposes are clarification and renewal—for the communitas as much as for the individual Christian soul.*’

The Second Nun depicts an age of unwavering faith: when idol worshipers come into contact with Christian truth, they convert immediately and go to their deaths unflinchingly. Custance, like Cecilia, effects conversions—but with a difference that helps distinguish her era from the earlier age of martyrs and catacombs. (Chaucer omits the detail, found in both Trivet and Gower, that in Rome Constance converts merchants to Christianity.)*® Custance converts a number of Syrian Muslims before her marriage. [he sultan is willing to convert to Christianity in order to marry Custance. But that selfish and goal-oriented political act should be contrasted with Cecilia’s conversions. Once the sultan and Custance have wedded, Custance’s evil stepmother, who makes a great pretense of conversion, leads the Syrians in apostasy—a countermovement unimaginable in Cecilia’s bright world of the church triumphant in persecution. At the wedding feast in Syria the sultan’s mother, whom the narrator characterizes as “‘welle of vices,” “roote of iniquitee,” “serpent under femynynytee,” “feyned womman,” and “Sathan,” causes the Roman Christians, her son’s close associates, and even her son—all but Custance herself—to be slaughtered. ‘The Roman Christians and converted Muslims are not said to be martyrs; they are quickly forgotten. The Syrians shove Custance

“foot-hoot” into “a ship al steerelees,” and narrative attention shifts to the pathos of the solitary Custance adrift “Yeres and dayes” on the Aegean.” The Man of Law portrays women in extremes: Custance is exemplary (if inimitable) in her steadfastness, but her two mothers-in-law are archetypes of malevolent iniquity. The sultaness and Donegild, Alla’s mother, are monsters who, like Lady Macbeth, are said to abandon their gender in their ruthless ambitions. ‘They are to a large extent vice figures reminiscent of morality drama, and surrogates of the devil. The narrator com” Imagery of Narrative, p. 297. Kolve also stresses the purpose of the tale of Custance,

to show “‘what poetry can do at its maximum dignity, in the service of historical fact and Christian truth” (p. 299; cf. p. 297). 8 Trivet’s Life of Constance, ed. Schlauch, in Sources and Analogues, ed. Bryan and Dempster, p. 165; Gower, Confessio amantis 2.598—610.

#9 See Kolve’s analysis, with illustrative scenes from the late-medieval period, in “The Rudderless Ship and the Sea,” chap. 7 of Imagery of Narrative.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 305 pares the sultaness to Semiramis and Eve, and he remarks that Satan finds women easier to approach: O Sathan, envious syn thilke day That thou were chaced from oure heritage, Wel knowestow to wommen the olde way! (365-67)

Similarly, the narrator explains the heathen steward who intends to rape Custance as a demonic agent: Sathan, that evere us waiteth to bigile, Saugh of Custance al hire perfeccioun, And caste anon how he myghte quite hir while. .. . (582-84)

The Man of Law’s Tale, with Custance as the object of pathos, contains extravagant rhetoric on the contempt of the world.°° Custance may be said to inhabit a world similar to that of Bede’s swallow—a ruthless, seemingly capricious earthly realm where Satan lurks to bring misery to those, like Custance and Hermengild, who would do well. Of the brief moment of joy that Alla and Custance are granted, the narrator observes, But litel while it lasteth, I yow heete, Joye of this world, for tyme wol nat abyde; Fro day to nyght it changeth as the tyde. (1132-34)

In this story, woe always follows moments of happiness: O sodeyn wo, that evere art successour To worldly blisse, spreynd with bitternesse, The ende of the joye of oure worldly labour! Wo occupieth the fyn of oure gladnesse. (421-24)

Alla’s death inspires similar philosophical reflection on the human condition: “For Deeth, that taketh of heigh and logh his rente .. .” (1142). Rhetoric de contemptu mundi dominates the storytelling in a way some have © Bloomfield, ““The Man of Law’s Tale”; Muscatine, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, p. 142; David, The Strumpet Muse, pp. 128-29.

306 THE WORLD GROWN OLD found distracting, heavyhanded, or inappropriate.*! Yet the great writings on the contempt of the world, including Innocent’s De miseria, manifest a similar taste for rhetorical excess. Peter Damian, Innocent III, Bernard

of Cluny, Serlo of Wilton, and others denounce the vile world in lurid terms and with impassioned rhetoric. By the standards of eleventh- and twelfth-century writings on contempt of the world, the Man of Law’s narrator seems restrained and muted. Chaucer not only introduces far more rhetorical, editorial remarks by the narrator (such comments are minimal in Trivet and Gower), he also frames the tale with translations from Innocent’s De miseria..* The material on poverty from Innocent’s treatise provides an atmosphere of pessimism that continues through the tale.

The rhyme-royal stanzas of The Man of Law’s Tale (as well as those of The Second Nun’s Tale and The Clerk’s Tale) reinforce the distancing effects of the rhetoric de contemptu mundi. Chaucer has recourse to this stanza form for saints’ lives, some lyrics (including moral ballades), and

tragic romance with epic qualities. Issues of predestination and free choice—as in Troilus and The Man of Law’s Tale—sometimes provide distancing perspective on the narratives. Donald Howard has characterized the narrative movement of The Man of Law’s Tale as “stately,” “stylized,” and “pageantlike”; and he observes that the rhyme-royal stanzas tend “to slow the movement and ‘distance’ us—we look on the events as from afar.” °? These qualities of otherworldly distance and pageant appear in fifteenth-century illustrations of the tale of Custance, as Kolve has shown.°*

Closely linked with contempt of the world is the Edwardian pathos manifested, for example, in Custance’s prayers to the Virgin Mary. By “Edwardian” I refer to Alfred David’s characterization of Chaucer’s earliest literary writings (to 1377), which include An ABC, The Romaunt of the Rose, some early complaint lyrics (Pity), The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The Legend of St. Cecilia (which would be included in

the Canterbury anthology as The Second Nun’s Tale), and Anelida and 51 Muscatine, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, p. 142; for other references, see Pearsall, The Canterbury Tales, pp. 258-59; Cooper, The Canterbury Tales, p. 128. 52 Rhetorical asides in Trivet include “allas! si ne fut la volunte dieu” (said of the sultaness’s existence, p. 167) and “cist, que tut estoit pris en la mayn al diable”’ (said of the false knight who plants the bloody dagger under Constance’s pillow, p. 171). For an analysis of Chaucer’s use of Innocent, see Robert Lewis, “De miseria humane conditionis in the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale.” I could not find comparable passages in Gower. 3 Chaucer, p. 419. Morton Bloomfield is most often associated with the term “‘distancing”’; see “Distance and Predestination” and above, n. 46. *4 See Imagery of Narrative, fig. 137 (“Scenes from Gower’s tale of Constance”), p. 307. See figs. 138-42 for comparable “tableaux.”

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 307 | Arcite. Related to The Legend of St. Cecilia is The Prioress’s Tale with its emphasis on the role of the Virgin in ameliorating human suffering. In these two last tales and in The Man of Law’s Tale as well (but not in Trivet or Gower), the Virgin Mary is appealed to as intercessor between the harshness of the world—the pain and tribulations it visits upon suffering creatures—and God, who offers surcease from mortal pain and wretchedness. This Mary sings lullabies to the weeping infant Jesus about the distress and cruel injuries he will receive soon enough (“‘Lollai, lollai, litil child, whi wepistou so sore?”’) and, as mater dolorosa, keeps vigil by the Cross.°> In the Edwardian ABC, Chaucer characterizes Mary as “Almighty and al merciable queene, / To whom that al this world fleeth for socour” (1-2); “Haven of refut, of quiete, and of reste” (14); “queen of comfort” (77, 121); “tresoreere of bountee to mankynde” (107); ““Temple devout”’ (145); and “adi ful of merci” (173). He testifies that humans on their own

merits have no right of appeal to God for mercy, “But thurgh thee han we grace as we desire” (32). He cannot, he adds, adequately portray her “sorwe .../ Under the cros, ne his greevous penaunce” (81-82); but he bids her, “Continue on us thi pitous eyen cleere!” (88). In a similar Edwardian strain of pathos and sentimentality Custance, with “‘Hir litel child ... wepyng in hir arm” (834), yields to the cruel, unjust orders for banishment (forged by Donegild) and prays to the Virgin for comfort. She asks Mary to take pity on her child: Now, lady bright, to whom alle woful cryen, Thow glorie of wommanhede, thow faire may, Thow haven of refut, brighte sterre of day, Rewe on my child, that of thy gentillesse Rewest on every reweful in distresse. (850-54)

After she has been falsely accused of killing Hermengild, Custance offers a prayer to Mary, “doghter to Seint Anne, / Bifore whose child angeles synge Osanne”’ (641-42). When the evil steward tries to rape Custance,

_ the narrator says that the Virgin protects her (920), causing the would-be rapist to fall into the sea. 55 RL XIV, p. 35, which contains the couplet “Lollai, lollai, litil child, to kar ertou bemette, / Pou nost no3t bis world-is wild bifor pe is isette” (IMEV 2025). A few other examples of this pathetic genre: “Lullay, lullay, litel child, reste pe a prowe,” which contains the line “Child, it is a weping dale pat pu art comen inne” (RL XIV, p. 83, line 13 [[MEV 2023]); “Ler to louen as i loue pe,” in which Mary comforts the shivering Christ Child (RL XIV, p. 91 [IMEV 1847]); and “Stond wel, moder, ounder rode” (Chauncoun de noustre dame; EL XIII, pp. 87, 89 [MEV 3211)]), in which Jesus comforts his mother as he dies on the Cross.

308 THE WORLD GROWN OLD The stylized prosody, elevated rhetoric, contempt of the world, sentimentality and pathos, cosmic scale, and polemically drawn characters of The Man of Law’s Tale all serve to advance the narrative’s nonmimetic, exemplumlike qualities. Custance embodies trouthe, gentility, patience in adversity, and constancy (as her name implies). Like St. Cecilia, she lived

in another era, when (such is the fiction) women furnished models of fidelity through suffering. Custance’s qualities as wife and mother should not be overemphasized. Her life and its meanings seem estranged from the afflictions of the modern pilgrims’ lives; at times her story appears to be fable, legend, or parable. But in the context of The Canterbury Tales and its chief (but by no means sole) topics—marriage and sexual relations— The Man of Law’s Tale does have something to add concerning “‘antique”’ marriages and suffering wives of the Marian type. The most memorable instance of female patience in adversity in The Canterbury Tales is the Clerk’s Grisilde. Of the three exemplary women examined in this chapter, she is the least saintlike: she has two children, engages in considerable dialogue with her husband Walter, and is seen to suffer in a worldly fashion. In one sense we are far away from St. Cecilia’s

age of martyrs. Yet Grisilde may be said to exist in a special past; the Clerk, as we have seen, speaks of her as a model that can no longer be found in the present era. It is very difficult, the Clerk says archly, to find “thre or two” Grisildes in any town nowadays; but he has also said that it would be “inportable”—“‘intolerable,” “too great a burden”—to follow Grisilde “as in humylitee” (1165, 1143). Still, “every wight, in his degree, / Sholde be constant in adversitee / As was Grisilde” (1145-47). The distinction, in Chaucer and his sources,** is between what women cannot be expected to do and what everyone, regardless of gender or estate, should

strive for. ,

An important point, all too often deemphasized or even ignored, is that much of The Clerk’s Tale is a faithful adaptation of Chaucer’s French and

Latin sources.*’ Chaucer changed the emphasis of certain passages— heightening Grisilde’s emotional responses and Walter’s cruelty, comparing Grisilde to Job and Christ—but he makes no fundamental modifications of his received story. His major alteration to Petrarch’s tale is to

6 The point is made with greater clarity in Petrarch and the anonymous French version. See Sources and Analogues, ed. Bryan and Dempster, pp. 330 (Petrarch) and 331

(Le livre Griseldis). 57 Chaucer relied chiefly on Le livre Griseldis, a French redaction of Petrarch composed in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The Clerk speaks only of Petrarch’s version, which was composed in 1373 and revised in 1374 for Epistolae seniles and which constitutes a translation of the last story of Boccaccio’s Decameron (10.10). Le livre Griseldis and Petrarch’s De insigni obedientia et fide uxoris are printed on facing pages in Sources and Analogues, ed. Bryan and Dempster.

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 309 assign it to the Clerk, who surrounds the story of Grisilde with death, contempt of the world, and satire directed at the Wife of Bath. Chaucer places the story in a specific polemical context and makes of Grisilde a representative of wifely rectitude and humility from the past. He historicizes and at the same time moralizes the story, although the tale he received was already moralized and overdetermined. Chaucer’s narrative framing, in my judgment, transforms the point and meaning of the story, although some Chaucerians would prefer to keep issues of the so-called debate on marriage separate from the tale of Grisilde. For his presentation of the popular fourteenth-century tale of Grisilde (which he says he was told by Petrarch), the Clerk insists on the context of death and contempt of the world. His emphasis on Petrarch’s death— ©

“He is now deed and nayled in his cheste; / I prey to God so yeve his soule reste!” (29-30)—serves both to place the story in the Italian past and to connect the story of Grisilde with that of Custance. If The Man of Law’s Tale is framed by contempt of the world from Innocent III’s De miseria, The Clerk’s Tale is framed by human mortality and transience, a significant aspect of literature de contemptu mundi. Speaking of Petrarch and Giovanni da Lignano, professor of canon and civil law at Bologna, the Clerk says, But Deeth, that wol nat suffre us dwellen heer, But as it were a twynklyng of an ye, Hem bothe hath slayn, and alle shul we dye. (36-38)

The Clerk not only waxes rhetorical about Italian humanism in his encomium to Petrarch and Giovanni da Lignano, he also includes reflections (not necessarily antihumanistic) on the brevity of human life. These sentiments, with their Pauline warnings, occur often in writings on contempt of the world, as in this passage from the De museria: “Vita velociter fugit et retineri non potest; mors autem instanter occurrit et impediri non valet” (“Life flees quickly and cannot be detained; but death attacks vehemently and is unable to be checked’’).** At the end of his story of Grisilde and at °8 De miseria condicionis humane 1.22, ed. and trans. Lewis, pp. 133, 132. The phrase “twinkling of an eye” occurs in moral lyrics concerning death. In the thirteenth-century ubi sunt? poem “Uuere bep pey biforen vs weren” from MS Digby 86 (cited above, p. 163), the poet depicts how quickly death will sweep people away: “And in a twincling of on eye / Hoere soules weren forloren.” The fourteenth-century “In a Pistel pat poul wrou3t” (Vernon Manuscript) observes that everyone is mortal and hastens to death: “Wip a twynklyng of an eize, / Eueri day pou hizest pe henne” (RL XIV, lines 63-64, p. 141 (MEV 1455)). Finally, the fourteenth-century Middle English translation of Cur mundus militat from ‘Trinity College, Cambridge, MS 181, contains the following ui sunt? couplet: “All bese grete princis, wip her power so hize, / ben wanischid a-way in twinkeling of an ize” (RL XIV, lines 23-24, p. 238 [IMEV 4160]).

310 THE WORLD GROWN OLD the opening of the “Lenvoy de Chaucer,” the Clerk alludes again to death

and Italy: “Grisilde is deed, and eek hire pacience, / And bothe atones buryed in Ytaille” (1177-78). Petrarch and the subject of his clerical story have become part of the Italian past; they and their values are gone, leaving

the debased, cruder world of the present. Grisilde dwells in Lombardy, a region that Chaucer seems to have associated with (male) tyranny in the figures of the marquis Walter, the old

knight January (The Merchant’s Tale), and Bernabd Visconti (The Monk’s Tale), “scourge of Lumbardye.” °° This area has a venerable history; the Saluzzo plain contains many towns and towers, says the Clerk following Petrarch, “That founded were in tyme of fadres olde” (IV 61), and Walter was, he adds, “‘to speke as of lynage, / The gentilleste yborn of Lumbardye”’ (71-72). This injection of the gentility motif has important implications for the story’s meaning, since Walter, the alleged “gentle” protagonist, behaves in churlish fashion, whereas Grisilde, the poorest villager from the poorest village of Saluzzo, conducts herself in a way that can only be characterized as transcendently noble. Walter embodies the foundational sentiment of Chaucer’s short poem Gentilesse: And, but [the noble person’s] heir love vertu as dide he, He is noght gentil, though he riche seme, Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe.

(12-14).

, Grisilde, by contrast, seems to step out of The Former Age in that she personifies moderation, gentility, and Boethian trouthe and steadfastness. | She lacks all the comforts and privileges of Walter’s station, but she seems

not to mind the harshness of her condition. She has no strong desires of *° Larry Benson comments, “While there is no indication that we should identify Walter with the proverbial tyrants of Lombardy, the association of tyranny with the area is consistent with elements of Walter’s future behavior” (The Riverside Chaucer, p. 881, gloss to line 72).

6° For the gentility topos in The Clerk’s Tale (and in the context of the Wife of Bath’s and the Merchant’s tales), see Donald Baker, “‘Chaucer’s Clerk and the Wife of Bath”; Levy, “Gentilesse”; and Carruthers, ““The Lady, the Swineherd, and Chaucer’s Clerk.” Baker, who notes that there are two endings to The Clerk’s Tale, observes that the theme of gentilesse is ‘‘present in all versions of the tale, especially in Petrarch’s version” (p. 633). He also notes how Chaucer sometimes alters Petrarch to emphasize gentility, as when he renders Petrarch’s “et caris moribus instruendam”’ as “‘in alle gentillesse” (p. 636). Of Walter and Grisilde Bernard Levy says, “In [the Clerk’s] tale a man of gentle birth but lacking true gentilesse is converted by a woman of low birth but possessing true gentilesse to an understanding of the nature of true gentilesse’”’ (p. 307). Carruthers regards ‘The Clerk’s Tale as a “dilation upon” the theme of gentilesse

, first introduced into the storytelling in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, although she adds that the Clerk’s use of this topic is “thematic and incidental, not dramatic” (p. 223).

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 311 her own; and she is, somewhat like St. Cecilia, a paragon of activity rather than sloth: But for to speke of vertuous beautee,

Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne; , For povreliche yfostred up was she, No likerous lust was thurgh hire herte yronne. Wel ofter of the welle than of the tonne She drank, and for she wolde vertu plese, She knew wel labour but noon ydel ese. (211-17)

She gathers and boils herbs and roots; she spins wool from sheep; she sleeps on a hard bed; and she is obedient to her father. The detail about Grisilde’s drinking water rather than wine may well reflect back to the Wife of Bath, who confesses that she always feels lecherous when she drinks;*! but it also serves to reinforce Grisilde’s connections with antique virtues, since the golden-age race is said to have drunk “‘water of the colde welle” (The Former Age 8). Grisilde, like the people of the former age, is

not “forpampred with outrage” (5). When the marquis selects Grisilde for his bride (at the people’s request), his women attendants “‘translate”’ her into a fine lady, stripping off her poor clothes and giving her rich attire; throughout this process Grisilde maintains a remarkable equanimity. She seems to embody the Pauline notion of self-sufficiency in God: “For Y haue lerud to be sufficient in whiche thingis Y am. And Y can also be lowid, Y can also haue plentee. Euery where and in alle thingis Y am tau3t to be fillid, and to hungur, and to abounde, and to suffre myseiste. Y may alle thingis in hym that coumfortith me” (Phil. 4.11-13).” For the Clerk, who has no direct or indirect experience of marriage, the Grisilde story presents an image of “ancient” marriages. Grisilde, for him, is a model of spousal obedience and meekness from a past when such

mirrors of wifehood could exist. Having almost no regard for temporal goods, she is heroically—some might say grotesquely—Boethian. The Clerk portrays her with human feelings, especially for her children and ostensibly for Walter, but in Walter’s three “temptations” of her she maintains an almost more-than-human equanimity despite apparent trag6! Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, p. 198. For other views of Grisilde’s exemplary qualities, see Middleton, ““The Clerk and His Tale,” and Morse, ““The Exemplary Grisilde.”’ ° In the Vulgate this passage reads, “Non quasi propter penuriam dico. Ego enim didici in quibus sufficiens sum. Scio et humiliari, scio et abundare. Ubique et in omnibus institutus sum et satiari et esurire et abundare et penuriam pati. Omnia possum in eo qui me confortauit” (Biblia Latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4:587).

312 THE WORLD GROWN OLD edy and reversals of Fortune. Charles Muscatine has explained the problems of interpreting Grisilde’s story as if it represents realism or verisimilitude rather than hagiography and legend: One is likely to smudge the Clerk’s Tale by the slightest mixing of earth with its pure water. Griselda’s deficiency as a mother has been several times deplored; one should on the same basis criticize Abraham’s carelessness of Isaac. Chaucer, after Petrarch, makes perfectly plain that Griselda is not a model for wifehood to imitate. She is a model of ‘“‘vertuous suffraunce,”’

realism.® |

and of nothing more specific. She will wither at the touch of practical

Muscatine’s point is all the stronger when Grisilde is considered from the Clerk’s viewpoint, for while the Clerk concedes that she is not a paradigm for modern times, he urges that she be regarded as an ideal. By making

Walter a tyrannical husband and “monster,” the Clerk may undermine his argument that the husband should have sovereignty in a marriage relationship; but the focus is less on Walter and why he acts as he does than on Grisilde and why she yields as she does. ‘The Clerk regards that past time not as the age of Walter but of Grisilde. | Nonetheless, Walter, too, displays emblematic qualities even before his tyrannical nature is revealed. He ignores his country’s welfare by refusing to marry, preferring instead to live the worldly life of hawking and hunt-

ing. For this neglect of the realm the Clerk “blames” him. Walter weds Grisilde only because his subjects petition him to consider the future rather than his “lust present.” On one level—a level that ignores his astuteness in choosing Grisilde and the fairy-tale conclusion of the story— his personality embodies attributes of the Lombard tyrant. On this level, he is an antitype to Grisilde: the local despot versus the patient saint. To the extent that the Clerk as narrator may be said to have a “voice” in his tale-telling, he censures Walter and glorifies Grisilde, comparing her to Job and even Christ. On another level—a level that emphasizes possible 63 Chaucer and the French Tradition, p. 193. P. M. Kean overstates the case for Grisilde’s “reality” when she writes, “We are not, in fact, to think of Walter as anything but a mortal man or of Griselda as anything but a real wife” (Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry, 2:125). For the complex qualities of patience that Grisilde embodies, , see the discussions of patience by Kirk (“Who Suffreth More than God?”’) and Hanna (“Some Commonplaces of Late Medieval Patience Discussions’’). * Helen Cooper is especially forceful on this point: “The Clerk’s Tale does not provide easy support for clerical antifeminism. It presupposes a patriarchal society in which husbands have power over their wives, but it does not take it for granted. ... The Wife of Bath mounts an open attack on the whole scheme of antifeminism that allowed Chaucer to create her as he does; Grisilde is more quietly subversive of such male ideologies” (The Canterbury Tales, p. 199).

CHAUCER AND THE DECAY OF VIRTUE 313 flaws in the storytelling—Walter is too much the psychological deviant and Grisilde too much the saint for both to exist in the same tale.® Nonetheless, Walter does possess symbolic or figurative dimensions; he may be more “realistic” in certain ways than Grisilde, but he is not so realistically drawn as Harry Bailly or January of The Merchant’s Tale.

ALTHOUGH CHAUCER’S ATTITUDE about the world grown old was ironic and

somewhat elusive, it is clear that he maintained a concern with worldly degeneration throughout his literary career. If Langland and Gower perceived corruption throughout the estates, human institutions, and individuals, Chaucer seems to have regarded mundane decay especially as a decline of virtue, a lack of commitment to trouthe and gentilesse, and a coarsening of human relationships. He represented the decline in his premier topic of The Canterbury Tales—marriage—and in his quasi-political short lyrics on Boethian themes. St. Cecilia, Custance, and Grisilde embody the via antiqua of truthful, gentle women; the Wife of Bath, Alison, May, and Goodelief constitute the via moderna of wives. For clerks at least—and doubtless for Harry Bailly as well—the passing of the old ways are to be lamented. As the Parson says in ‘“Remedium contra peccatum Luxurie,” “A wyf sholde eek be mesurable in lookynge and in berynge and in lawghynge, and discreet in alle hire wordes and hire dedes./ And aboven alle worldly thyng she sholde loven hire housbonde with al hire herte, and to hym be trewe of hir body.” And he adds, “So sholde an housbonde eek be to his wyf. For sith that al the body is the housbondes, so sholde hire herte been, or elles ther is bitwixe hem two, as in that, no parfit mariage” (X 936-38).

6° As Bertrand Bronson has written, “But all this effort to turn the story into a religious parable splits on the rock of Walter’s too too solid flesh” (In Search of Chaucer,

p. 108). See also Donald Reiman, “The Real Clerk’s Tale,” who argues that Grisilde is “pathetic rather than virtuous in the eyes of both the reader and the Clerk; one sympathizes with her predicament without respecting either her intelligence or moral sensitivity” because, says Reiman, she is “guilty of idolatry” when she submits to Walter (Pp. 363).

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Conclusion

The Idea of the World Grown Old in the Later Middle Ages I ORIGINALLY UNDERTOOK TO WRITE A BOOK about how late-medieval authors

viewed their historical age—what they might have called the eleventh hour

of the sixth world age. As it has turned out, the book has dealt as much with the earliest world age as with the later Middle Ages, for when medieval authors wrote about their own time, the saeculum, they usually turned to the past for examples of virtuous behavior. By the same token, those who wrote about the past usually had recourse to the present since _ the decay of the contemporary world helped illuminate the pristine past. Harry Levin has observed that in the golden-age myth there is no true story, only a golden past and an iron present, and “no real protagonist.” Such is not the case with the world grown old, the Christian medieval analogue to the pagan golden-age myth. ‘The world grown old involves past and present; it has actual historical stages as well as heroes and villains.

The world grown old is in large part the Christian story, especially as it attempts to define the Christian’s relation to time, history, and the saeculum. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in Eden, they set the pattern of moral corruption that led to worsening physical conditions. Some historical personalities contributed directly to the continuing decline. Cain, Lamech and his children, the pre-Flood giants, Ham, Nimrod, Jupiter, Nebuchadnezzar, Judas, and Nero were all part of this negative effort— what Augustine characterizes as building the city of man. These figures constituted a genealogical line from Cain to the antichrists and pseudoapostles of the world’s last hours. Other historical figures heroically fought

against the city of man on behalf of an unseen garden-city: the city of God. Of these, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jonah are prominent in the Old Testament. In primitive Christian times or in the Christian past generally there were many exemplars of special virtue—constancy in adversity, patience—in defiance of an ever

more corrupt saeculum. The strong interest in the past and the whole

| 315

“course of the world” is in my judgment a defining element of fourteenthcentury English literature.

316 THE WORLD GROWN OLD French, Italian, and English writers in the later Middle Ages described a world grown old, a world upside-down. These writers de senectute mundi conducted literary explorations of both the present and the past, and often

the idea of the world grown old was their point of departure. In their writings the saeculum is replete with plagues, famines, earthquakes, wars, and rumors of wars. It is overrun with corrupt ecclesiastics; divided by poorly administered institutions; and devoid of the virtues possessed by primitive men and women, early Christian saints, some poor people, and some modern-day communities, especially those in geographical regions near the terrestrial paradise. In these authors we can descry a concern for

where things began to go wrong. They wanted to know how the world came to grow old, who was responsible for the corruption, and where they as moderns stood in relation to this aging process. In some authors, especially John Gower in the Confessio amantis, the meditation on the world grown old and its causes led to literary expressions of hope for reform. Gower (and Amans) suggested that knowledge

, of the world’s divisions and one’s own divided condition may perhaps bring about the world’s renewal. Gower tried to transcend the chaos of his age by identifying the universal laws of the macrocosm and microcosm and by discerning a divine plan. Chaucer, too, seemed to offer some hope

for a world lacking steadfastness by urging reform at the governmental

top—by petitioning the king for a return of law and justice and by including in his Canterbury Tales a Knight and Parson who teach by example.

Most literary writers of the later Middle Ages, however, professed to see little hope for the present world age. Jean de Meun offered the vision of an idealism that has become squalid through a lack of charity. Dante, an exile from his divided city, literally became a pilgrim-wanderer who looked to—indeed invented—“‘the state of souls after death” to represent what he regarded as the contrapasso and vendetta di Dio for a degenerate world. Chaucer’s Clerk seems to believe that the saints are long gone. At the same time, though, these writers and others made the world grown

old a focus of their imaginative literary writings. Dante, undergoing conversion, listens to Virgil’s narration of a mysterious statue of an Old Man standing within Crete’s Mount Ida, site of Rhea’s hiding of the infant Jove. This statue suggests much about the pagan golden age at the same time that it points toward Christian ideas of worldly degeneration and conversion. Despite (or perhaps because of) the many successful attempts to render Scripture more accessible to the faithful after Lateran IV, the older alle-

gorical accounts of the world grown old survived in at least two latemedieval literary vehicles: the Glossa ordinaria and the cycles of English mystery plays. Indeed, both of these projects may be said to be part of the

CONCLUSION 317 continuing effort to promulgate Scripture, since the Glossa (with the more recent postils of Hugh of St.-Cher and Nicholas of Lyra) facilitated scriptural interpretation for clerks, especially preachers,' and the cycle dramas transmitted biblical stories to wide audiences of clerks and lay people. The Glossa ordinaria, begun under Anselm of Laon and his school, contains interlinear and marginal glosses from many authorities, including

Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, Hrabanus Maurus, Alcuin, and Walafrid Strabo.* Because the traditional commentaries were handed down from generation to generation as an integral part of the Bible, the allegorical interpretations de senectute mundi found their way inevitably into late-medieval Bibles. The newer glosses, with their trend to literal interpretations, as in Nicholas of Lyra’s postils, appeared alongside the traditional commentaries. At much the same time that writers were composing lives of Adam and Eve, assembling “lay Bibles” and “Bibles for the Poor,” and composing Old Testament histories, postillers were transmitting “Sex ydriae: sex aetates mundi.”

The compilers of the great cycle dramas, as V. A. Kolve has demonstrated, organized their sequence of plays roughly around the six world ages: the Fall of Adam and Eve in the first age; the Flood in the second age; Abraham and Isaac in the third age; Moses or David in the fourth age; and the story of Christ in the sixth age. The medieval playwrights did not stage the Babylonian Captivity (fifth age); nor did they include—as Chaucer did in The Monk’s Tale—“modern instances” after Christ. They represented the sixth age solely in the life and Passion of Jesus. The cycle dramas depicted not so much the whole “course of the world” as the most significant moments from the Old and New Testaments. An important trend in the literature de senectute mundi of the later Middle Ages was the personalization and internalization of the world grown old—the world’s aging in relation to a narrator or speaker. Writers began to locate the sources of corruption not just in remote ages, in alien places (Rome, Avignon, Babylon), or in others (the pope, the friars) but also in

the unclean parish priest or even in the self. This trend may have begun in the twelfth century with the so-called goliardic poets or with Chrétien de Troyes, who in Perceval demonstrated how his protagonist came to recognize his own role in the wasteland. But the true inspiration for this personalization of the world grown old was probably Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose. Jean shows the relations between his hero, Amant, and the ' Coleman, Medieval Readers and Writers, p. 193. ? The frequency of Strabo’s glosses in Genesis and Exodus earned him the reputation of author of the Glossa, but he was mostly abridging the glosses of Hrabanus. See Smalley, Study of the Bible, p. 60. For an account of authorship and the “layering” of commentary, see Smalley, pp. 56-66.

318 THE WORLD GROWN OLD world’s degeneration, specifically with respect to love. Although the agents

| of mundane decay are allegorical figures, they exist, except for Amis and a few others, within Amant’s personality, his “fallen” nature. Gower in the Confessio amantis not only anatomizes the great world but also places his character, Amans, and then himself (“John Gower’’) within the decline of the world. Amans learns much about the sources of the world grown old and sin, but his final lesson concerns himself. Gower as senex amans does penance, and so does Chaucer—or at least he presents the image of doing penance—for a lifetime of writing. Although The Canterbury Tales as a book is not structured morally in the manner of Gower’s Confessio, it

ends with a treatise on penance and the seven deadly sins and with a retraction of Chaucer’s nonspiritual writings. The connections among lit-

erature, politics, and the world grown old were much on the minds of writers in the later Middle Ages, but they also concerned themselves with their individual roles, as ‘“‘makers” and as poets, in the decay of the common profit. I hope my study has demonstrated that the idea of the world grown old helped structure some of the major literary works of the later Middle Ages. The authors of these works used motifs from a virtual storehouse of commonplaces de senectute mundi. I have collected many of these motifs in Chapter 1. But the imaginative, literary settings of those motifs suggest to me that late-medieval writers regarded the concept of the world grown

old as an important idea: they felt their historical moment, whether the thirteenth or fourteenth century, to be spiritually and physically inferior to previous ages. They did not merely repeat ancient commonplaces or allude to Augustine’s doctrine of ages; rather they explored themselves— their own goodness or venality—through the literature of the past, which offered models of exemplary conduct in simpler eras and indicted their own age in the process. Charles Muscatine has described how Ricardian writers responded variously to the “crises” of the fourteenth century: the “Babylonian Captivity” of the papacy, the Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Great Schism, the rise of heretical groups such as the Lollards, and general economic disruptions. In his stylistic analysis Muscatine cites three responses to the crises: the ‘“‘oblique” style “as defense” (Pearl poet), the inconclusive style of Piers Plowman as “symptomatic of some sort of breakdown,” and the ironic and pathetic styles of Chaucer. Muscatine summarizes, “One [poet—the Pear! poet] refines out, in his art, all of the contemporary except the ultimate moral issues, and reclothes them in terms that defend them from the accidental and the local. Another poet [Langland] immerses himself and his poem in the moving current of history, from which both emerge with the marks of crisis upon them. The

CONCLUSION 319 third [Chaucer] is somewhere in between, detached yet sympathetically moved.””?

A response to crisis common to the Ricardian poets was an imaginative movement, perhaps a retreat, into the past and into the self. This contact with the past and the self came most often in dreams (the Roman de la Rose; Langland’s Piers Plowman; Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame; Gower’s Vox clamantis and Cronica tripertita), but it could also come in the process of storytelling (Gower’s Confessio amantis,

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). In these last works we can discern a movement from sickness to a kind of spiritual health suggested through pilgrimage, recreative stories, and penitence.*

A good example of the retreat into self occurs in the writings and thought of Richard Rolle (about 1300-1349), monk of Hampole, and his school. Rolle attended Oxford University for a short time, but at age nineteen he returned to his native Yorkshire and threw himself into the hermit’s life. From his crabbed cell in a hillock, he wrote biblical commentaries, instructions, and meditative and devotional exercises with a strong autobiographical cast. Whereas a William of Ockham, the Oxford Franciscan philosopher, sometimes entered the political arena (as when he defended the divine rights of secular governments against the papacy), Rolle’s response to the social and intellectual crises of the fourteenth century was withdrawal, retirement from the fray, and a single-minded devotion to the name of Jesus. He would die in order to live in Christ: Lever me war to dy Than all this worlde to welde, And have it in maistry. When will thou rew on me, Jesu, that I might with thee be, To love and lok on thee.°

The sin and corruption that others would find in the degenerating world Rolle discovers in himself. He concerned himself with what he calls ‘“‘the fire of God’s soul” in a world that he felt had reached a crisis stage through the cooling of charity. Criticizing philosophers, wise men, and theologians 3 Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, p. 145. See also Salter, Fourteenth-Century English Poetry, p. 105 (on Langland and Muscatine); and John Bowers, The Crisis of Will in Piers Plowman, pp. 1-39. For other reflections on the crises of the fourteenth century, see Lerner, Age of Adversity.

*]T have explored this congeries of motifs at greater length in “Chaucer’s Repentance.” >This poem begins, “My sange es in sihting” (IMEV 2270). See Medieval English Lyrics, ed. Davies, p. 110.

320 THE WORLD GROWN OLD who treated issues that Rolle regarded as essentially worldly, he wrote specifically to “the simple and unlearned” and those who fled the world rather than to those who sought rank and privilege in the church hierarchy, which he regarded as corrupt. But Rolle was not really a political

| writer, nor did he care much about history. He meditated on Christ’s life and Passion, not so much as historical events but more so as events taking place within him, at the place where the divine and human can meet. And he helped define a passionately religious ethic for an age of crisis. Another manifestation of the personal response to the world grown old can be seen in the focus on individual sin and death. Johan Huizinga has described the importance of this theme in French verse of the later Middle

| Ages, but lyrics on death and mortality occur frequently in Middle English as well, especially in the great moral collections, such as British Library, MS Harley 2253, and in the Vernon Manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Li-

brary, MS Eng. poet. a. 1 (both fourteenth century). These poets concerned themselves with the deaths of individual men and women rather than with the old age or death of the macrocosm. They focused on the moment of death, and many poems ask the reader to beware of that hour. | As Rosemary Woolf has written, “The aim of the death lyric was to dispel [the] comforting remoteness by emphasizing both the uncertainty and the inevitability of death, and most frequently by, as it were, looking through a magnifying-glass at all the minutiae of death, so that time or aversion might not make its image blurred to the imagination.”® A Wulfstan or other Old English homilist once admonished his congregation to watch for the second Advent in a declining world, when Christ would come like a thief in the night. The Middle English lyric writer transferred the sentiment to the individual and death. He makes a more personal appeal, as in “Wynter wakenep al my care”: when he thinks about winter, the poet says, “pis worldes ioie .. . hit gep al to noht”; and he ends with a prayer: ihesu, help pat it be sene and shild vs from helle,

| for y not whider y shal ne hou longe her duelle.’ | In another moral lyric from the Vernon series, ‘“Whon Men beob muriest at heor Mele,” the poet warns his readers to be on guard for death at all times, since it may come in the midst of revelry, without time for a final atonement. The world, he says, “nis but fantum and feiri,” while earthly

joy “Is but a fikel fantasy, / For nou hit is and nou hit nis.” Old and crooked people, he says, should serve as a portent of things to come, a 6 English Religious Lyric, pp. 74-75.

’ RL XIV, lines 13-15, p. 10 (MEV 4177).

CONCLUSION 321 memento mori for the feckless young. In a moving stanza the poet describes how children playing by candlelight run after their own shadows on the wall: I haue wist, sip I cube meen, Pat children hab bi candel liht Heor schadewe on pe wal i-sen, And Ronne ber-after al pe niht; Bisy a-boute pei han ben

To cacchen hit with al heore miht, And whon pei cacchen hit best wolde wene, Sannest hit schet out of heor siht; Pe schadewe cacchen pei ne miht, _ For no lynes pat pei coupe lay. Pis schadewe I may likne a-riht To pis world and 3uster-day.®

In this poignant lyric, which reflects the best of its moral genre, the present moment is seen to be insubstantial and shadowy; each man’s life is in a kind of twilight as he vainly chases after temporal goods that fade, like all the world, into yesterday. Other lyric writers harmonized parts of the day with times of life. In ‘As I went one my playing,” a lyric from a fifteenth-century manuscript, National Library of Wales, MS Porkington 10, the poet describes how he meets an old man who recounts the course of his life: That one be morrov when hit [is] fayre & clere, After none hit wendys awaye,

| And commyth to the ny3t as hit was ere: This word ys but a day.°

The stages of life are marked by the day’s progress. The old man was born with “gronttyng and weppyng” in “the morrow-tyde.” He played in the ® RL XIV, lines 121-32, pp. 143-48 (MEV 3996). For similar language and sentiments, see ““A Mayde cristes me bit yorne,” also known as “Friar Thomas de Hales’ Love Ron” (EL XIII, pp. 68-74; IMEV 66); and “I Wolde witen of sum wys wiht” (RL XIV, pp. 160-64; IMEV 1402), a poem from the Vernon Manuscript, which has as its refrain “Pis world farep as a Fantasy.” ° RL XV, lines g-12, p. 231 (MEV 349). See also ‘“Swete ihesu cryst, goddis sone of lyue,” in RL XIV, pp. 50-51 (MEV 3230); and “At pe time of matines, lord, pu were i-take,” in RL XIV, pp. 69-70 (MEV 441). For a homiletic application of a threefold scheme, see the Kentish sermon Dominica in Sexagesima, in An Old English Miscellany,

ed. Morris, pp. 33-36. For a similar scheme, see another penitential lyric, ““The Ten Stages of Man’s Life,” beginning “Waich & wreschede pou art in sith,” in Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 267 (MEV 3858).

322 THE WORLD GROWN OLD street with other children “At myde-morroo-daye.” “At vnder-day” he went to school, although he proved to be an inattentive and froward pupil.

Things improved “At mydday,” since he was “dobbyt a kny3t,” and then, ‘At nonne,” he was “crounyd a kynge.” He experienced a decline from this fortunate estate “At myd-vndure-none,” since he was deprived not only of his ‘“‘ryalte and ryche a-raye” but also of his “lust and lykyng.”’ Finally, “At ewynsong tyme,” he approaches death, which, he says, “for his hyre dothe me crawfe.” The refrain is ““This word ys but a wannyte.” The underlying scheme for this penitential lyric is the wheel of fortune,

but the author has also profited from Hours of the Cross poems and the concept of world ages and vineyard hours. These last, as we have seen, revolve around a single day until the eleventh hour and twilight. In the Porkington lyric the emphasis is on the course of an individual’s life rather than the course of the world, and the ultimate purpose is moral and penitential rather than didactic. Shakespeare will use a similar metaphor in Sonnet 73, “That time of year thou may’st in me behold.” The moral sentiments of these Iryic writers as well as of Rolle and his school manifest an ahistorical, personal view of morality and death. They turned the focus on the soul and the moment of atonement and attempted

to shut out the larger world through meditation on Christ or intense reflection on death and salvation. This inward turning and moral admonition, however, were not the only applications of the personal view of

time. A French poet of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, Gilles li Muisis, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St.-Martin of ‘Tournai, lamented that the world had declined since his youth. “For him,” according to Pierre-Yves Badel, “the good old days were simply those of his youth and of the reign of Philip III, times when neither disorders nor

vices ruled, but when institutions such as marriage were respected and mores were honest.” !° We are far away from the temporal and historical reflections of Augustine or Bede in the nostalgic meditations of Gilles li Muisis. Another kind of personalization occurs in biblical exegesis. A good example appears in the Middle English Pear/, which includes the pearl-maiden’s explanation of the vineyard parable (Matt. 20). In traditional exegesis

as old as Origen and Hilary of Poitiers, the hours of the vineyard were glossed as world ages. The interpretation was that those who enter the

| church in any world age can achieve salvation. The pearl-maiden, however, explicates the vineyard hours as ages of an individual’s life.!! Whether 10 Le roman de la Rose, p. 77.

11 Sometimes the vineyard hours were treated as world ages that progress and decline

like a human, an application that prepared the way for the pearl-maiden’s interpreta- __ tion. See, for example, Glossa ordinaria, 4:63B. The ninth hour is old age; the eleventh

CONCLUSION 323 one dies as a saintly old man or woman or as an infant without good works, one’s reward is the same: the kingdom of heaven. The maiden does say,

“In euentyde into pe vyne I come,” which seems to indicate that she entered the vineyard in the world’s “evening”’ or in the sixth world age. But her real interpretation concerns the ages or “hours’’ of a human life span:

Fyrst of my hyre my Lorde con mynne: I watz payed anon of al and sum. %et oper per werne pat toke more tom, bat swange and swat for long 3ore, bat 3et of hyre nopynk pat nom,

Paraunter nozt schal to-3ere more. (583-88)

Others have labored long and hard for the church (= vineyard), but the pearl-maiden has died just after being baptized. The narrator of Pearl seems not to understand the point of Christ’s vineyard parable: he regards the vineyard system as essentially unfair. My final example of the personalization of the world grown old occurs in a collection of late-fifteenth-century school exercises (vulgaria) associated with the Magdalen Grammar School (in British Library, MS Arundel

249). In one passage, called “Morning” by the editor, a schoolboy was

| required to translate the following English into Latin: The worlde waxeth worse every day, and all is turnede upside down, contrary to th’olde guyse. for all that was to me a pleasure when I was a childe, from iij yere olde to x (for now I go upon the xij yere), while I was undre my father and mothers kepynge, be tornyde now to tormentes and payne. For than I was wont to lye styll abedde tyll it was forth dais [late in the day], delitynge myselfe in slepe and ease. The sone sent in his beamys at

the wyndowes that gave me lyght instede of a Candle. ... But nowe the hour is decrepitude: “Nona senectus, quia sol id est, calor aetatis descendit. Undecima decrepita aetas.” The author of the fifteenth-century allegorical treatise Facob’s Well ignores the standard exegesis on the well in which, for example, Jesus’ stopping at the

well about the sixth hour John 4.6) is glossed as his entrance into the world in the sixth world age: “Sexta hora: sexta etas qua venit puteus profunditatis huius saeculi” (Glossa ordinaria, 4:232B). Instead, the anonymous author explains the various parts of the well in terms of the human senses and sin. See the edition of Brandeis, 1:3-4. 12 The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, line 582, ed. Andrew and Waldron. Subsequent quotations are from this edition.

324 THE WORLD GROWN OLD world rennyth upon another whele. for nowe at fyve of the clocke by the monelyght I most go to my booke and lete slepe and slouthe alon.”

It continues in this vein. The young scholar is called upon to explain, in Latin prose, how the world has grown old not because of human sin, as in the old homilies, but because of natural human aging—because he has grown older and no longer enjoys the carefree days before the rigors of schooling. At least so the author of the exercise imagines for the student. The world grown old has become a metaphor for the good old days, the golden time of youthful innocence and ease. The schoolmaster’s intent seems to have been to personalize and revivify the ancient trope of the world grown old in order to highten his students’ interest in their Latin exercises. It is an early attempt at what we now call, somewhat desperately, “relevance.” We can only imagine whether the schoolmaster succeeded. The writers of the later Middle Ages concerned themselves more with the meaning and application of the world grown old than with the simple

mechanisms of stages of decay. They were less interested in abstract allegorizations than in personal uses of senium mundi and in old age generally, as in the penitential lyrics. For these writers it was not enough merely to know that the world had declined from earlier times morally and physically, through six or seven ages. They also wanted to understand the significance of the world’s degeneration and to discern how to act on that knowledge. The idea of the world grown old raised profound questions about one’s relation with the saeculum and one’s place in the scheme of salvation. Dante learned one thing from Virgil’s legend of the Old Man of Crete; he learned something else—something far more important— from the river of blood. By internalizing the idea of the world grown old,

| the writers of the later Middle Ages made it new. |

13 A Fifteenth Century School Book, ed. Nelson, pp. 1-2. Latin on p. 101. Iam indebted to John Fyler for calling this passage to my attention.

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Index

‘A! dere God, what may this be,” 107-8 Adamites of Bohemia, and innocence, 125 “A Mayde cristes me bit yorne,” 321 n. 8 Adams, Robert, 198 n. 1 Abel, 44, 98 n. 117, 121-22, 123, 134, Adrian and Ritheus, and joca monachorum,

186, 315; as first homicide victim, 113, 42n.8 131, 245; as nomad and shepherd, 128, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Treatise on

129, 131 Nn. 49 Antichrist, 15, 52 n. 24, 114

Abelard, Peter, 63 fElfric, 23 n. 42, §2 n. 24, loo N. 121, 141 Abraham, 41, 44, 49, 105, 142, 312, 315; Aella (Alla; king of Deira), 301, 304, 305 and third world age (Abraham—David Aers, David, 203 n. 9, 204 n. 12, 223, 225or Abraham—Moses), 31, 32, 40, 43, 317 26

Abrams, M. H., 12 ages of man, 29, 36, 179-80 n. 14;

Actaeon, 158 harmonized with world ages, 22, 31-34, ‘“‘Ad occasum cuncta ruunt,” 56 49, 43-44, 94-95, 183-84, 321-23 Ada (Lamech’s wife), 126 ages of the world, 6 n. 8, 7-8, 19-20, 22,

Adam, 17-21, 36, 46-47, 131. See also 94, 182, 218. See also Abraham; Adam; Fall, of Adam and Eve; Christ, as New Babylonian Captivity; Cana, wedding

Adam at; Christ; David; Noah

—advanced age of, 46, 69 —allegorical interpretations of, 39-46, 60-

—and class distinctions, 102-3 62, 94-95, 183-84

_ —and Eve, 2-4, 24 (Fig. 1), 49, 72, 94, —and hours of vineyard parable, 43, 214-

96, 98, 113, I14, 190 N. 36, 207 15, 322-23

—lives of, 115-19, 210-12, 317 —as instruction in history, 41, 324 —and pattern of decline, 315 —in medieval illustrations (wheel —penance of, in Jordan and Tigris, 118— designs), 27-32

20, 2IO-II —six world ages, 2, 3, 4, 6-7, 20, 23, 27,

—primitive history of, 113-14, 116-20, 38, 39-46, 174, 184 Nn. 20, 317, 324

151, 181 n. 15, 210-12 —as stages in salvation, 6 n. 7

—and sexuality in Eden, 150, 211 Alan of Lille, 22 n. 38, 56 n. 30, 68, 70,

—and source of division in world 71, 93 N. 109, 97

(Gower), 252, 261 Alaric (king of the Goths), 49

—withered footprints of (Seth legend), Albertus Magnus, 71, 164

98 Alceste, 105, 277, 282

—and first world age (Adam—Noah), 29, alchemy, and decay of knowledge, 155,

31, 32, 40, 43, 81, 118, 123, 129, 132, 265, 273 133, 139, 142, 164; as age of “gold,” Alcuin, 108, 317 27, 184, 257; and cycle dramas, 317 Aldhelm, 25 n. 44, 186 n. 27

—as giant, 185-86 Alexander Neckham, 68, 71, 82 n. 84 —as homo faber, 22, 23, 32, 36, 121 Alexander of Hales, Expositio in —as image of God, 21 Apocalypsim, 61, 83 n. 85 —and loss of Paradise, 2, 4, 98, 117-20 Alexander the Great, 26 n. 46, 189, 252, —old Adam (vetus homo), 18, 20, 187, 192, 258

267 Alexandre Ricart, 68 n. 60

—and original language, 140, 141, 174 Alexis, St., as ideal, 105, 166

—six sins of, 42-43 Alford, John A., 199 n. 3, 203-4, 209 n. ‘Adam lay I-bowndyn,” 17-18 22, 299 N. 37 357

353 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Alfred (king), 109 Apocalypse of Golias, 234 Allen, D. C., 13, 68 n. 59, 82 n. 84 apocalyptic writings, 3, 14-15, 52-53, 64, Allen, Judson B., 204 67, 72-77, 82-89, 244. See also - Altercatio Phyllidis et Florae, 296 Apocalypse; eschatology , ‘“‘Amaris stupens casibus,” 63 n. 48 Apollonius of Tyre, 252

Ambrose, St. (bishop of Milan), 19 n. 34, apologetics, Christian, 48-51 21, 47 N. 14, 49, 83 n. 85, 88, 98 n. 117, “apples” of paradise (banana), 99

132 N. 50, 139 n. 64, 219; on Archilochus, 59

Elizabeth’s seclusion for five months, Argus, 293 34; and felix culpa, 17; and rhetorical Arion, 262-63, 280 tropes, 60; and world ages, 4o, 42 n. 6 Aristotle, 71, 164, 175, 260 n. 29; and Amsler, Mark E., 124 n. 31, 136 n. 57 academic prologues, 251; and eternity

Anchises, on Crete, 178-79 of the world, 89-90, 91, 92-93

ancients-versus-moderns controversy, 38, ark, Noah’s, 32, 36; as City of God, 22,

67-72, 108 n. 136, 187. See also giants 123

and giantism Arnaud de Savignan, 93 n. 109

Anderson, David, 269 n. 46 Arnaud de Verniolles, 125 Anderson, George K., 53 n. 25 Arnaud Tolus, 93 n. 109 Andreas Capellanus, De amore, 66, 102, Arnaut Daniel, 59

165, 268 Arnold of Bonneval, Tractatus de operibus Andrew (apostle), 44 sex dierum, 83 n. 85, 91-92 Andrew of St.-Victor, 68 n. 60 Arthur (king), 2, 99, 145, 155-56

Andromache, as ideal wife, 301 n. 40 arts, development of, 3-4, 34-35, 91, 123-

Angers Apocalypse, 35-36 29

Anne, St. (mother of Virgin Mary), 307 —alchemy and secret arts, 265 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and years from —and discovery of fire, 34

Creation, 46 —fishing, 127

Anonimalle Chronicle, 278 —hunting, 127, 154-64 anonymous Florentine, Commento alla —music, 128, 265 Divina Commedia, 184 n. 20, 187 n. 30 —origins of letters, 265

Anselm of Havelberg, Dialogi, 110 Arundel, Thomas (archbishop of

Anselm of Laon, St., 43, 217 n. 33 Canterbury), 116 n. 9, 242

Antichrist, 8, 15, 44, 61 n. 43, 114, 141, “As I went one my playing,” 321-22

202, 219, 220, 221 Ashenden, John (Fellow of Merton

—and antichrists, 62, 73-74, 89, 146-47, College), 88

169, 206 askesis, 183

—and Doomsday, 15-16, 36, 73-74, 100 Assur, supplanted by Nimrod, 138 —friars as vanguard of, 74, 77, 80, 100, Aston, John, 88

169, 202 Aston, Margaret, 79 n. 77, 229

71 i-take,” 321 n. 9

—in Jean de Meun’s Roman, 146-47, 169- “At be time of matines, lord, pu were

—Lollards on, 64, 254-55 Athens, and hunting, 159 —‘“‘mystical” Antichrist, 206 Attridge, Harold W., 124 n. 33 —political uses of, 106 Auchinleck couplets (Adam and Eve anticlericalism, 54-57, 63-65, IOI, 174, legend), 118-19 n. 17

200-202, 213, 215-17, 227, 228, 235- Auerbach, Erich, 13, go—41 36, 255 n. 23. See also antifraternalism; Augustine of Hippo, St., 17 n. 29, 20, 49,

pseudoapostles and false prophets 52, 64, 71, III, 140, 161, 164, 211 n. antifraternalism, 58, 65, 72-81, 100, 167— 24, 217 N. 33, 218, 219, 317, 322. See

70, 212, 221, 227, 229-30, 272; in also Augustinian revival Gower’s writings, 236-37, 250; and 2 —and ages of the world, 7-8, 18, 40-44,

Tim. (penetrators of houses), 74, 100, 50, 61, 318

148 —and Christian instruction, 40 n. 3, 41,

ape, as symbol of cowardice, 295 161, 164, 182-83

Apocalypse (Revelation), 74-76, 114, 146, —The City of God, 48, 49, 90, 192

244; in art, 35-36; on new heaven and —on Cain and city of man, 120, 124,

new earth, 83, 87, 257. See also New 125, 206

Testament —on “daughters of men,” 207

INDEX 359 —on diminution of human stature, 82 Bede, 50, 52, 122 n. 27, 124 N. 30, 126 n. —and origins of kingship, 138 n. 62, 37, 127 N. 40, 132 N. 50, 159 N. 26, 205,

I51—-52 217 N. 33, 305, 317, 322. See also

—on pre-Flood giants, 185, 186 Pseudo-Bede

—on decline in fifth world age (De Genesi —and ages of the world, 18, 19 n. 32, 34,

contra Manichaeos), 97 39 Nn. 2, 41-43, 44 n. II

—and eternity of the world, 90 —and Doomsday, 84-85

—historiography of, 7~8, 47 n. 14, 83 n. —on genealogical lines from Shem, 85, 88, 115 N. 5, 124, 139, 142, 151-52, Japheth, and Ham, 134-35

189, 192, 207 —on innovations of Lamech’s offspring,

—on Nimrod, 135, 136, 137, 138 n. 62 128-29

276-77 37 n. 85, 84 n. 86, 88 85, 87

—on reading Virgil’s Aeneid, 182-83 —on Nimrod, 134-35, 139 n. 64 —and region of unlikeness, 2, 182 n. 17, —and primitive history, 122 n. 27, 126 n. —and renovation of the elements, 82, 83 —and renovation of the elements, 83 n.

Augustinian revival (fourteenth century), —on Tower of Babel, 136 n. 59

1-2, 206 —and years from Creation, 46-47 Averroes, 92 Bedford Hours, 23 n. 40 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and eternity of the begging, 75, 78, 148, 228-30

world, go, 92 Beichner, Paul E., 128 n. 42

Avignon papacy (“Babylonian Captivity’’), Bel the Assyrian, and origins of idolatry,

, Belfour, A. O., 42 n. 6 — - §0-5§1, 80-81, 252-54, 317, 318 138 n. 62

“bella menzogna,” in Dante, 179-83 Benedict, St., 229

Babel, ‘Tower of, 4, 114, 134, 136-37, 139- Bennett, J. A. W., 115, 299 n. 36 42, 152, 174, 187 n. 30, 261, 275. See Benson, C. David, 286 n. 21, 301 n. go

also Nimrod Benson, Larry D., 13, 292 n. 28, 310 n.

Babylon, 2, 27, 72, 134, 135, 136 Nn. 57, 59

137, 138-39, 317; as archetype of city, Benton, John F., 11 n. 20, 56 n. 30 35-36, 38, 72, 135, 191; empire of, 108, Benvenuto da Imola, 190 134, 135, 152, 189-91, 257-58; fall of, Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV, 54,

and lament, 191. See also 106-7

Nebuchadnezzar; Nimrod Beowulf, 25, 131 n. 48, 208 Babylonian Captivity (fifth world age), 20, Berengaudus, 83 n. 85 27, 32 N. 55, 40, 137, 252; compared Bergin, Thomas G., 184 n. 20

with human aging, in Augustine, 97; Bernabo Visconti, 310 not included in cycle dramas, 317 Bernard of Chartres, 67-70, 71, 108 n.

Badel, Pierre-Yves, 151 n. 10, 322 136, 187 Bagrow, Leo, 25 n. 44 Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 31 n. 52, 202 n.

Baker, Denise N., 199 n. 3 6

Baker, Donald C., 310 n. 60 Bernard of Cluny, De contemptu mundi,

Ball, John, 102-3, 237, 245, 277, 278. See 54, 85, 96, 262, 306

also Peasants’ Revolt Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, 70, 91,

Balthazar (Belshazzar, son of 93

Nebuchadnezzar), 258 Bernheimer, Richard, 25 n. 46 Bamberg Bible, 23 n. 40 Besserman, Lawrence, 297 n. 34 Bamberg cathedral, Prince’s Portal, 69-70 Bethurum, Dorothy, 16 n. 27, 52 nn. 23-

Bandy, Stephen C., 131 n. 48 24

Barney, Stephen A., 203, 214 n. 27 Bible. See New Testament; Old

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 186 Testament; parables

Baruch, Apocalypse of, 3 n. 3 Bible moralisée, 32, 33 (Fig. 4), 34

Batany, Jean, 151 n. 10 Bible of Charles the Bald, 23 Beauchamp, John, 250 Bible of St. Calixtus, 23 n. 4o Beaujouan, Guy, 68 n. 60 _ bird entrapment, and seduction, 157-58 Becket, Thomas, 55 Black Death (pestilence), 50, 200, 210,

Beckwith, John, 23 n. go 318 ,

360 THE WORLD GROWN OLD

n. 121 Paris), 72

Blickling Homilies, 52, 53 n. 25, 60, 100 Buridan, Jean (rector of University of

Bliss, A. J., 119 n. 18 Burley, Sir Simon, 250 Bloch, Herbert, 259 n. 26 Burlin, Robert B., 295

| Bloch, R. Howard, 139 n. 65, 140 n. 66, Burr, David, 61 n. 43, 74, 75 n. 72 I4I n. 69, 142, 298 n. 35, 302 n. 43 Burrow, J. A., 29 n. 49, 32 nN. 55, 53 n. 26,

Bloom, Harold, 183 n. 19 57. 31, 117 N. 12, 201-2, 213 n. 26, Bloomfield, Morton, 13, 21, 45 n. 12, 227. 49, 246 n. 17, 264, 292 198, 203, 204 nn. 10 and 12, 206 n. 16, Busnelli, Giovanni, 176 n. 6 220 N. 35, 303 n. 46, 305 n. 50, 306 n.

Bons, George, 4-5, 6 n. 8, 9, 27 n. 48, 82 Cadmus, as Theban hunter, 159 n. 84, 95, 110 n. 142, 113 n. 1. See also Caesarius of Arles, 42 n. 6

ideas, history of; primitivism Cahn, Walter, 26 n. 47

3;>’’;

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 162 n. 32, 166, 190 Cain (Caym), 89, 98 n. 117, 120, 120-25,

n. 36, 222 n. 37, 271, 308 n. 57 129, 132-33, 134 N. 54, 135, 142, 161,

—Decameron, 50-51, 308 n. 57 165 n. 38, 180, 214, 223, 247

—Esposizioni sopra la Comedia, on Dante’s —as first murderer, 3, 98 n. 117, 113, 120-

gran veglio, 183-84, 187 n. 30, 190 Nn. 22), 726, 286, oe 48 .0

—Genealogia deorum gentilium, 34, 166 n. —genealogical line from (“daughters of 41, 184 n. 20; on a giant statue, 186; on men’’), 3, 49, 89, 99, 113-14, 122, 123,

pagan poets and Cretan liars, 188 124 N. 33, 125, 127-28, 129-133, 135,

Bot 93. age, op 625,255, TARE 2S 22, 2B23Ia 8 279;20 and37, golden 95-96, 110, _ 148il ACES, 49» 74-16 values of, 31, } 65,1 66, 274- ~ man), rs owe cy rl

76, 279, 280, 310, 311; and world’s > 3x 153) 9 BPs ©3599 5513

mundi, 92 _ a? eternity, go. See also Fortune, wheel of I51, 152, 161, 162, 206, 207, 231, 315

Boethius of Dacia, Tractatus de aeternitate an i enn PRP human), 205 ‘ 210-12, 221

Boob of Ouiie Hanes ‘ 656 a me £9 —as wanderer (homo vagus), 121, 207

Boke of Seynt Albans 134 —as wicked farmer, 121-22, 128 n. 43,

Borst hone Bn 115 141 131 N. 49, 198, 205-6, 212, 220-21, 315

Bosco Utnberto 183. Calder, Daniel, 53 n. 25, 131 n. 48 BOurayenon, qi hon, JJean, , Callahan, Daniel, 35 Callimachus, Hymn16 to Zeus, 187 Bowers, John, 222 n. 37, 319 n. 3 Calmana (Cain’s wife), 123 Bowers, R. H., 42 n. 6 Cambyses (king of Persia), 258

Boyle, Leonard E., 117 n. 11 Campbell, Hugh P., 116 Brady, Ignatius, 91 N. 103 Cana, wedding at (John 2), and water jars, Braunfels-Esche, Sigrid, 23 nn. 40-41 32, 33 (Fig. 4), 34, 36, 41, 94 n. 110

Brembre, Nicholas, 250 Canaanites and Ham, 133-34

Breughel the Elder, Peter, 59 cannibalism, 25, 129 Brewer, Der ek, 279 n. or . Canterbury, Christ Church Cathedral, Brinton, Thomas, Sivzul in unum diues et windows of, 23, 32

pauper (sermon 44), 51 Canticum de creatione, 119 nN. 17, 131 Nn. 49, Bromyard, John, 220 n. 35 sII

Bronson, Bertrand, 313 n. 65 Capaneus, as giant, 187 n. 30

Brooke, George C., 217 n. 31 Carmina Burana, 55 n. 29, 63 n. 48, 296

Brown, Carleton, 43 n. 9 n. 33

Brown, Emerson, Jr., 282 n. 16 Carruthers, Mary, 13, 155 n. 16, 218, 310

Brown, Peter, 61 n. 41 n. 60 |

Brunetto Latini, 174 Cassell, Anthony K., 176 n. 7, 184. n. 20, |

Brutus, 109 36

Bruno Astensis, 22 n. 39 185 n. 22, 186 n. 27, 187 n. 31, 190 N. Bukowski, T. P., 92 n. 106 Cassiodorus, 124 n. 31 Bultot, Robert, 22 n. 38 castration, 149 n. 8, 152, 153, 180

INDEX 361 Cathars, 21, 93 n. 109, 131 n. 48 —Melibee, 273, 285, 291 n. 26, 294,

Cato the Elder, 226-27 300-301 N. 40, 303

, Cato the Younger, 176-77, 195 —Merchant, 210, 284, 286-87, 288,

Catto, Jeremy, 173 n. 1 294, 297, 299

Caviness, Madeline, 23, 32 n. 53 —Merchant’s Tale, 283-84, 285, 286, Caxton, William, The Book of the Ordre of 291, 293, 294, 302, 310, 313 Chyualry or Knyghthode (Lull), 155-56 —Miller, 239, 299

Chan, Great, 99 313

Chaldeans, and fire worship, 138 —Miller’s Tale, 285, 291 n. 26, 293, “Charite, chaste, pite arn waxin al colde,” —Monk, 201, 272, 296-97

IOI N. 123 —Monk’s Prologue, 294, 295-97; and

Charlemagne, 108, 259 Goodelief, 288, 294-97, 313 Charles, R. H., 3 n. 3 —Monk’s Tale, 258, 300, 303 n. 45, Chartres, school of, 69, 71, 90, 92 n. 104, 310

263. See also Bernard of Chartres; John —Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 285, 294; and

of Salisbury Pertelote as modern “wife,” 301 n.

Chartres cathedral, lancet windows of, 69, 40

70, 71 , —Pardoner, 170, 231, 272, 284, 294

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 13, 14, 45, 63, 66, go, —Parson, 133, 198, 210, 231, 236, 272—

95, 102, III, 160, 197, 209, 222 Nn. 37, 73, 313, 316 223, 231, 239, 243, 244, 251, 258, 260, —Parson’s Tale, 277-78, 291 n. 26,

265, 269, 271-313, 316, 318 303 Nn. 45

—ABC to the Virgin, 300, 306, 307 —Physician’s Tale, 300 n. go, 303 n. 45

—‘‘Adam Scriveyn,” 139 n. 65 —Plowman, 223, 231, 271 —Anelida and Arcite, 126 n. 36, 160, —Prioress, 269, 289

306-7 —Prioress’s Tale, 291 n. 26, 303 n. 45, | —Boece, 90, 95, 110, 274-75 307

319 —Reeve’s Tale, 285

—Book of the Duchess, 128 n. 42, 268, 306, —Reeve, 299

—Cuanterbury Tales, 231, 235, 268 n. 43, —Retraction, 318 271, 273, 274, 280-99, 302 n. 44, 308, —Second Nun, 289

313, 316, 318, 319 | —Second Nun’s Tale, 285, 301-2, 303,

—Canon’s Yeoman, 265, 273 304; and St. Cecilia, 273, 281, 288, —Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, 170, 273 300-301, 311, 313

—Clerk’s Tale, 238, 273, 284, 285, 286, —Shipman, 299 291 n. 26, 297-99, 303, 308-12; and —Shipman’s Tale, 285, 293 debased coin metaphor, 297-98; and —Squire’s Tale, 126 n. 36 declining world, 7, 316; Grisilde in, —Summoner, 170, 231, 272 288, 300-301, 308-13; and “Lenvoy —Wife of Bath, 204, 210, 281-94, 297de Chaucer,” 284, 286, 294, 297, 298- 99, 312 n. 64

99 —Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 126 n. 36, —Cook, 299 281-93, 313 —Cook’s Tale, 285 —Wife of Bath’s Tale, 238, 277, 302 —Franklin’s Tale, 283, 285, 301 n. go —Complaint of Mars, 160

—Friar Huberd, 78, 170, 231, 272 —Complaint unto Pity, 306

296 76, 280, 300, 310-11

—General Prologue, 58, 223, 235, 273, —Former Age, 95, 137, 153, 154, 273, 274-

—Host (Harry Bailly), 273, 210, 287, —Gentilesse, 102, 238, 273, 274, 277-79,

294-07, 299, 313 280, 310

—Knight, 231, 280, 316 —House of Fame, 271, 319

285 279, 280

—Knight’s Tale, 21, 160, 268 n. 43, —Lak of Stedfastnesse, 66, 102, 273, 274, —Man of Law’s Tale, 291 n. 26, 301, —Legend of Good Women, 152 n. 12, 280,

302-8, 309; Custance in, 300-301, 281, 283, 300 302-8; and Gower’s Tale of —Legend of St. Cecilia (Second Nun’s Constance, 238 n. 8, 301 n. 41, 303 Tale), 306

, n. 46, 304, 306, 307 —Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton, 284, 291,

—Manciple’s Tale, 285 300

362 THE WORLD GROWN OLD —Parliament of Fowls, 271, 306, 319 Coffman, George R., 233, 272 n. I —Troilus and Criseyde, 14, 81, 160, 271, Cohn, Norman, 16, 114 277, 306; Criseyde in, 277, 280; Troilus coins, debased or counterfeit, 57, 216-17,

in, 273 226, 296, 297-98. See also /ushburnes

—Truth, 276-77, 278, 279 Coleman, Janet, 233, 242, 317 n. I , Chenu, M.-D., 6, 19 n. 32, 39 n. 2, 52 n. Colossus of Rhodes, 186 22, 56N. 29, 59 n. 36, 68 n. 59, 92 0. Commodian, “Acrostich on the Last

104, 108 n. 135 Judgment,” 84 :

Cherniss, Michael D., 145 n. 2 common profit, 155, 203, 205, 212, 213, Chiron, and hunting, 158, 159 225, 235; abandonment of, 273; decay chivalry and chivalric ethos, 104, 154-56, of, 154, 318; and Saturnian golden age,

238-39; turned on head, 245-46 161; and the work ethic, 214, 226, 231

Chrétien de Troyes, 59, 66, 100, 145, commonplaces, rhetorical. See topics 166, 317; and the decline of love complaint and satire, 54-59, 100-101, 105(Yvain), 145, 171; matiere and sens in, 7, 201, 215-18, 233, 234, 258-59, 266, compared with Dante’s allegory, 180; 271, 279 nN. 11, 298-99. See also venality

, and translatio studii (Cligés), 108; and satire

the wasteland (Perceval), 103-4 Constantine the African, Viaticum, 268

Christ, 29, 31, 32, 40, 43, 44, 46, 49, 52 consummation of the world, 45, 47, 83 n. N. 22, 166, I9I, 202, 205, 217-18, 219, 85, 89, 174. See also Doomsday 300, 307 N. 55, 308, 317, 320. See also contempt of the world, 99, 201, 249; and

New Testament; parables clerical satire, 38, 54-59; and rhetorical

—and felix culpa, 17-20 style, 305-6, 308, 309-10; and the —meditations on, 319-20, 322 world grown old, 5-6, 16, 67

—as New Adam (homo novus), 18-20, 176, “Contra avaros” (venality lyric), 57

192 cooling of charity (Matt. 24.12), 4, 8, 38,

—second Advent of, 59, 61, 257, 320 54, 59, 62-66, 76, 99-100, 145-46, 147, —and sixth world age (Christ—end of 171; in Gower, 250, 254, 261, 263, 264;

world), 31, 61, 164, 192, 317 and renovation of the elements, 84; in

—Transfiguration of (allegorized), 41, 42 Rolle, 319-20. See also decline of love

n. 6 Cooper, Helen, 280 n. 12, 301 n. 42, 303

—and voluntary begging, 164-65, 168, nn. 45-46, 306 n. 51, 312 n. 64

229 Copeland, Rita, 109 n. 138

Christ III, and renovation of the elements, Costello, H., 22 n. 38

84 n. 87 Courtenay, William J., 1-2 n. 1, 71 n. 67,

Christianus Druthmarus, 34 n. 59 72 n. 68

Christine de Pizan, 105, 291 Creation, 89; goodness of, 20-22; years Chronica de origine civitatis (on Florence), from, 46-47

174 | Creed, Apostles’, 224

Chronicon anonymi (A.D. 236), 136 n. 58 Crete, 177-79, 179-80, 185, 195; as “false

Chrysostom, John, St., 26 n. 46, 200 mother,” 179; and proverbial liars, 183, church, 74; and corruption, 2-3, 4, 200- 187-88, 192; as wasteland, 179, 181, 202, 320; and papal schism, 64, 76, 235; 188, 190, 193, 195 as vineyard, 205, 214-15, 221, 322-23; crises of the fourteenth century, 200, 204,

Wyclif on, 73, 75-76 244, 318-20

Cicero, and rhetorical topics in history, Croce, Benedetto, 11

qi | Cross, J. F., 7 n. 9, 52 n. 24, 279 n. 10

city. See Babylon; City of God; city of Crowther, J. D. W., 57 n. 31, 66-67 man; Florence; Jerusalem; Thebes ~ “Cum declinent homines a tenore veri,” City of God, 49, 123, 191 N. 37, 315. See 55 n. 29

also Augustine Cumont, Franz, 3 n. 3, 39 n. I

city of man, 49, 113, 120-25, 127-29, Cupid (Amor), 163, 165, 268 160, I9I, 206, 207, 220, 231, 315 Cur mundus militat, 56 n. 30, 309 n. 58 Cleanness, 215, 231, 243, 251, 260 Cursor mundi, 19, 47, 82 n. 84, 99, 113,

Clemen, Wolfgang, 300 n. 38 115, 117-18, 127, 132, 135; and “the

Clogan, Paul M., 233 n. 3, 301 n. 41 Comestor tradition,” 115, 127, 132,

Clytemnestra, 283 135; and legend of Seth, 100, 119; and Cocytus, 176, 189, 192 Nn. 40, 193 Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, 136,

INDEX 363 138, 276; primitive history in, 113, 115, —“allegory of poets” and “allegory of

I17-18, 122, 127, 132, 135, 136, 138; theologians,” 179-80

and renovation of the elements, 85-86 —and gentility, 102, 238 n. 8 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 7-8, 9, 11 n. 20, —and the last world age, 174 15,17, 52 n. 22, 56, 59, 60 n. 4o, 67 n. —De monarchia, 192 59, 70 n. 64, 92 n. 104, 102, 108, 141, —De vulgari eloquentia, 174, 179 Nn. 14

IQI N. 37, 259 N. 26, 284 n. 19 —Fpistle to Can Grande, 180, 184

138 genealogical line from

Cush (Chus; father of Nimrod), 134, 135, “daughters of men.” See Cain,

cycle dramas, organized around world Daunger (Resistance), 143

ages, 20, 316-17 Davenport, W. A., 300 n. 38

Cyprian, St., 4, 15, 40, §1, 53; Ad David, 31, 32, 40, 44, 49, 109, 315, 317 Demetrianum, 48-49, 60, 96-97; De David, Alfred, 272, 278, 305 n. 50, 306 mortalitate, 59; on Jupiter’s sepulcher David of Augsburg, De exteroris et (De tdolorum vanitate), 185, 187-88 n. interioris hominis compositione, 14

32 Davis, Charles T., 173 n. 1, 174 nn. 2-3,

Cyrus the Great (king of Persia), 258 192 n. 39

de la Pole, Michael (earl of Suffolk), 250 De Lisle Psalter, 27-29

Dahlberg, Charles, 2 n. 2, 121 n. 22, 147, De principio creationis mundi, 118 n. 15

163 N. 35 De rectitudine catholicae conversationis

Dales, Richard C., 90 nn. 99 and 101, 93 tractatus, 62 N. 44

nn. 108-9 De sancta Maria (sermon), 105 |

Damian, Peter, St., 21, 54, 60-61, 107, Dean, James M., 96 n. 113, 98 n. 117

262, 306 decay of speech, 136 n. 57, 139-42, I71

Damietta, 190, 194 n. 44 decline of love, 4, 39, 66, 99-101, 145, Daniel (prophet), 27, 69, 242 147-48, 149-51, 170-71, 175; in

Daniel, Book of. See also Old Testament; Gower’s writings, 249, 253-54, 261-62;

translation of empire in Le roman de la Rose, 145, 147-51, 170—-

—Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, 26—27, 108 71, 175. See also cooling of charity

—and Dante’s gran veglio, 189 degeneration of the world, 3-4, 5, 68 n. —in Gower’s writings, 26, 244, 248-49, 59, 71, 83, 96-97, 132-33, 139, 149,

253-59, 269 175, 177, 190, 192, 195, 270. See also

Daniélou, Jean, 83 n. 85, 84 n. 88, 88 ages of the world; decline of love; Dante Alighieri, 13, 21, 66, 102, 105, 136 pessimism; senectus mundi n. 58, 142, 143, 160, 173-95, 316, 324 —and apologetics, 48-51

—Commedia, 143, 160, 173, 176, 178, 180, —in Dante’s Commedia, 173-74, 176-77,

181, 190 183~84, 189, IgI-92, 193-95

—Inferno, 9, 159-60, 173-95 —and degeneration of Florence, 173, 174, —and “allegory of poets,” 177, 179- 193-94, 271

83, 191, 195, 248 —and degeneration of Romagna, 194, 271

—and “allegory of theologians,” 178 —and degeneration of Tuscany, 193

n. 10, 179-81 —and Genesis, 113-14, 120, 132, 141-42

—and division of languages, 174 —in Piers Plowman, 197, 200-202

—and fable, 181-83, 195 —and renovation, 4, 82-89

—gran veglio di Creta (Old Man of —in Le roman de la Rose, 144-48, 150,

324 Dejanira, 283 195 Delilah, 283

Crete), 26, 105, 175-95, 255, 316, 152, 154, 156-57, 164, 170-71

—and irony, 179, 195 Del Lungo, Isidoro, 190

—and poetic fictions, 177, 178-83, Delbora (Abel’s wife), 123

—Paradiso, 142, 173-74, 176, 195 Deschamps, Eustache, 5-6, 63-64 —Purgatorio, 173-75, 181; and Cato, D’Evelyn, Charlotte, 115 n. 6, 120 n. 20 176; and Guido del Duca’s lament Di Scipio, Giuseppe C., 176 n. 7, 181 n.

for Romagna, 193-94; and Marco 16

Lombardo and Beatrice on Dido, 182

degeneration, 173-74 Dies irae, 85

—Convivio Dino Campagni, 174

364 THE WORLD GROWN OLD Dinshaw, Carolyn, 139 n. 65, 294 n. 30 Emmerson, Richard K., 47 n. 15, 61 n. disease of the world, 38, 48-49, 60, 63 n. 41, 62 n. 45, 72 n. 69, 145 n. 4, 146-47,

- 48, 147 n. 7; and disease of love motif, 206 n. 16 66, 100 n. 121, 268; in Gower’s “L’en puet fere & defere” (“The Sayings

Confessio, 259-60 of the Four Philosophers”), 1o1 n. 123

dissuasio, tradition of, 283-84 Engelbert of Admont (abbot), De causis distaff, as emblem of womanhood, 282-83 diluvii, 82, 260

Distichs of Cato, 226-27 Enoch (Cain’s son), 122, 125, 142 distinctiones, 8 n. 11, 204 Enoch (father of Methuselah), 36, 44, Dives and Pauper, 224 n. 44 I1q, 126 nN. 37, 142, 315 Doane, A. N., 121 n. 23 Enoch (first city), 122-23, 135 Dominic, St., 229, 237 Enoch, Book of, 129, 131 n. 48

n. 25 23

Donaldson, E. Talbot, 13, 198 n. 1, 213 Ephraim (city), confused with Enoch, 122— Donne, John, First Anniversarie, 68 n. 59 Epimenides, on Cretans as liars, 187

Donovan, Mortimer J., 68 n. 60 Equitain (Marie de France), as hunter, Doomsday (Last Judgment), 15-16, 23, 163 n. 36 31, 38, 40, 45, 58-59, 64-65, 72, 100, eras, three (ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia),

110; and the Flood, 36, 82-85; and 18-10, 47, 59, 110

friars, 61 n. 43, 100-101; and God’s Erasmus, Desiderius, 188 n. 33 wrath, 49-51; and renovation of the Erens, Frans, 27 n. 48 elements, 82-89; rhetorical language Eriphyle of Thebes, 283 and, 51-53, 60-62; signs of, 15, 35, 65, Eriugena, John Scotus, go, 91 72, 74, 85-86, 100-101, 110. See also Erkenwald, St., 105 Antichrist; eschatology; fifteen signs Esau, and hunting, 158, 160-61

before Doomsday eschatology, 14-16, 52-53, 60, 62, 64-65,

Dornseiff, Franz, 188 n. 33 72-81, 110, 227; biblical, 48-51; in | Dove, Mary, 29 n. 49, 31 n. 51 Gower, 244-45, 257; in Langland, 198, Dronke, Peter, 11 204, 206, 208, 21g—20, 221-22; Du Boulay, F. R. H., 203 n. 9 polemical, 38, 72-81, 145; and

Duby, Georges, 16, 36 n. 65, 69 n. 62 renovation of the elements, 4, 38, 82Duhem, Pierre, go n. 100, 91 n. 103, 92 89, 257

Nn. 105 Esdras, Book of, 3 ,

Dumoulin, B., 92 n. 106 estates and estates satire, 58-59, 228; in Dunmow flitch (prize for marital Confessio amantis, 252, 253-54; in harmony), 210, 285, 287, 291 Mirour de Pomme, 234-41; and three

Duns Scotus, 71 estates, 45, 66, 77, 227-28, 234-35, 254

dwarfs. See giants and giantism eternity of the world, 39, 89-94

, Ethelbert (king) 52

_ Eucherius of Lyons, 60 n. 38

“Eaduuardi regis Anglorum me Europe, as country of “churls,” 134

pepulere,” 103 n. 128 Eusebius “Gallicanus,” 42 n. 6 Ebstorf world map, 25 Eusebius of Caesaria, 46, 50, 142, 186 “Ecce dolet Anglia luctibus imbuta,” 60 Evans, J. M., 186 n. 26

Nn. 39 Eve, 23, 113, 180, 237-38; and penance in

“Ecce mundus moritur vitio sepultus,” 55 the Tigris River, 118-20, 211; as

, n. 29 , “wicked woman,” 283, 305. See also Eden, garden of. See paradise, terrestrial Adam Edward (duke of York), The Master of Every, George, 23 n. 40

Game, 156, 158 Exeter Book, 16 n. 28, 53

Edward III (king of England), 107, 217 n. Ezekiel, 69, 71 32, 272

eleventh hour, 43-44, 60-62, 322. See also novissima hora

Elijah, 36, 142 Fabricius, Gaius, 266

Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist), 34 Fall, of Adam and Eve, 17-21, 29, 113, Emerson, Oliver F., 121 n. 23, 160 n. 29, 117-20, 129, 131 n. 48, 155, 218; in

135 Nn. 55 Gower’s Confessio, 252, 265, 267; and

INDEX 365 world grown old, 2-3, 4, 49, 98, 113, Freccero, John, 160, 177, 179, 180 n. 14,

I17—20, 129, 155, 171, 182 182 n. 17

‘‘Falsenesse and couetys er feris” (De Fredegarius. See Pseudo-Fredegarius

mundo), tol Frederick II, 174 n. 3

“Felix erat studium” (Walter of Freeman, Michelle A., 108 n. 137

Chatillon), 55 n. 29 Freud, Sigmund, 290

Fell, Christine, 54 n. 27 Friar Daw’s Reply, 64, 79-80, 229, 230 N. Ferrante, Joan, 163 n. 36, 173 n. 1, 176 n. 53, 244

6 “Friar Thomas de Hales’ Love Ron,” 321

Ferrer, Vincent, 61 n. 43 n. 8

fifteen signs before Doomsday, 35, 72, 74, friars, 72-81, 116, 164, 167, 174, 212,

85-86, 110 | 221, 317; and antifraternalism, 58, 61 n. fire worship, 4 224 Nn. 43, 227-30, 237-38, 250, 272; as

fin amour (refined love), 14, 101, 165, 149 43, 73-81, 147, 167-70, 200, 202, 221,

‘De first day of pas fiften days,” 35 “Cain’s castle-makers,” 77-78; as Fisher, John H., 235 nn. 5-6, 238 n. 8, renewers on the church, 74. See also 242 Nn. 12, 257 ) rancis O S1S1, Ot. FitzRalph, Richard (archbishop of Fried, Johannes, 16 n. 28

Armagh), 75, 79, 225-26 Friedman, John Block, 22, 25 n. 46, 208 Fleming, 60, 31 98,ngescente 116 n. corn 19 ‘tatis.”” 10, 147,John 150 V., Nn.68-69 9, 161n.Nn. caritatis, 63 n.6 4F Flemish crusade (1383), 76, 252 Froissart, Jean, 242 Flint, Valerie I. J., 186 n. 26 Frye, Northrop, 9 n. 16, f2n. 2] Flood, Noah’s, 3, 37-38, 61, 81-82, 87— Fulcieri da Calboli (podesta of Florence),

88, 100, 110, I13—14, 122, 129, 137 193-94

—allegorical interpretation of, 41, 317 Fyler, John M., 123 n. 29, 126, 272 n. 1,

—as baptism of the world, 83 n. 85, 87- 324 1. 13 88

—Book of Wisdom on, 132-33, 208

—compared with renovation of the canoway, Andrew, 242 n. 10, 284 n. 20

elements, 84-89 Canin « wt M.. 28

—consequences of, 38, 81-82, 110, 129, anim, Jo 79 204 Ne 20, 299 D- 37 Ganymede, 158, 187 133, 184, 186 n. 25, 212 Gascoigne, Thomas

—giants lived after,| Gaston, 186 count n. 25 Bn; 93du chasse, of Foix, Le Jivre —and human life spans, 69, 70, 82, 184 villicacionis tue (““3elde reckynyng of thi

baili’’), 44-45, 47, 65-66, 227, 234, 270

Wimsatt, W. K., 11-12 Zacharias (father of John the Baptist), 34

Winchester Bible, 29-30 Zeus, 187

witchcraft, 61-62, 131 n. 48, 133 Zillah (Lamech’s wife), 126 Wolfdietrich, as wild man, 26 n. 46 Ziolkowski, Jan, 68 n. 59, 70 n. 64

Wolfram von Eschenbach, 141 Zoroaster, 41, 62

Wonderful Parliament (1386), 250 Zumthor, Paul, 13

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