B 5.54–55 in þe gospel: A reference to the parable of wise and foolish virgins (Matt. 25); the Latin is v. 12: “Amen I say to you I know you not.” 1.185 alludes to the same passage. Bennett wishes that L had cited another verse that would insist upon Jesus’ dismissal of those who do evil (to follow contrarieþ truþe); he suggests as appropriate loci Matt. 7:23 or 25:41, Luke 13:27. But the B version might be construed as analogous to 1.185 and following the analysis of Prol.161–64: lawyers refuse to display their talents and thus fail to actuate love, just as do the foolish virgins.
198 (B 5.57, A 5.41) Seketh seynt treuthe: The command recalls the lying pilgrims of Prol.47–50, and Reason’s messianic reformulation of pilgrimage at 4.122–24. This pilgrimage follows easily upon Reason’s papal universalism—one should no longer seek particular saints (as does the palmer of 7.160–81). The folk of the fair field will take up this pilgrimage at 7.155, and Piers will explain to them the actual nonspatial route to the “shrine” at 7.205–60L.
Burrow argues (1965:252) that the injunction voices L’s antipathy to actual pilgrimages and (in the developing treatment of this theme in passus 7–8) his opinion that the spiritual values to be gained through pilgrimage are better discovered in nonmobile true labor. For anti-pilgrimage invective generally, see Prol.47–50n. More germane in this context may be Jerome, Epistolae 58.2 (PL 22:580): “Non Jerosolymis fuisse, sed Jerosolymis bene vixisse laudandum est” (What’s praiseworthy is not to have been in Jerusalem but to have lived in Jerusalem well), cited Polak 1970:285. The statement appears at Decretum 2.12.2.71.3 (CJC 1:711) in a context relevant to those interests L broaches at B 7.53–59. Cf. also the Lollard “Hou men shulden gon,” fol. 14, citing Augustine: “not bi goyng of feet but bi goyng of goode maners, God is to be souʓt, for her place and not her leuynge þei chaungen þat rennen biʓonde þe see.”
Such citations imply a widely dispersed discourse that distinguishes pilgrimage as a truly penitential living from a physical journey. But metaphorical translations of “pilgrimage” were particularly alive in local English discussions. L’s thinking, which predates Lollard writing, resonates with the sect’s sustained invective; see Hudson 1988:307–9. L would certainly distance himself from the logic underlying Wycliffite antipathy to pilgrimage, that the systematic veneration of postbiblical saints is misbegotten idolatry. Yet simultaneously, there are striking parallels—which may reflect Lollard appropriation of L, rather than the reverse; cf. Lawton’s aperçu (1981:793), “Lollards had Langlandian sympathies.”
In general, Lollard writers insist, as does Chaucer’s Parson (CT X.48–51—is he “a Lollere in the wynd”?), upon pilgrimage as defining the whole of human life. See William Thorpe, lines 1237–54 (including as “pilgrimage itinerary” an instructional program that elaborates Piers’s route in C 7) or “Hou men shulden gon,” fol. 12v; for the pilgrimage of life as totalizing narrative theme, see Wenzel 1973. English heretical materials commonly include statements analogous to Reason’s “til saynt Iames be sauhte there pore sikke lyggen” (4.122); cf. “Hou men shulden gon,” fol. 13v, which urges a stay-at-home pilgrimage “wiþ þe gold and siluer þat þei spenden in pilgrimages, first founden vp and stifli mayntened by couetise of fals prestes, fulfillynge þe seuen dedis of merci to whiche euery man is bounden vp peyne of dampnacioun.”
199 (B 5.58, A 5.42) Qui cum patre et filio: “Who with the father and the son.” Skeat and Knott identify the phrases with the closing blessing of sermons, “In nomine Jesu Christi, qui cum patre et spiritu sancto vivit et regnit saecula saeculorum.” The former cites Chaucer, CT III.1734, a brief use of the phrase at the end of the friar’s sermon. Schmidt1 argues that the phrase is formulaic and Qui not necessarily a functioning relative, but the blessing merely restates a clause of the Apostles’ Creed, “(Credo) et in Spiritum Sanctum Dominum et vivicantem, qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur.” Truth is the Holy Spirit, the source of love; cf. 19.184–226.
——— þat: “May,” elliptically introducing a volitive subjunctive, a prayer for willing listeners.
200 (B 5.59, cf. A 5.42) and Thus sayde resoun: RK’s C version is emended to accord with B, but equally plausible would seem retention of the harder manuscript verb and substitution of a synonymous alliterating particle, and [so] endede resoun. Kane prints no parallel line in A, in the belief that the manuscripts that provide one (EKWM) have borrowed it from later versions.
C Passus 6; B Passus 5; A Passus 5
Headnote
Reason (with Conscience) now disappears, having through his sermon brought the folk to contrition. He will not reappear until 13.194 (B 11.376), and following his second skeptical examination of the dreamer’s credentials there, will vanish from the poem. Conscience only returns in 15.25 (B 13.22). Similarly, de Deguilleville’s Reason exits in the presence of a sacrament at PLM 793–814 (although here it is the avowedly inexplicable and “unnatural” transsubstantiated eucharist).
These two personifications are abruptly and vibrantly replaced by a new one, Repentance. His activity, as Alford points out in the only extensive study (1993), is considerably expanded in the two later versions. In C, passus 6 is entirely devoted to (but, unlike the earlier versions, does not complete) the confession of the Seven Deadly Sins. At the end of this scene, when it is time for acts associated with the third “part” of penitence, satisfaction (pilgrimage), Repentance, in turn, will surrender the pilgrims to a new guide, Piers Plowman, in the sequence 7.155–82 (A 5.251–6.25, B 5.510–37).
Although widely admired for its liveliness, the confession scene (in C extending through 7.154) is perhaps that portion of the poem least analyzed in detail. Scholars seem to have found it a rather inert, if amusing, handling of a fixed theme, a view belied by L’s perceived “lapses” in presenting the topic in A, his persistent expansions, and considerable C version tinkering (cf. Russell 1982). Exceptional studies, all engaged in close attention to this portion of the poem, include Dunning 1980, Gray 1986a, Kirk 1972, and Stokes 1984.
Bloomfield 1952 provides the standard historical study of the Seven Deadly Sins, together with a very full survey of published English uses (PP discussed at 196–201). In addition to the discussion here (which incorporates B’s reprise, B 13.271–459), briefer listings of the sins occur at 2.87–108 (A 2.59–68, B 2.80–101), B 14.216–61, 22/B 20.70–164, 215. Discussions with exemplary selections from the seven, dependent on distinguishing the sins of the world, flesh, and devil, appear at 7.261–64n (A 6.95–98, B 5.609–12), 18.31–52 (B 16.25–52).
Bloomfield demonstrates that the Seven Sins developed within the tradition of apotheosis, the raising of the dead hero (or pilgrim?) through the planetary spheres, “In convers letyng everich element,” as Chaucer has it (T&C 5.1810, cf. 1807–27). Along with the elements, the hero in this tradition leaves behind worldly contagion. A fully formed schema of seven or eight principal sins appears in writings of later Desert Fathers; its formative transmission to the West occurs at Gregory’s Moralia in Iob 31.45.87–89 (PL 76:620–22). There Gregory identifies “superbia” as the “radix” of an “exercitus” (source/root of an army) comprised of seven further sins (including “inanis gloria,” later dropped from the list as simply doubling “superbia”). (The language relies upon the metaphor of battles between virtues and vices exemplified in Prudentius’s Psychomachia or Benedict’s Regula 1, battles to which L vaguely alludes at 16.43 [B 14.202], 22/B 20.215.) Influentially, Gregory lists each sin’s constituent “partes,” since they are taken to be “capitalia” (chieftains in an army, “head-sins”). (This is their proper designation, as opposed to the usual mortalia “deadly”; cf. 19.253–300 [B 17.185–320], including extensive discussion of issues first bruited in this passus.) See further Steadman 1972, Tuve 1966:esp. 57–143; and Wenzel 1968. Bennett suggests antecedents for and analogues to L’s voiced portrayal (for which, see further below) in several medieval dramas. Pearsall refers to the other outstanding ME examples and to ME descriptions of the practice of confession (some cited passim