As a summary of the sequence Fortune-through-Ymaginatif, the passage is less arbitrary than may at first appear, though not without its difficulties. In the B version its character as a summary is marked rather baldly: eight events are listed, the first introduced by “First how” and the other seven introduced by “And how”; six of the eight are given one line each. Lines 5–10 cover B.11.7–83, 5–6 echoing Elde’s threat at B.11.28–29; the friar material is given disproportionate weight in the summary. There is also, indeed, some amnesia: as Donaldson 1949:81 points out, “According to B’s account of the quarrel, the Dreamer refused to be buried with the Friars, but according to the line in which he mentions the matter [i.e., B.13.9–10], the Friars refused to let him be buried among them.” Lines 11–13 cover at least B.11.283–319, which treat avarice and ignorance in priests and imply the betrayal of the lewed (but see below on lines 12–13), and can be thought to cover the entire disquisition on love and poverty, B.11.154–319, since that passage is arguably addressed to priests from the beginning (see Lawler 2002:98–107): the word preestes doesn’t appear until line 283, but men of holy chirche in line 160 must mean priests. However, the sequence Lewte-Scripture-Trajan (B.11.84–153) is not summarized. Lines 14–20 summarize B.12.217–97, and deftly take in the vision of middle earth in B.11.320–441.
Lines B.13.12–13 are perhaps troubling, since the criticism of ignorant priests in B.11.283–319 does not say explicitly that their ignorance brings damnation on their parishioners. But see the variants to B.11.302, and p. 193 of the B introduction, where KD report that they have omitted from the text as scribal a pair of archetypal lines: “I haue wonder for why and wherfore þe bisshop/Makeþ swiche preestes þat lewed men bitrayen.” The lines sound scribal indeed (though Schmidt prints them), and yet they provide an explicit referent for 13.12–13. KD (p. 193) suppose that the scribe who made them wanted to “participate in criticism of the clergy,” but we might better suppose he was bothered by lines 13.12–13, and felt moved to provide a specific basis for them.
The passage shows incomplete revision in the C version. Some attention has been paid to varying the list of eight events: in the last two (21, 23) the “And how” formula is varied, and now only the first and last are confined to one line. Lines 5–12 are essentially unchanged from B.13.5–10, even though there is now more material in the passage they cover (C.11.166–12.22) than there was before. As Donaldson points out (1949:68–69), the lines on the friars’ burial practices (11–12) should have been omitted, since the B passage they referred to, 11.64–67, has been omitted (at 12.15). On the other hand, covetousness is now said (13–14) to overcome not just priests but al kyne sectes, a change that seems to recognize better than in the B version the place of covetousness in Fortune’s program for us all, and, in its greater breadth, to be suited to the significant extension by Recklessness of the praise of patient poverty. Lines 15–16, unchanged from the B version, cover C.13.100–128, and make it plain, pace that interfering scribe of B, that L thought the passage clearly implied that a lot of people go to hell because their priests are ignorant. (Meantime the scribal couplet of B.11 has been replaced in C by lines 13.115–16.) C.15.17–23 have the same effect as B.13.14–20, although C.15.20 (referring to C.14.161–63) improves the rather fatuous B.13.18. For C.15.22, see the note below.
5 (B.13.5) fortune me faylede At my moste nede: at 12.13 (B.11.61), though the phrasing here reflects Elde’s threat at 11.188 (B.11.29).
6–8 And … lotus (B.13.6 And … mete): “And how Old Age threatened me, if I should live long, (that) he would leave me in debt, and all my good looks and all my powers vanish.” The C lines repeat accurately Elde’s threat to Will at 11.187–89 (B.11.28–30) that Fortune would fail him and Concupiscencia carnis forsake him. So myhte happe / That y lyuede longe translates, in C’s way, the more metaphorical B myʒte we euere mete—though the B phrase is closer to what Elde originally said in both versions, “yf y mete with the” (11.187, B.11.28). As the conjunction with fayre lotus (which may mean “fair speeches” or “loving glances” rather than “good looks,” but which appears regularly in romantic contexts; cf. MED, s.v. lote, sb. 1) suggests, vertues refers in particular to sexual powers (which do vanish, thanks to Elde, at 22.193–98 [B.20.193–98]).
9–12 (B.13.7–10) And how þat freres … quyte here dettes: For a definitive, nuanced discussion of bequests from Londoners to the various orders of friars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Jens Röhrkasten’s article of 1996 and his book of 2004. Bequests fluctuated, he shows, and were waning in Langland’s time, but still frequent, especially among the rich.
21–22 And y merueyled … how ymaginatyf saide / That iustus … non saluabitur bote vix helpe (B.13.19 And siþen how ymaginatif seide “vix saluabitur iustus”): B is straightforward and noncommittal, but C offers a playful version of Ymaginatif’s dictum (14.203; B.12.281), turning it into a little grammatical-legal narrative. Since vix (scarcely) is almost a synonym for “non” (not), the poet seems to posit an underlying statement non saluabitur iustus (the just man will not be saved), of which the statement Vix saluabitur iustus is what we would call a “transformation.” Vix (an “auxiliary” word) “helps” the statement mean something new, and so “helps” the just man to be saved. It is a way of saying just what Ymaginatif said: salvation almost doesn’t happen. Salter and Pearsall (1967:13) instance the passage as an example of “embryonic allegory”: the Latin phrase is “dramatized, in simple but striking terms, as a court scene, with ‘vix’ personified, and interceding for ‘justus.’” Later, in annotating the passage on p. 131, they assert (adding a notion of Wyclif’s cited by Skeat) that the wordplay depends on the “interpretation of vix as the Five (V) wounds of Jesus (I) Christ (X),” and Pearsall repeats it ad loc. in his edition; “depends” is perhaps strong, but the further meaning is certainly welcome. Fiona Somerset accepts both meanings: “The word ‘vix’ will help to save the just man on the Day of Judgment in the grammatical sense Ymaginatif employs—it restricts rather than reversing ‘saluabitur’—but also in the sense that it is the mercy of Christ symbolized by the word ‘vix’ that will save him” (1998:45).
24 me lust to slepe … 18.178 y wakede (B.13.21 at þe laste I slepte … 14.335 þerwiþ I awakede): The fourth vision. Most commentators have seen in this vision a shift from a cognitive to a moral emphasis: the interlocutors are no longer mental faculties but the moral faculty of Conscience and the virtue of Patience. And the mode changes from sharp correction of Will, first to narrative in the dinner scene and the meeting with Actyf, then to benign instruction from Patience, and in C from Liberum arbitrium as well. Simpson (2007:125) argues that the move is from “the rational faculties of his (Will’s) soul” to “those parts and qualities of the soul that direct and condition moral choice…. The burden of learning is now, in effect, on Will himself, as the human will, since it is the will that must choose, rather than merely be informed of the truth.” Conscience is certainly part of the soul; see the quotation from Isidore, 16.201a (B.15.39a) and the surrounding discussion in both versions. Medieval philosophers regarded conscience or synderesis as a function of the soul, whether in Plato’s tripartite soul (rational, appetitive, emotive), where it was a function of the rational soul, or in Jerome’s quadripartite soul, where conscience is a separate part; see Potts 1980:6–9 and passim.
Conscience’s dinner (25–184, B.13.22–214)
25–184 (B.13.22–214) Conscience’s dinner. The dinner scene is the most complex narrative scene in the poem so far: it is less intense than the pardon scene, but involves more characters and more interplay among them. In B the dinner takes place at Conscience’s court or palace, and Conscience is clearly the host, inviting, welcoming, seating, ordering service. Clergie is the star guest,