L promises that friars will be maintained by a royal (or perhaps merely secular?) grant. constantyn, of course, through his supposed “donation” to Sylvester I, always offered a justification for church endowments. Rather than an inadvertent corrupter, who introduced the venym of temporal concerns into the church (cf. 17.220–24), the name here represents “Christian kingship,” and he corrects what is amiss, just as Reason promises an English king will. Presumably, since the only thing Constantine will cook them is Bred 174 (contrast Wrath as monastic cook at 6.132–33, or the doctor of divinity in passus 15), the grant will be, if perpetual (euere aftur 174), quite a minimal one. This is probably the freres fyndynge of 22.383, as Pearsall1, Schmidt, Kerby-Fulton (1990:34), and Clopper (1997:292–98) argue, an echo of the “daily bread” of the Pater noster.
176 (B 10.331) abbot of engelonde (Abingdon B): Skeat follows Wright in identifying Abingdon as the first truly Benedictine house in England, a product of Aethelwold’s tenth-century reforms.
——— his nese: Cf. 6.440 “Abstinence myn aunte” for a similar example of allegory based upon familial relationships (other notable examples would include 7.278–82, 8.80–83); Tavormina 1995 includes provocative materials on familial metaphors in the poem (e.g., 48–50, 57–58, 78–82, 87–88), if not a discussion of such fitful allegorical connectives. It is just possible, however, that Reason wishes the word to imply “concubine”; the sense is not recorded under MED nece n., but cf. the parallel and al his issue B 10.331, as well as Suster B 5.642 (and distantly, MED suster n., sense 3a[c]) and Brown XIII, no. 25/7–14.
177 (B 10.332) a knok … and incurable þe wounde: This devastating blow must be read in the context of the following Latin, where baculum and virgam refer to the insignia of lordly office. Thus, it must mean the destruction of religious’ lordships, the loss of temporal endowments. Cf. the more direct 17.227: “Taketh here londes, ʓe lordes, and lat hem lyue by dymes.” Contrast the implicit evocation of another baculum and virga (from Ps. 22:4) at B 7.120–21 and the echo at B 12.292L (and the notes to both).
177L (B 10.333L) Contriuit… : Isa. 14:5–6, fuller in B with part of v. 4 (How is the oppressor come to nothing, the tribute hath ceased? The lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of the rulers, That struck the people in wrath with an incurable wound, that brought nations under in fury, that persecuted in a cruel manner). Pearsall notes that L’s quotation is wrenched from context; in the Vulgate, the Lord breaks the rulers’ rods, with which they struck inferiors incurably, while in L’s rendition, the Lord’s breaking of such false rulers’ rod is the incurable wound. The verse is also used to promise the destruction of corrupt clergy in the Joachite prophecy De oneribus prophetarum (Kerby-Fulton 1990:177).
178 (B 10.334) cronicles me tolde (Caym shal awake B): For C’s cronicles, i.e., apocalyptic materials offered as portions of historical accounts, see Kerby-Fulton 1990:24, 210 n73. The revision is at least partly inspired by L’s having front-loaded the passage; the next line in B, Ac dowel shal dyngen hym adoun, relies on a personification from 10.128–38 (B 9.1–11). The allusion was sensible when the passage was spoken by B’s Clergy, but not in this earlier context. Yet L perhaps revised a bit too rigorously, and thereby lost one powerful effect present in B. For as Schmidt1 sees, one should identify Caym with Antichrist’s appearance at 22.53; and in his train come the four orders of friars whose initials comprise his name. In fact in B, Clergy forecasts Piers as the dowel whom Conscience (a kyng at 21/B19.256) will seek to set things right in the Last Days; the use of friars’ refounding in lines 173–75 as a model for the treatment of all orders also looks ahead to the poem’s end. C’s shal be clothed newe is, in such a context, pallid (perhaps a reference to celestial garments?), although subsequent revisions might be construed as compensation for such loss; see the discussion of lines 181 and 189 in the next note.
180–90 (B 5.48–49) Reason addresses king and commons: In the extensive C expansions at its end, L focuses Reason’s sermon in forward-looking terms, rather than the retrospective opposition to Meed inherent in the rather scrappy B materials. This passage now clearly follows from Prol.139–59 with its evocation of social groups working to common purpose. L thus truncates B 5.49, with its doubly recursive reference to tresor and tryacle (cf. 1.81, 136 and the fuller B 1.134–37, 202; and 1.146). And he drops altogether B 5.52–55, with its particularistic glance at lawyers; in the reformulation of C, the profession will become otiose. CK 61–62 probably echoes, a bit vaguely, the C Version.
Rather than the narrowness of B’s treatment, the discussion of king and commune has a new global interest rooted in a return to an aboriginal pristinus status. Central to this is the injunction Holde ʓow in vnite 189, which seeks to undo the original disunity and cause of sin, Lucifer’s revolt (alluded to in treson B 5.49). Pearsall compares 1.104–29, which describe this primal act of disobedience, the servant trying to escape his status to become maister; the king is to be analogous to the paterfamilias at the head of the sermon; see 128–39Ln.
The emphasis upon vnite also binds this political analysis more closely with the preceding prophecy. The injunction of 189 will be echoed at 22.246, to which he þat oþer wolde ominously alludes (cf. further 21.359, 22.75). And Reason’s bow to his helper Consience 181 has similar resonances. Not only will Conscience officiate at the poem’s conclusion, but the line summarily refers to developments in this character unique to C. Conscience now speaks the Latin speech at Prol.153–59, which emphasizes the king’s pietas, his love for his commune; as well as the expanded discussion of clerical failures (Prol.95–138), germane to the preceding prophecy. Equally relevant is the extensive grammatical metaphor of passus 3 through which Conscience tries to explain licit relationship (cf. the parallel of divine and human kingship evoked there with the use of acorde 183). For fuller discussion, see Wood 2012 passim.
At moments, Reason achieves powerful rhetorical statement of the desire for vnite. For example, wit and wil 185 are conventional opposites, but in this line come into a harmony, in which the grasping desire inherent in wil is denatured (cf. the perhaps flashier locution of B 5.52). Rather than “wardships” (the only sense Alford cites at 1988c:165), wardes 185 probably refers to administrative units of a city and the day-by-day relationships between their inhabitants.
191–96 (B 5.50–51) Reason addresses the pope: Reason here moves past the fair field or al the reume 125 to consider the global Christian community. God’s vicar, properly another paternalistic figure like the king in his realm, should return European society at large to the harmonious stability that existed in Heaven. Reason here, as in the preceding reference to Lucifer, apparently wishes to undo history altogether, to replace rancorous memory with 192 good loue through a perpetuel forʓeuenesse. One might contrast the poem’s version of the future, the lewed vicory’s report on the behaviors of popes and cardinals at 21.409–58; or Meed’s argument at 3.236–64 that kingship should translate to the international sphere her particularly divisive brand of retinue politics with the injunction to surrender accions 196, legal claims, however licit they may be. As a statement of forgiveness, this discussion again looks ahead to Dobest, L’s one brush with a central topic of traditional alliterative poetry, the treatment of the conqueror, in passus 21.
192 (B 5.51) grace: That is, “penitential forgiveness” (cf. Bennett), looking ahead to line 194. B gouerne first hymselue, a statement parallel to lines 141–42, perhaps implies that evil modern popes have lost the Petrine right to dispense forgiveness (cf. Prol.128–38). In C, L makes the statement more provocative and expansive.
196 eche man loue other: Cf. John 13:34 (A