In the C version, the alliance of Reason and Conscience as Will’s major guides continues from passus 5; in B Conscience reemerges after being absent since the end of passus 4, where he and Reason agreed to remain always with the king; in both versions Will has also had a recent, unsatisfying encounter with Reason in the vision of middle earth, within vision three. But Reason in actuality plays almost no role here, and leaves the poem for good. Pearsall considers the dinner a “probationary reward for Will, who has shown recent signs of improvement,” these being his blush of shame at 13.213 and his good definition of Dowel a few lines later (220). But it may be better to think of Conscience as an indiscriminately generous host like the host in Christ’s parable of the Great Feast, out on the highways inviting all he meets. Thus he welcomes the doctor, also, and when he comes home and finds Patience (and, in C, Piers) on his doorstep, he welcomes them too. Especially in the C version, L is at pains to stress the breadth of Conscience’s hospitality. The invitation would thus be, like much else, a happy accident for Will rather than a reward.
As others have intimated (Middleton 1987:32; Simpson 2007:138; Gruenler 2017:165), the “source” of the scene would seem to be the speech of Dame Study in passus 11 (B.10, A.11), which is largely taken up with a tirade against various abuses of feasts (I cite the fuller version of B.10): the exclusion of the man with “holy writ ay in his mouþe” (32) in favor of lewd entertainers (39–51); ignorant and presumptuous theological disputes after dinner (52–58, 67, 70–71, 104–18); and refusal to admit to the feast the poor clamoring at the gate (59–66, 79–103, see also B 9.82–83); also, friars are incidentally criticized for preaching insincerely at St Paul’s (74) and for seeking feasts at other men’s houses (95–96).
Conscience’s dinner is an attempt to right all these abuses, although the feast-seeking friar, fresh from St Paul’s, with his pompous speechifying, does his best to maintain business as usual. Bourquin regards the scene as a “dramatizing” of Study’s tirade, 1978:406. He also points out (405–6) that the structure of the scene reproduces that of the Meed episode, featuring two sharply opposed sides (there, Conscience and Reason vs. Meed, here Patience vs. the doctor), with a figure in the middle (there the king, here Conscience) who chooses “the good side” (optait pour le bien) at the end.
The ultimate source, of course, is the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, where dinner scenes and parables of feasts abound (see Barney 1968:192–208 on how the New Testament material is developed in Old French allegories that personify the banquet foods, etc.). See especially Luke, where “the Son of man is come eating and drinking” (7:34), and where Jesus urges his dinner host to invite the poor (14:12–14), then tells the parable of the Great Feast (14:16–24). Matt 23:6–7 says of the Pharisees: “They love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the marketplace and to be called by men Rabbi” (which means “Master,” John 1:38) (see also Luke 20:46–47, where almost the same thing is said of the scribes). And see 2 Tim 3:1–7, in which Paul warns against the heretics of latter days, among whom are “they that creep into houses” (qui penetrant domos, verse 6). For a full account of how William of St Amour drew from Matt 23:6–7 and 2 Tim 3:6 what developed into the major conventions of antifraternal literature, see Szittya 1986: 34–41, 58–61, 71, et passim; cf. also the pair Frere Flaterere and Sire Penetrans-domos in passus 22 (B.20), 313 ff. and the note there. (For a nuanced account of the whole complex history of antifraternalism, going well beyond William of St Amour, see Geltner 2012.) Our friar is (seemingly) greeted by Conscience outdoors (in C), penetrates his house, is called master and takes first place at dinner, and even uses that place as a kind of pulpit. Jill Mann (1979:38) suggests that the scene might be seen as the product of L’s rumination on the text, “Not by bread alone doth man live, but by every word that proceedeth out the mouth of God,” Matt 4:4, Luke 4:4, quoted in the next scene by Patience, 15.244a (B.14.47a) (and half-quoted at 5.86).
Alford 1995 is an important attempt to see the entire scene as built on Proverbs 23, which starts, “When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face,” and commentary on it by Ambrose and Hugh of Saint-Cher. He uncovers some telling parallels, though much of what both commentators advocate is rather standard moral teaching.
For all its trappings of allegory, the scene is in the main literal enough. It is a little comedy in which, as Piers and Patience say, the patient win; see Kirk 1972:145–53 and 1978:98–100, and Lawler 1995. Neither the friar nor Will acts as a guest ought. The friar as alazon is overcome, not by Will’s heavy-handed resentment, arrogant enough in its own way and suavely deflected by Conscience, but by the mercurial Piers (in C) and the mild eiron Patience. The issues are literal too. How do we do well? What are the major values we aspire to? Love and patience win out over the friar’s worldly notions. This core of meaning is eked out by two kinds of allegory. The food, served by Scripture, consists of the Gospels and the Fathers, or, in Will’s and Patience’s case at the side table, scriptural calls to do penance. These are not out of line with the scripture-based stress on love and patient poverty that emerges in the debate after dinner. Those who ate willingly what they were served speak and act well in the debate; Will and the doctor, who spurn their food, speak and act badly. The allegory simply says that those who feed the body and not the spirit will come out spiritually undernourished. Secondly, the identity of the hosts implies that dining on such insubstantial fare is reasonable, is what both our conscience and our learning urge on us. Meanwhile, the friar is shown not to make conscientious or reasonable use of his learning, whereas Will, for all his impatience, learns enough to ally himself with Conscience and Patience. At the end of the scene, he starts on the road that will lead him to redemption—the road to Jerusalem: see 15.184 (B.13.215)n.
For a different emphasis on the theme of learning, see Schmidt’s note, in his 1995 edition of the B text, to B.13.24, “And for Conscience of Clergie spak I com wel þe raþer”: “Will’s eagerness is the fruit of Ymaginatif’s instruction … But after meeting the doctor he will have many of his earlier misgivings shockingly confirmed and withdraw from intellectual learning into the company of a spiritual virtue, Patience, to find the kynde knowyng of Dowel he has sought in vain elsewhere.” It is true that Conscience regards Patience as having given a more penetrating answer than Clergie, and that he chooses the way of experience as he and Will go off with Patience, and yet the accord that Conscience and Clergie reach by the end of the scene suggests that Clergie is not being altogether rejected.
The scene is an instance of L’s general tendency to satirize the friars’ love of learning: see 11.52–58 (B.10.72–78, A.11.58–60); B.11.219–30; 16.231–41a (B.15.70–88); 22.250 (B.20.250); and 22.230–31n.
Clopper, both in his 1990 article (74n34) and his book (1997:238–41), argues that the scene has a “Franciscan character,” and that Patience is modeled on St Francis, though most scholars have accepted the identification of the friar with the Dominican William Jordan; see 91n.
Conscience and Clergie invite Will to dine with Reason (25–31); Conscience invites Will to dine with Clergie (B.13.22–28)
B.13.23 court: A large house or castle; cf. Kane, Glossary, and Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale, D2162, “Doun to the court he gooth, / Wher as ther woned a man