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The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 2. Ralph Hanna
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isbn 9780812293838
Автор произведения Ralph Hanna
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Ingram
At this point, Reason asks religioun to see that it holds its temporal possessions in revocable trust. They came to religious establishments by gift from laypersons, and king and council can enforce proper behavior by rescinding their prior donations. Rather than letting religious beneficiaries act as their own trustees, lay figures will temporarily administer the properties as intended under the original grant.
Such a view relies upon English law and its common acceptation; see Plucknett 1949:92–93. Statute of Westminster II, c. 41 (1285; SR 1:91–92) builds upon earlier legislation designed to enforce payments or services due under a lease (see c. 4 at SR 1:48, c. 21 at 1:82–83). A lessee who fails to pay rent or provide services for two years can be sued for return of the property, and the action is heritable for both parties—successors in the lease and heirs of the lessor. Westminster II, c. 41 extends this right of recovery to include spiritual services, “But if the Land so given for a Chantry, Light, Sustenance of poor People, or other Alms to be maintained or done, be not aliened, but such Alms is withdrawn by the Space of Two Years, an Action shall lie for the Donor or his Heir to demand the Land so given in demean.” (The statute, thus, as Robert Swanson points out to me, actually does not threaten a monastery’s full endowment, but specific funds for spiritual purposes, perhaps particularly chantries, engaged in prayers for the patrons.) In any case, L’s position is moderate, for the return of endowments is not irrevocably to the donor’s “demesne,” but only a temporary cessation (til 145) to coerce performance. On the topic, see further Heale 2004.
As an example of such a grant, cf. Thomas of Lancaster’s 1318 gift of lands to Whalley (Lancs.), a Cistercian abbey, “in free, pure, and perpetual alms, free and quit of every secular service, exaction, and demand, reserving nothing therein to myself and my heirs except prayers” (in liberam, puram, et perpetuam elemosynam, solutam et quietam ab omni seruicio seculari, exactione, et demanda, nichil nobis et heredibus nostris inde reseruando nisi preces et orationes), from Hulton 1847–49, 1:249; cf. 2:527, 4:940. Aston provides (1984:63–64) examples of legal cases brought by knights for return of their endowments on the grounds of clerical nonperformance of promised services.
146–79 (B 10.297–335, cf. A 11.204–16) Reason chastises regular clergy and predicts their disendowment and reformation: L advances this material from Clergy’s discussion early in Dowell. The revision resembles the relocation of the adjacent B materials concerning Hophni and Phineas to Prol.95–124. Here lines 141–42 seem to recall to the preacher Clergy at B 10.257–335; see further 146–55n. In making both C revisions, L attempts to group passages with similar themes in early stages of the poem, while simultaneously streamlining and concentrating the discussion of learning in the Dowell passūs. There Clergy’s assault on the religious orders echoes Study’s diatribe against the rich and their dining habits.
The qualified threat of Laste 144, retained from AB, is buried in the charges of this large C relocation, with its climax in the famous prophecy of disendowment at lines 176–77. Here L, without having Reason abandon his reliance on estates satire, supplements that discourse with another, the language of expropriation. Such threats, as Aston shows (1984:49–57; followed by Scase 1989:109–12), were far from uncommon c. 1358–1410; in an era when royal and magnatial policy was frequently driven by considerations of “national defense,” temporal lands under clerical ownership often appeared an attractive source of funds to underwrite military activities (cf. the emphasis on military benefits in the “Disendowment Bill,” Hudson SEWW 135/6–15). Wilks (1972:esp. 116–27) discusses the centrality of disendowment to Wycliffe’s reforming efforts at renovatio; at Opera Minora 64, he argues that founders’ heirs, if in need, have a right to reclaim church endowments.
This passage introduces substantial disproportion into Reason’s sermon. Not only does it overweight one status, but it will come to breach the nonmessianic tone of the whole. The performance in C perhaps most resembles the sermon attacking avarice preached by the Lollard Nicholas Hereford on Ascension Day, 1382 (ed. Forde 1989). Like Reason’s effort, it was public (at the cross in the cemetery of the Augustinian canons, St. Frideswide’s, Oxford) and delivered “in vulgari ydeomate Anglicano” (237/13, although only surviving in a Latin notarial reportatio). And although Hereford ostensibly addressed all classes, he gave two of his main divisions over to failures of regular clergy and concluded (as Reason will not) with an invitation to disendowment and return to the apostolic life (240/[1] 15–38).
L presents errant monastics as personifying the violation of status-based ethics. Reason first elaborates (146–55), since religioun has apparently forgotten them, the joys of the strait inclaustration that defines this social group. But at the center of the passage (156–63), he identifies current behavior as an effort to subvert status altogether, regular clergy’s effort to claim for itself the perquisites proper to another social group, knights. Religious orders have redefined the verb holde; it should mean “preserve or follow [the rule],” not “seize [temporal lordship] tenaciously.” (Contrast the basic formulation of Prol.139–42 and Wimbledon’s view of status, mentioned in 43n, as well as Will’s effort in the waking interlude to redefine aristocratic “estate” as spiritual “hereditas.”). After identifying the social costs of such behaviors (164–67), Reason concludes his discussion with a prophecy of disendowment and reform (168–79).
146–55 (B 10.297–310, A 11.204–10) Reason explains the ancient religious ideal: Reason now defines “religion” as a status; he relies upon complementary and importantly, very ancient metaphors (only the first of them in A). The first is negative—that the noncloistered monk is an absurdity and a dead thing, a fish out of water. For a discussion of this commonplace, see The Riverside Chaucer 807, CT I.180n, as well as Mann’s commentary (1973:30–31). The “Verba seniorum” in the Vitae patrum is responsible for the immense dispersal of the figure; see Hanna 1987:411.
In the context of Reason’s allusion to Gregory and The reule, the figure recalls Benedict’s definition of “monk” in Regula ch. 1: “gen[us] coenobitarum, id est monasteriale, militans sub regula vel abbate.” Fixity of abode and community of purpose, specified in the basic virtues the Rule inculcates (obedience, poverty, and chastity) make a monk. Benedict further specifies this status by contrast with two tribes of evil monks who wander guideless following their own wills, not a rule or superior, saraibites and gyrovagues. (The passage can be connected with Will’s interrogation and the discussions that follow from it; is Will a holy hermit, Benedict’s fourth genus monachorum, or simply, like lollares and lewede Ermytes, a graceless gyrovague?)
The Benedictine ideal of communal responsibility and support underpins Reason’s second metaphor. The cloister is a nonworldly place of spiritual (L, mindful of the unaccommodated Will the scholar, has Reason add “and intellectual”) fulfillment. The comparison of cloister and heaven is an utter commonplace; see Bloomfield 1961:72, 197–98 n13. Orsten (1970:528) quotes bishop Brinton, who identifies the statement as a proverb (although Wit, as perhaps typically, manages to get the identification wrong in B 9.119–20): “iuxta vulgare, ‘si sit vita angelica in terra, aut est in studio, vel in claustro.’ ” Similarly, FM declares (684/67): “vita claustralis est vita angelica,” and see further Wenzel 2008:186, 278–79. Cf. Kaske 1957, who traces the idea to a well-known sermon ascribed to Peter Damian (but actually by a follower of Bernard, Nicholas of Clairvaux). Another example occurs in Peter of Blois’s epistle 13 (PL 207:42); see further Lawler 2013:59–60, with further citations.
The evocation of heuene on erthe