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Piers Plowman, Passus 5 1 Piers Plowman1 from Passus 5, The Confession of the Sins [Reason preaches a sermon to the king and all the realm, urging the whole community to reform. The seven deadly sins come forward to confess, with the narrator, “Will” in the throng.] 60 … Then Repentance went and publicized his theme, And made Will weep water with his eyes. Pernel Proud-Heart prostrated herself to the ground And lay a while before she looked up and cried, “Mercy, Lord!” And vowed to Him who made us all 2 65 That she would untie her shift and set a hairshirt there To mortify her body that was so bold to sin. “No high heart will ever capture me; but I will hold myself low And let myself be scorned, as I never did before. This time I’ll abase myself and beg for mercy 70 For all that I have despised in my heart.” Then Lecher said, “Alas,” and implored Our Lady To obtain God’s mercy on his soul for all his misdeeds, So long as he, every Saturday, for the next seven years, Drink only with the duck,3 and eat just one meal a day. 75 Envy, with heavy heart, endeavored to do penance And sorrowfully, “through my fault,” he began to curse.4 He was as pale as mucous;5 he seemed almost stricken, And dressed in some crazy get-up—I can’t describe it: In a short tunic and jacket, and a knife by his side; 80 The top part of his sleeves came from a friar’s gown. And like a leek that had been lying for a long time in the sun, 1 Piers Plowman Translated by Emily Steiner for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. 2 untie her shift … there In imitation of the early Christian ascetics, medieval penitents would mortify their flesh and demonstrate their contempt for earthly vanity by setting a garment of rough goat hair next to their skin. 3 Drink only with the duck I.e., drink only water. 4 Envy … to curse For medieval Christians, the sacrament of penance constituted a sacred mystery and, through the instrument of the priest, conferred divine grace upon the penitent. If the penitent is properly “shriven,” that is, if he or she offers a sincere and complete confession, demonstrates true contrition, acknowledging his or her culpability, and makes satisfaction for her sins (penance)—then he or she may be absolved by the priest and rejoin the community of the faithful. Envy, and Wrath after him, offer detailed confessions, but as personifications of the Sins, they have difficulty feeling contrite. 5 mucous The word “pellet” (in the original Middle English) might mean a stone, but it is possible that it refers here to a mucous membrane (pellicula), for example, of a chicken. 2 William Langland So he looked with [his] lean cheeks, glowering meanly. His body was so swollen with wrath that he bit his lips And clenched his fist, intending to avenge himself 85 With words or with works when the time was right. Every word he spoke was from a snake’s tongue, His chief sustenance consisted of chiding and reproach, Backbiting and slander and bearing false witness: This was his conduct wherever he went. 90 “I would like to be shriven,” said this rogue, “I ought to for shame. I would be gladder, by God, if Gib had bad luck Than if this week I had won a pound of Essex cheese. I have a neighbor nearby; I have often disturbed him, And lied about him to lords to make him lose his money, 95 And turned his friends into foes through my false tongue. His blessings and good fortune aggrieve me deeply. I stir up strife between one household and another, So that both life and limb is lost through my speech. And when in the market I meet him whom I most hate, 100 I greet him civilly, as if I were his friend, For he is stronger than I—I dare not do otherwise. But if I had the power and strength, God knows what I would do! “And when I go to church and should kneel in front of the cross And pray for the people, as the priest enjoins us— 105 For pilgrims and for palmers, for all other people— Then I pray on my knees that Christ give them sorrow, Who carried off my bowl and my torn sheet. I then turn my eyes away from the altar And notice that Elaine1 has a new coat: 110 I wish then it were mine, and the whole cloth too! And I laugh at his losses—[they] gladden my heart— But when it comes to his winnings, I weep and wail. And I judge that some men do badly, although I do much worse: Whoever corrects me, I despise him forever. 115 I wish that every person could be my servant, Because [the fact that] anyone has more than me makes me very angry. “And thus I live without love like a miserable dog, So that my whole body swells with the bitterness of my gall.2 1 Elaine Some manuscripts of the poem read “Harvey” rather than “Elaine”; hence the third-person masculine singular in the lines following. 2 whole body swells … gall Following the writings of the second-century Greek physician, Galen, medieval practitioners believed the body was governed by four fluids or humors corresponding to four organs: blood (liver or head), yellow bile (gall bladder), black bile (spleen), and phlegm (lungs). Certain conditions and diseases were Piers Plowman, Passus 5 3 I haven’t been able to eat, for many years, as a man ought to do, 120 Because envy and bad feeling are hard to digest. No sugar or sweet thing can assuage my swelling, Nor can any sweetened lozenge drive it from my heart, Neither penance nor shame, lest someone scrape my stomach.” “Yes, come on!” said Repentance and advised him to do what’s right: 125 “Sorrow for sins is the salvation of souls.” “I am always ‘sorry,’” said Envy, “I am seldom anything else, And that’s what makes me so thin, because I can’t avenge myself.1 I have been among burgesses, living in London, And hired Backbiter as an agent to find flaws in people’s goods. 130 When he sold [something] and I didn’t, then I was ready To lie, and condemn my neighbor, and criticize his trade. I will amend this if I can, through the power of God Almighty.” Now Wrath wakes up, with two white eyes, And a dripping from the nose and a hanging neck. 135 “I am Wrath,” said he, “I was once a friar, And the convent’s gardener who grafts seedling plants. On limiters and lectors I grafted lies, Till they bore leaves of fawning speech, in order to please lords.2 And from there they bloomed in bedrooms to hear confession 140 And now a fruit has fallen: folks greatly prefer To make confession to them than to their parish priests. And now that priests realize the friars are taking half, These priests preach and vilify the friars; And friars criticize [priests], as people bear witness, 145 So that when they preach to the people in many different places, I, Wrath, walk with them, and teach them from my books. Thus they speak about “spirituality,” who each despise the other, Until either they both become beggars and on “spirituality” live, thought to stem from an imbalance of the humors; personal characteristics, too, were thought to correspond to the disproportion of humors within an individual. Thus, someone with too much gall (bile), like Envy, was necessarily bad-tempered or irritable. Here, Envy’s inability to “cure” his soul through penance is compared to his inability to cure his body of the imbalance of humors. 1 I am always … avenge myself Envy, capitalizing on the imprecision of the Middle English word “sorwe,” continually distorts the language of contrition by expressing sorrow entirely the wrong way. He wishes, grieves, and cries, but his regret is reserved not for his sins (contritio) but for the good fortune of others (tristitia). Sorrow is what defines Envy, not as a sinner but as a Sin. 2 On limiters … please lords Limiters were mendicant friars whose activities were restricted to one area of a monastery’s territory. Lectors were clerics in minor orders, whose job it was to read the sacred books in church. Wrath boasts that he grafts lies on to these people, referring to the horticultural practice of attaching a twig of one plant, selected for its fruit or flowers, to another plant selected for its root, in order to propagate certain characteristics of both. See Chaucer’s friar in The Canterbury Tales. 4 William Langland Or else all become rich and ride about. I, Wrath, never rest 150 But follow these wicked folk, for such is my lot. “I have an aunt who is both nun and abbess; She would rather swoon or die than suffer any pain. I have been a cook in her kitchen and served the convent For many months, both for them and for monks. 1 155 I was the stew-maker to the Prioress and other poor ladies, And made them stews of gossiping: that Dame Joan was a bastard, And Dame Clarice a knight’s daughter (but her father was a cuckold), And Dame Pernel a priest’s whore (she’ll never make Prioress, Because she had a child in cherry-time, the whole Chapter knows it!).
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