Þe passioun of seynt Aueroy is still more obscure. “Passion” here perhaps does not mean “suffering and martyrdom,” as it regularly does in the martyrologies, but just “suffering,” or “hard life,” the sort of heroic abstinence one associates with saints: once again Anima’s “sermon” in B.15 is relevant: the desert fathers’ “penaunce and pouerte and passion” (B.15.270) consists above all in eating simply. In contradistinction to this, Patience predicts, the friar will offer, in proof of his proposition, the suffering of St Aueroy from too much fine food. But St Aueroy (B Auereys) has been a puzzle. Pearsall in his first edition, following Skeat, suggests St Avoya, “who was fed in her torment with fine bread from heaven—a useful twist to the doctor’s argument that good food and suffering go together,” and also mentions St Aurea, “a Spanish solitary, better known, who is said to have drunk only what she could distil from cinders.” Schmidt says it is either one of these “or an imaginary saint (the B form echoing Avarice) suited to the Doctor, whose own ‘passion’ would presumably result from over-indulgence.” Middleton (1987) has argued powerfully that the reference is simply to the Arab philosopher Averroes, here “sainted” by the friar for his materialism in a brilliant satiric thrust on L’s part against fraternal materialism in general. Again the historic disputes within the Franciscan order seem relevant, since the place of secular learning, in which Averroes’s thought was prominent, was a major issue. Peter John Olivi, the major Franciscan Joachist, in his Postilla on the Apocalypse made the study of Averroes a prominent mark of the carnal church (Leff 1967a:1.125). Pearsall in his revised edition drops his earlier suggestions and accepts Averroes. But this explanation, as Schmidt points out, leaves “passioun” imperfectly explained: in what sense did Averroes suffer? Yet another possibility (very like Schmidt’s imaginary saint) is that the word meant is “Auerous,” avaricious, and that the “Passion of St Avaricious” is invented as a partner-text to the “Apocalypse of Gluttony.” (On how avarice suffers—not as severely as Gluttony—see 6.272–85; avarice is relevant because fine food is expensive; see 44–45.) But Golias is not necessarily “Gluttony,” and there is no reason to suppose that the common word “averous,” even in connection with “saint,” would be mishandled by scribes, who had no trouble with “Erl Auerous” (10.86, B.8.89, A.9.80). On the whole, the best explanation seems to lie in the Franciscan disputes; though L elsewhere shows some sympathy with the Spirituals’ position, this line strikes at fraternal intellectual extremism in general by ridiculing both sides.
101–3 (B.13.94–96) And thenne shal he testifie … leue me neuere aftur: “And then he will tick off three proofs that he found in a pamphlet about how a friar should live his life, and get his companion to back him.” Clopper 1997:76, referring to this passage, says that “Patience ridicules the mendicant habit of using trinities to gloss away their Rule.” Irritatingly, he provides no evidence for this remark, and I do not know what glosses he has in mind, but it is true that a lot of fraternal writers love to number their thoughts. The Summa theologica is an obvious example, as are the Legenda aurea, Bonaventure’s Minor Life of St Francis, and Olivi’s Rule Commentary. This habit seems to me to be as good an explanation as any for the doctor’s trinite.
A forel is “a case or covering in which a book or manuscript is kept, or into which it is sewn” (OED, s.v. forel, n. 1c). “Lyuynge” can mean “way of life,” “rule of life,” or it can mean “livelihood, means of getting a living.” Pearsall, apparently settling on the latter, glosses the line “What (poor) fare he [i.e. his felowe] found in a friar’s box of provisions.” This presumably means that the friar will argue further that his fellow brought his dinner with him, obtained by begging, and is asking for himself a kind of guiltlessness by association. But the line is more likely to mean “what he, the friar-doctor, found in a pamphlet on the fraternal way of life,” i.e., further specious defense of la dolce vita. And then the furste leef is simply the first page of that book or pamphlet. Of course, if the first leaf is lies, so are all the other leaves: it is “lies from the word go.” Cf. 22.248–50, 274–75. Or does the first leaf take up the topic mendacium?
104–5 (B.13.97–98) And thenne is tyme … penaunce: Why is thenne the time to quiz the friar about Dowel, etc.? Not, probably, because he will have brought up the subject of trinities (Patience can’t have that much confidence in his prediction), but simply because having spoken first, and probably incoherently, he can now be spoken to: Will’s error was to want to be the first to speak. And Patience also deftly redefines what Will is to ask about, deflecting the issue of “penaunce” to a subordinate and nonconfrontational position in the question (though Will will manage soon enough to deliver his challenge directly). to take and to appose: to begin to challenge, a phrase a little like our saying “go ahead and challenge” instead of just “challenge”; this is a similar filler, and provides the poet with an alliterating stave. The phrase “take and” is used by L only here, and not treated by either OED, MED, or Kane, Glossary; but see MED, s.v. take, meanings 37–39a. Yf dobest be eny penaunce: i.e., Isn’t the best life one of suffering and self-denial?
Will questions the doctor, then challenges the answer (106–18, B.13.99–111)
107 (B.13.100) As rody as a rose: Whiting R200, though not commonly used for the flush of overindulgence, as it is here.
108–9 (B.13.101–2) Cowhede and capede (B carped), and consience … trinite: All B mss. read carped(e), as do all but five C mss. Skeat and Schmidt have carpede in both versions. RK-C include capede on p. 80 as part of a very long list of “small lexical and rhetorical differences” between B and C that may be scribal but may also be L’s “minute revision” and so are “accepted as features of the revised version” (78). Ms. X of C very clearly reads capede. If L indeed wrote capede, he forgot that Patience’s prediction obliges him to have the doctor speak. If he merely coughs and gapes, the prediction looks foolish; if he speaks, we can assume, as we do in B, that he drivels in some way more or less like what was predicted. And consience hym herde: Heard him cough? Surely he heard him speak.
Note that it is Conscience who opens the dialogue with the doctor, not Patience, who is after all at this point nothing but Will’s tablemate; Conscience is the host, and thus the right person to speak. But we have to assume that he has overheard Will and Patience’s conversation.
109 (B.13.102) tolde hym of a trinite: Apparently with ironic reference to the self-serving trinite (101, B.13.94) Patience has predicted that the friar will cite to justify his indulgence, Conscience brings up a trinity with real moral import. We might think of him as saying, “Will here has a trinity on his mind that he would like to ask you about.”
109 (B.13.102) and toward me [B vs] he lokede: The scene is alive to the decorum of the dream vision: a threatening opponent is wisely softened by the guide before the protagonist confronts him. Cf. Inferno 29, in the tenth bolgia, where Vergil first speaks to Griffolino and Capocchio, propped against each other and scraping their scabs, but when he finds they are Italian, draws close to Dante and says, “Say to them what you want.” Similarly, in the eighth bolgia, Cantos 26 and 27, Vergil has spoken to Ulysses and Diomede, because “being Greeks, they might disdain your speech,” but has let Dante speak to Guido da Montefeltro: “He touched me on the side and said, ‘You talk; he’s Italian.’” Cf. also Wit silently gesturing to Will to speak to Study, B.10.140–46. Cf. B.13.86 and note, and C.15.119–20 and note.
110 (B.13.103) “What is dowel … is dobest eny penaunce?”: Will, perhaps after all a little cowed, truncates his question, in the second part merely parroting what Patience said in line 105 (B.13.98); the doctor will ignore that part. The question is a mere trap, designed