Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England

Marquee University

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APOCALYPTIC MENTALITIES IN LATE-MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Steven A. Hackbarth

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School,

Marquette University,

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

December 2014

ABSTRACT

APOCALYPTIC MENTALITIES IN LATE-MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Steven A. Hackbarth

Marquette University, 2014

Apocalypticism, defined by expectation of an imminent End, assumes many

forms and proves influential in the second half of the Fourteenth Century in England.

Throughout my study, I demonstrate that a rich apocalyptic environment emerges in

works of the period, including those of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the Pearl-poet.

In this period, apocalypticism has provided explanations for plague, narratives that make

evil more vivid, and arguments for urgent action. It gives contemporary phenomena

special meaning. My study is organized around conspicuous centers of meaning that

work reciprocally with the apocalyptic, simultaneously defining the End and defined by it.

First, I center on death, which as a theological “last thing” in itself necessarily shares a

sense of anxiety with the apocalypse. In connection with both death and apocalypse, fear

and hope are often invoked. And as forms of death are tied to the apocalyptic, this means

that data from the late-medieval world are used to tell a vivid story with implications for

the future of daily life. My second chapter deals with how the meaning of the

apocalyptic is interrelated with ecclesiastical authority. In an apocalyptic context,

authority delineates not only power but also the important matters of good and evil. In

this period in which notions of power and evil are intensely debated, apocalypticism

proves adaptable to different circumstances and different perspectives while still

remaining grounded in predictive ancient prophecy. Third, I maintain that the period’s

still-developing practices of confession (which claim to regulate all human activity) are

given a special urgency by the sense of impending doom. Then I close my study with an

examination of how writing embodies a curious tension with the apocalyptic in mind:

writing is confined to time, but it also must serve as a witness to eternal matters. The

apocalypse, while it argues for ephemerality of earthly things, requires a qualified

permanence of texts that spread its explanations and stories. Overall, I maintain that the

richness and variety of apocalyptic meaning in this period is best understood through the

apocalyptic’s interaction with key cultural terms, including mortality, authority,

confession, and textual permanence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Steven A. Hackbarth

I am deeply appreciative of the support offered by Marquette University’s

Department of English and the Graduate School throughout my doctoral work. In

particular, I am grateful for the advice and guidance of my dissertation director, M.C.

Bodden, and of my committee members, John Curran and Angela Sorby. I also wish to

thank Tim William Machan for his years of service on the dissertation committee. And I

must express my gratitude to the organizers, advisers, and participants of Marquette’s

Dissertation Boot Camp, as that initiative by the Graduate School helped me immensely

throughout the writing stage of this dissertation.

I am also indebted to the many professors who have encouraged me in the years

prior to my doctoral work, including Lorna Wiedmann, Peter Fraser, Martin Moldenhauer,

Cathy Tonnacliff, Mary Jo Brown, John D. Niles, Michelle Bolduc, Kristin Pitt, and

Gabriel Rei-Doval. I am also grateful to Rebecca Parker Fedewa, David Weaver, and

Christian Williams, friends who have been deeply supportive since our undergraduate

years. I also thank my colleagues at Wisconsin Lutheran College for their support and

collegiality as I have taught there. Finally, special thanks go to my wife, Erin, for her

support throughout the majority of my graduate career and to my parents, Allen and Lyn,

for encouraging me to pursue all of my educational and professional goals.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………..i

INTRODUCTION…………………………………...........................................................1

CHAPTER ONE: THE PRIMACY OF DEATH………………........................................7

CHAPTER TWO: PENULTIMATE THINGS”: ECCLESIASTICAL

AUTHORITY AT THE WORLD’S NEAR-END………………………………………47

CHAPTER THREE: CONFESSION AND THE END.........……………………………97

CHAPTER FOUR: THE END THROUGH TEXTUAL

PERMANENCE AND EPHEMERALITY………………………………...…………..154

BIBLIOGRAPHY..………………………………………………………..……………220

INTRODUCTION

The notion of an apocalypse can put the fear of God and the fear of death in us.

And everyone fears death. In this project I set out to complicate the way by which we

understand apocalypticism in the later Middle Ages. Throughout this study I continue to

ask what the apocalypse—an unstable term—looks like. I focus on England in the later

fourteenth century, and my approach incorporates cultural and textual phenomena evident

in texts that we hold up as literary but whose apocalyptic meaning is still being debated.

These works include those of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the Pearl-poet. I use these

texts to draw out apocalyptic meaning that has been consistently overlooked in previous

scholarship, while I also connect their work with other discourses from which they draw

and which had deep effects on religious discourse in the period.

I structure my study around four rich centers of meaning—mortality, authority,

confession, and textual permanence. As I do this, I show how the apocalyptic affects and

is affected by these qualities. My study begins with death because, I maintain, death is a

necessary first cognitive step in understanding the apocalypse. And the logical move

from death to the apocalypse shows the apocalypse to approximate the semantic puzzle

“the death of death,” a term on which my chapter hinges. Thus, as my project is

concerned with how individuals in this period process the apocalypse, the primal

experience of death is an important reference point. In the next chapter, the very social

yet deeply religious implications of religious authority show another rich center of

apocalyptic meaning. Religious authority is widely contested in this period that

encounters the Papal Schism, interclerical conflict, and Wycliffism. One important

component of this developing apocalyptic thread in the later Middle Ages is how the

necessary social exposure required by church work enables others to construe a person’s

claims to authority and patterns of behavior as apocalyptically evil. More broadly, this

chapter presents a story of how in the apocalyptic moment clergy, laity, and those with

claims in between use apocalyptic urgency to exercise their own kind of decisive

judgment on matters of truth, power, good, and evil.

As language harnesses tremendous power in those first two major centers of

meaning, so does it prove powerful in the final two that I examine, which are defined in

terms of communication. I will show that confession, an increasingly important and

contested religious practice in the late Middle Ages, is especially powerful as it shares

concerns with the apocalyptic. These concerns include exposure (which I considered in

the previous chapter) and also secrecy, vulnerability, and revelation. My final chapter

considers the implications for posterity communicated by these texts. Writing, within an

apocalyptic scheme, is limited to time, to the human activity worked out before the End.

But it allows individual writers to transcend death as well as social and geographic

separation from their audiences. Furthermore, texts may, given an apocalyptic imperative

to revise and supersede what has been written before, seek (and occasionally achieve) a

new sense of stability. The ambitious and deeply culturally engaged narrative projects of

Chaucer and Gower illustrate this most clearly. As Chaucer and Gower assume their

readers to be engaged with apocalyptic discourse, they invite readers textually to make

more sense of the End.

All of these centers of meaning prove especially rich and complicated in this

period. In order to tell this story of shifting and intensifying meaning, this study

necessarily draws on a wide range of works and approaches that have traced significant

portions of the rich network of apocalyptic meaning available in the late Middle Ages.

This study will seek to avoid key missteps that have been cited in studies of

apocalypticism in recent decades. Among these missteps, those brought about by

overapplication of sociological models have proven most controversial and have been

countered. As Curtis Bostick rightly observes, various sociological approaches to late-

medieval apocalypticism have not appreciated fully the deep religious meaning

communicated from various factions within late-medieval Christianity.

Bostick’s emphasis on differences of apocalyptic aims helps us begin to

understand the diverse forms that apocalypticism can take in the late Middle Ages. He

offers the terms “accommodative,” “reformist,” and “subversive” as categories for three

general orientations toward ecclesiastical power (15-16).

Even so, apocalypticism is

observable for its interaction with various phenomena, and in some cases the orientations

posited by Bostick are less pronounced than in others. A many-faceted apocalypticism

emerges through the preparation instilled in all of us through death and mourning,

through Church practices that address death and other problems of meaning, through

confessional culture, and through the implications of texts for posterity. As I am so

deeply concerned with apocalyptic arguments and discourse, the seminal work of Stephen

O’Leary on apocalyptic rhetoric has proven valuable, even as his focus is on later cultural

phenomena. In my ultimate discussion of apocalyptic discourse I draw out those qualities

that make the apocalyptic possible: narrative shape, secrecy, readers’ permissiveness

and/or suppression, writerly caution, and the need for posterity endemic to all writing but

invoked uniquely in medieval Christian apocalypticism. And the wide-ranging

See Bostick’s analysis of “the sociological model” (3-4, 18).

I consider these terms especially in my second and third chapters, given these terms’ applicability to

ecclesiastical authority and to the authority-dependent practices related to confession.

scholarship on medieval apocalypticism done by scholars including Bernard McGinn and

Richard Emmerson has furthermore been foundational to the field and necessary for this

study. The apocalypse deals with the sequence of events at the end of the age, including

the ascent of Antichrist, the Second Coming, and the New Earth. Beyond the scholars

already mentioned, scholars including Anne Hudson, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, and Fiona

Somerset have discussed the late fourteenth century as a moment of profound concern

with such matters.

Furthermore, a variety of recent textual work has helped to refine our

understanding of Wycliffism and to conceive of late-medieval England as more dynamic

than scholars ascribing all significant conflict to Wycliffites would have it. Kathryn

Kerby-Fulton reminds us that “Wycliffism by itself…, as has become increasingly

apparent, cannot sustain such a massive burden of literary, social, and political agency”

(Books under Suspicion 3). Considering John Hall’s recent concern with apocalypticism

that has social consequences, I will argue that the apocalyptic meaning evident in

literature from his period in fact cannot be divorced from the social changes of the

period.

The necessary foundational scholarship to which I am indebted on death,

authority, confession, and on the possibilities of texts will emerge in the respective

chapters and is too numerous to cite here. However, it should be noted that much modern

scholarship on England in this period has drawn from the work of W. A. Pantin who

To be sure, his period gets short shrift in Hall’s study, as is apparent in his list of social “shifts” (204-5).

See in particular pages 49 and 200 in Hall for an indication of his emphasis on the consequential.

fruitfully sketched the fourteenth century as “an age of continuous controversies” (123).

Taking into account those scholars who have sketched out fascinating histories of the

transmission of apocalyptic traditions and that of those who emphasize the possibility of

original or creative uses of apocalyptic thought, I may be seen to negotiate a middle

ground between those fields of work. As I see my work, however, my approach is

necessarily eclectic and makes use of a wide variety of deeply productive studies. As it is

worth revisiting and considering the implications of apocalyptic rhetoric for power (those

implications first studied at length by Norman Cohn), I will also suggest that

apocalypticism can become a beast of its own will, feeding off a complex of already-

existing images. It may serve self-interest or some stated purpose, but it may (due to the

power of its images) also resist such interests.

In my study I focus on fields of meaning that lend themselves to the

intensification and the continuation of such tension in spite of what we see in hindsight as

disappointment, frustration, an End that never comes. As I approach the apocalypticism

evident in late-fourteenth-century texts, I center on the subjects of death (which never

comes), church authority (which is constantly chipped away at), and writing (which in

spite of its pretensions is always incomplete). In this way I locate the apocalyptic in

anticipation, in uncertainty, and often in miscommunication. Most importantly, this

multifaceted apocalyptic environment presents apocalyptic views that are difficult to

resist. Individuals have tremendous difficulty resisting the narrative patterns and social

dynamics suggested by the apocalyptic.

Pantin’s masterfully compressed yet sufficiently vivid treatment of controversy includes such topics as

apostolic poverty, ecclesiastical endowment, issues of the state’s and church’s powers, monasticism,

scholasticism, and anti-intellectualism (123-35).

The study of the apocalyptic in the English literature of the late fourteenth century

cannot boil down simply to the tracing of sources or to historicist (New and otherwise)

readings of contemporary texts and artifacts. It needs to take into account the ways in

which apocalyptic comes to be known. In my work I move from the primal reference

point for an End—physical human death—and then through various forms of religious

practice before finally considering how the apocalypse is harnessed in written

communication of the period. Even as the apocalypse does not become known,

something significant—the apocalyptic—becomes known. And this mode of the

apocalyptic continues to fascinate us in religious and secular contexts alike. The

apocalyptic is pervasive in the medieval texts I consider, and its imprints on culture and

literature remain for us today.

CHAPTER ONE: THE PRIMACY OF DEATH

The story of the end of an age necessarily begins with the reference point of death.

Death is variously interpreted in late-fourteenth-century literary texts as a concept that

relates to the theological end of the age. Death, in that it is understood as part of a cycle

of life, relates to the apocalyptic when the end of death is posited. Still, as death is

understood in real time, as it is read in the late fourteenth century, it complements life:

both death and the apocalypse communicate urgency, anxiety, and uncertainty. What is

more unsettling, then—that one might see the Judgment before death, or that one might

die first? As can be seen in a work as multivocal by design as The Canterbury Tales,

apocalyptic overtones—ranging from the urgency of death in the Nun’s Priest Tale, to its

supposed personification but actual abstraction in the Pardoner’s Tale—create a sense of

importance for the living. Death is conceived from different perspectives and with

different kinds of expectation. Can it be foreknown and (at least temporarily) averted, as

in the Nun’s Priest Tale? Are we foolish or wise to encapsulate it as an object to be

encountered, as the riotoures of the Pardoner’s Tale do? Ultimately, as I will show in

this chapter, apocalyptic meaning in this period intensifies in the conjunction of

theological last things, matters as profound as death, Last Judgment, and eternal life.

These interrelated concepts feed each other, facilitating markedly apocalyptic mentalities

in late-medieval England.

The Reciprocity of Death and Apocalypticism

Near the end of the John’s Apocalypse, John speaks of a time when death is no

more. This appears after the passing away of the first heaven and first earth.

Et absterget Deus omnem lacrimam ab oculis eorum et mors ultra non erit

neque luctus neque dolor erit ultra quae prima abierunt.

[And God shall wipe away all tears from their eye: and death shall be no

more. Nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the

former things are passed away.] (Apoc. 21:4)

This prediction raises many issues, including those of what deathlessness could look like,

what passing away entails, and what the eradication of mourning, crying, and sorrow

means for good and evil. This definition through absences suggests that death, which can

be a physical reality but which also can be an abstract term, is hardly a more stable term

than the apocalypse is. Death cannot be undone, except by this specific divine

intervention that has been seen as an undoing of creation. As is evident here, death is tied

to apocalypticism. And as will be suggested throughout this chapter, this relationship

between the two is not of a simple character: the two may work coordinately or

reciprocally, but one may also have an individual effect on the other. The teachings

current in the late Middle Ages about life’s end and about the age’s end emerge from the

foundation of eschatology developed within Judeo-Christian conceptions of history. This

foundation is generally understood to be largely drawn from the book of Daniel and from

John’s Apocalypse. Even as Daniel and the Apocalypse are seen to advance “the

‘legibility’ of history and the imminence of the End,” how exactly history is read has

always caused some controversy (McGinn, “Introduction: John’s Apocalypse” 9). Even

within the professedly orthodox appearance of medieval Christianity, much diversity of

opinion persists in the Middle Ages. In fact, the robustness of the apocalyptic

The Latin Vulgate text throughout this study follows the Weber edition published by the Deutsche

Bibelgesellschaft. For the sake of reasonable consistency with the Vulgate, Modern English biblical

translations included are from the Douai-Rheims.

environment in the late Middle Ages substantially benefits from an already-established

network of conflicting ideas. Although neither apocalypticism nor theologies of death

are new to this period, they take forms uniquely suited to events and circumstances of this

period.

As for death, part of the fluidity of the representation of death can be explained by

the capaciousness and flexibility of the term death. Death seems simple enough (a term

for the stoppage of life), but the term can be personified, can represent the even more

abstract concept of negation, and even can connote spiritual causation, linking itself to

terms including sin, evil, and the decay of creation. Along these lines, a long tradition of

commentaries posits theological meanings of death’s end in the aforementioned passage

from John’s Apocalypse. Some pivotal readings include those that specify the end of the

devil (Origen’s Homilies on Joshua 8.4) and the restoration of a fallen creation to a pure

state (laid out in Augustine’s City of God).

Death permeates late-medieval

apocalypticism in many ways, as Aberth has shown clearly in his From the Brink of

Apocalypse, particularly in a period still traumatized by the first wave of the Black Death

and the Plague’s recurrences.

Death brings with it instability, vulnerability, and

confusion. As I explore death’s connection to apocalypticism throughout this chapter, I

will continue to return to the stresses and confusions brought by the concept of death

itself and those caused by the notion of the death of death.

Several important texts are shaped by this instability and can also be seen to

respond to it. The texts that I am examining most closely in this study—Chaucer’s

Many examples from this long tradition, including selections from the Origin and Augustine texts

mentioned here, are represented in William C. Weinrich’s Revelation volume in the Ancient Christian

Commentary on Scripture series, 352-357.

Also see Phillippe Ariès’ historical sketch of the changing social meanings of death in the West in his The

Hour of Our Death.

Canterbury Tales, Langland’s Piers Plowman, Pearl, and Clannesse—illustrate the

changing meanings of last things and of death in particular. To be sure, there are

important differences in the natures of these authors’ engagement with religious culture

and in the function of these texts. And premises of these works can show how these

works lean toward the apocalyptic: the centrality of storytelling in the Canterbury Tales,

the mechanics of dreaming in Piers Plowman and in Pearl, and the historical-interpretive

project of Clanesse all problematize death and make the apocalyptic emerge in different

ways. Furthermore, as I will suggest below, Langland, Chaucer, and the Pearl-poet

through their use of figures of death illustrate the foundational status of death for the

apocalyptic. Death helps to supply some of the suddenness of the apocalyptic and

furthermore conditions persons to consider important markers in time.

Death teaches us limits. Additional ways by which apocalyptic meaning is

communicated will be treated in a later chapter on the necessity of texts for the

apocalyptic, but for our purposes in this chapter, it should be noted that these forms of

communication and engagement may be seen to affirm life while they also struggle with

what life’s limitations are. The pilgrims cannot agree on what stories to tell in their

allotted time or on the functions stories should have. Dreaming for Langland, to consider

briefly another example, creates space for imagery that is otherwise inexplicable (not

unlike biblical vision) but makes the importance of waking life all the slipperier. And the

contested religious-political sympathies of the writers of all these texts, even as those

sympathies are subject to speculation, have important implications for the unavoidable

apocalypticism emerging in their texts. In all of these cases, however, the fascination

with an end stems from the limitations of life. Death is inseparable from apocalypticism

and must be its start.

Apocalypse and Death: For the Living

To be sure, theologies of death and of the apocalypse are for the living, for it is

the living persons who must consider, read about, and write about their own imminent

deaths. And beyond that, the people of a given generation may feel a sense of self-

importance if they perceive that they are witnessing special types or frequencies of death.

If some have died and if these deaths have purpose in light of an eventual End, it stands

to reason that those remaining have important work to do. Even with the sobering

Augustinian caution that one should not obsess over the time of the End, persons across

various social strata throughout the Middle Ages managed to read their own time as

nearing the End.

The connections between death and apocalypse are enhanced through

suggestions of martyrdom, consolation, suffering, and plague. Furthermore, individuals’

communications of the apocalyptic, as will be clear by the end of this chapter, frequently

employ death in the abstract, invoking the death of an age or even the death of death. As

these “deaths” will bleed together in this chapter, that is a necessary consequence of the

umbrella term of death that is evident in the discourse of the period. Death, emerging

frequently in these poetic texts, is a primary term necessary to comprehend the end of an

age. Individual deaths and deadly natural calamities lend themselves to readings

associated with the End.

The apocalyptic in death in many Christian cultures, that of medieval England

included, is seen in the justification for suffering. Stephen O’Leary in his Arguing the

Apocalypse traces this notion as far back as the second-century Christian thinker Irenaeus

On some factors enabling medieval individuals’ making-vivid of apocalyptic history, see Fredrickson (36).

and shows the capacity of apocalyptic Christianity to change the meaning of death,

suffering, and calamity:

Irenaeus’ argument on behalf of the millennial kingdom illustrates the

theodocical function of Christian eschatology: the narrative of the

Apocalypse provides an explanation for evil that is “fitting” and “just.” In

the terminology of modern rhetorical theory, the millennium lends

narrative coherence to the story of evil. The affliction and suffering of the

community of believers will be redeemed when the earthly creation comes

to its fulfillment. Placing one’s faith and hope in the fulfillment not only

provides a ‘logical’ solution to a theological dilemma; it also enables the

believer to define any apparent evil or calamity as a positive good by

situating it within the temporal frame of the mythic narrative. (42; italics

O’Leary’s)

Thus many apocalyptic narratives within this long tradition have proven resilient, capable

of surviving even in spite of false predictions and in spite of misreadings of contemporary

phenomena. Furthermore, one must realize, just as death and the apocalypse may have a

reciprocal relationship, so must evil and the apocalypse. And as collectively as the

apocalyptic is conveyed through language, it can also be deeply personal. The various

occurrences of death and the frequent invocation of evil contribute to an individualized

view of the apocalyptic. Since the cultural conditions understood as related to the

apocalypse vary, views of the apocalypse may vary radically from individual to

individual. As an especially traumatic phenomenon, death calls for individuals

constantly to process it, to reinterpret it.

Death in Christian terms presupposes the continuity of daily life: deaths shall not

(as seedtime and harvest shall not

) cease until the age’s end. And death—as one

considers so broad a category in a century of war, revolt, plague, even famine—not only

has its meaning changed by a notion of a pending end but also affects the apocalypse

itself. In the eighth vision of the B-text of Piers Plowman, the Antichrist (a marker of the

End) has set the stage for Deeth. Deeth here is connected to something larger than

himself.

Thanne mette thise men, er mynstrals myghte pipe,

And er heraudes of armes hadden discryved lordes,

Elde the hore; he was in the vauntwarde,

And bar the baner bifore Deeth—bi right he it cleymede.

Kynde cam after hym, with many kene sores,

As pokkes and pestilences—and muche peple shente;

So Kynde thorugh corupcions kilde ful manye.

Deeth cam dryvynge after and al to duste passhed

Kynges and knyghtes, kaysers and popes.

Lered ne lewed, he lefte no man stonde

That he hitte evene, that evere stired after.

Many a lovely lady and [hir] lemmans knyghtes

Swowned and swelted for sorwe of Dethes dyntes. (B.20.93-105)

Genesis 8:22 is one text invoked to connect beginnings and ends, and it is one that appears proven in its

assertion of always-evident data. In the Douai translation, “All the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall not cease” (Vulgate: “cunctis diebus terrae

sementis et messis frigus et aestus aetas et hiemps nox et dies non requiescent").

[Then these men met, before minstrels might pipe, and before heralds of

armies had described lords, Old Age the hoary; he was in the vanguard,

and bore the banner before Death—by right he claimed it. Nature came

after him, with many severe sores, as diseases and pestilences—and many

people killed; so Nature through corruptions killed full many. Death came

driving after and struck all to dust, kings and knights, leaders and popes.

Learned and unlearned, he left no person stand that he even hit, that ever

stirred after. Many a lovely lady and her beloved knights swooned and

perished for sorrow of Death’s blows.]

Everything is caught up in the apocalyptic moment of this passage. Evil continues to get

worse, and nature is in disorder. Personified Death is accompanied by multiple problems

of nature, a reminder that, as Alford suggests, medieval theology of created matter asserts

creation’s contingency (“The Scriptural Self” 4). Death within an apocalyptic scenario is

not only a matter of individual destiny; it is also possibly caused by signs of a world-end,

which can take such sweeping forms as pestilence or cataclysmic earthquake.

Death

according to these terms is also a great equalizer of status, and it turns out that worldly

statuses have, in terms parallel to the Beatitudes, been inverted.

A corrupt and

disordered world calls for a reversal, some end to the corruption, some new order.

The Last Judgment and the finality of worldly activities tied to it may suggest a

heightening of the deadly. Then, too, particularly in reformist strains of apocalypticism

See Bryon Grigsby’s study, which addresses pestilential references in literature. See, too, Heist’s study

of the “fifteen days before Doomsday” tradition, as he maps out several configurations of physical signs of

the end (a few key configurations appearing on 119-21). On the special “disaster syndrome” that may

emerge as multiple disasters are read together, see Michael Barkun (83-84).

To follow the generalization, the Beatitudes are often understood to be about reversals: reversals of

things such as power, humility, and poverty. Muessig in her “Preaching the Beatitudes in the Middle Ages”

notes the uses to which the Beatitudes were put in preaching in the later Middle Ages, particularly starting

with the assumption of evangelical poverty (139).

(in various readings circulating in this period), are seen visions of restoring a sense of

normal life, of restoring the power of death and the assumption of a long life, even in

periods when circumstances contributed to statistically significant early deaths.

The

apocalypse thus explains death, and death is invoked as evidence of the apocalyptic.

This type of engagement with death can help us to explore the reach of the

apocalyptic in this period even when such apocalyptic topics as the Antichrist, the

parousia, or the Last Judgment are not made explicit. The lack of direct reference to the

more controversial applications of John’s Apocalypse is one of the more puzzling

tendencies of the late-medieval texts with which this study is concerned, especially of

Pearl. As Ad Putter and others have suggested, the Apocalypse in Pearl may not be

invoked as directly as a modern reader would expect.

And still, I maintain, the

apocalyptic cannot be disqualified from Pearl.

Even if the work does not read like the

literary genre of apocalypse, it is in fact apocalyptic. Pearl, after all, works too hard to

reframe life and death in terms defined by the apocalypse. Cynthia Kraman, after laying

out parallels between John’s Apocalypse and Pearl, highlights an important distinction

between the works:

What sets [Pearl] apart is that it takes into account the late medieval

situation of living long after the promise or threat of last days, and uses the

double frame of Romance time (repetition and cycles) and Apocalyptic

Even though, as Platt demonstrates, the elderly were struck in higher numbers than the young, the

conspicuousness of young death is worth noting (King Death 10).

Sandra Pierson Prior’s The Fayre Formez of the Pearl Poet and Tessa Morrison’s “Seeing the

Apocalyptic City in Medieval Art and Literature” break from the tendency of scholarship that denies the

apocalyptic. Pierson Prior and Morrison notably make strong appeals to visual culture in order to do so.

As Pierson Pryor says with regard to images constructed in the works of the Pearl-Poet, “Most of these

images, both visual and verbal, are not just biblical, but more precisely apocalyptic” (13).

Putter in his Introduction to the Gawain-Poet makes a claim against the apocalyptic in Pearl, maintaining

that “The Gawain-poet’s use of Apocalypse stands out among these doom prophets for not being

apocalyptic at all” (160).

time (eternity). Pearl is not an eschatology but a vision of both time and

eternity, personalized into a literary work. (257)

Its focuses on individual death and individual mourning facilitate broader discussions of

the nearness of the afterlife and the machinations of last things. Penn Szittya further

bolsters the case for apocalyptic teaching within Pearl as he aligns the Pearl-Maiden’s

story with that of the Church: “By a theological synecdoche, the Pearl-Maiden has an

identity that is simultaneously singular and corporate, individual and ecclesiological”

(“Domesday Bokes” 395). Thus the apocalyptic is apparent throughout the text of Pearl,

even if it is a less obviously apocalyptic text than, say, the Pearl-Poet’s profoundly

judgment-minded Clannesse.

And regarding the special apocalyptic sense evident in Pearl, the rich temporal

terms used by Kraman deserve further parsing. In considering the “late medieval

situation,” however, this expression of time tells only part of the story: one must balance

Kraman’s after with another preposition: during. Both emphases—the lateness of history

and the presentness of the apocalyptic promise—are invoked in religious texts, in

preaching, in conceptions of the moment. These two emphases apply to Pearl, as the

work suggests not only awareness of final Judgment but also humans’ limited time before

Judgment.

Where Pearl may not be explicitly apocalyptic, its implications for time

lead its reader to begin to read time in apocalyptic terms. And it is death that makes this

reading possible.

Such consciousness of apocalyptic time through death, while difficult to achieve

in the first place, is also difficult to sustain. For this reason the dreamer needs such

consciousness to be opened to him, and similarly the reader needs to be made privy to

For one example, stanza 59 (697-708, cited below) suggests the timing of Judgment.

what the dreamer saw. The elapsing of centuries in early Christian history may cause

some to disregard the possibility of a literal apocalypse, or it may require caution and

qualification. As a predominant qualifying force, the Augustinian tradition may be seen

as retreating to allegory, to recapitulation and other ways of de-chronologizing the

canonical Apocalypse.

However, it may also lead to a re-examination of the terms tied

to the apocalypse in terms even more specific than Kraman suggests. J. Stephen Russell

in his study The English Dream Vision illustrates some connections to eschatology that

are broadly suggested in Pearl:

What Pearl is is a deconstruction of the discourse of eschatology: a

sophisticated presentation of a human discourse the purpose of which is to

demonstrate the complete inefficacy of that discourse. Like the Book of

the Duchess and the House of Fame, Pearl attempts to bring human

discourse to bear on a subject, only to discover human discourse to be

inadequate as a medium. (160)

The apocalyptic is ultimately inseparable from the rest of medieval Christian theology. It

can be downplayed and it can even, given the potential for controversy and condemnation

for heresy, be avoided in communication. But in those latter cases its avoidance may

bespeak its importance and its contentious nature more than widespread repetition of it

would. As Russell suggests, the transcendence of heaven and the very articulation of

doctrine through the primarily consoling poem each emphasize death’s importance and

its primacy. The cognitive and philosophical primacy of death applies throughout the

history of apocalypticism. This primacy is especially important in the late medieval

To the concern of a canonical text that merits comparison to the late-medieval text, Pierson Prior

underscores that “the [Pearl] dreamer’s vision is definitely inferior to the certain truth of Scripture. John’s

vision is authoritative and reliable, but the narrator’s own dream is subject to doubt” (66).

period in England, a period in which not only death rates but also birth rates noticeably

change, in which memory of the plague persists through lesser recurrences of the mid-

century devastation.

Death is impossible to ignore as it strikes closest, and it radically

reshapes life when it happens with great frequency.

In Pearl humans’ active engagement with death—their necessary processing of

it—gestures toward the apocalyptic. Again, death cannot be undone, save through the

theological promises of apocalypse, time’s end, and afterlife. More immediately, death

cannot be undone cognitively. Nor can revelation be cognitively undone: the all-

encompassing idea that knowledge has been revealed displaces other explanations of

phenomena. Against the critical tendency to divorce the material of Pearl from the

apocalyptic, I maintain that in Pearl’s consoling, its working-out of the meaning of death,

the poem begins the process of grappling with the apocalyptic. Meaning-making is

essential to apocalypticism. And again, death is preparatory for the apocalyptic

cognitively: as someone begins to understand death, that person has a foundation for

understanding the more complex matter of the apocalypse. One cannot grapple with the

apocalyptic without understanding death first. The dreamer’s faith is in need of

strengthening; he needs more meaning than he can tease out rationally and independently.

Discussing Pearl, Elizabeth Kirk maintains, “to surround death with formal beauty is one

of the tools to which human beings instinctively turn when we try to re-establish a

framework of order after loss has reduced our world to chaos” (217).

His response to

See Herlihy’s The Black Death and the Transformation of the West.

She continues: “Pearl and The Book of the Duchess are rare if not unique in the history of elegy in their

recognition that mourning is not so much about what has happened to the dead person as about what

happens to the living, what the survivor must do. Pearl in particular is distinctive in its acknowledgement

of how complex a process is involved” (217).

death requires guiding, as does a person’s anticipation of the end of an age. There is

order, Pearl maintains, but it is an order that must be outlined and explained.

Still, an explanation of such an important matter may encourage more questions.

Only through another’s death does the dreamer begin to grasp a greater plan, a greater

end than the end of one person’s life. How imminent is the End in Pearl? The Pearl

maiden’s discourse takes the dreamer into John’s vision:

“Maskelles,” quoþ þat myry quene,

“Vnblemyst I am, wythouten blot,

And þat may I with mensk menteene,

Bot “makeleȝ quene” þenne sade I not.

Þe Lambes vyuez in blysse we bene,

A hondred and forty þowsande flot,

As in þe Apocalyppeȝ hit is sene.

Sant Johan hem syȝ al in a knot

On þe hyl of Syon, þat semly clot.

Þe apostel hem segh in gostly drem,

Arayed to þe weddyng in þat hyl-coppe,

Þe nwe cyté o Jerusalem. (781-792)

[“Flawless, unblemished, and without stain I am,” said that beautiful

queen, and that I may maintain with honour, but I did not say ‘peerless

queen.’ We are the brides of the Lamb in heaven, a company of a hundred

and forty thousand, as it is seen in the Apocalypse

: St. John saw them all

in a group. On the hill of Sion, that lovely mound, the apostle saw them in

John’s Apocalypse, the book.

a spiritual vision, adorned for their wedding on that hilltop, the new city of

Jerusalem.” (Trans. Andrew and Waldron)

Here the completion of heaven’s population is imaginable. John in his vision sees quite a

bit more than is related in the Pearl-Poet’s retelling, and much scholarship on Pearl has

shown how challenging it is to see much more than heaven in the poem’s treatment of

last things. The vision makes the dreamer aware of an End before his time. It

furthermore nods toward eternity, toward the elect’s enjoyment of heaven in a state of

timelessness. And also in Pearl a discussion that begins with death requires an

interrogation of not only death’s cause, but death’s resolution. As Russell suggests, Pearl

is crafted out of the remnants of the discourse of last things. As such, Pearl seeks to

remind its audience that the prospect of death—often imagined at a distance—can be

imagined as much closer, and as creating an urgency approaching that of the Day of

Judgment. And it is judgment that adds another layer to the notion of the death of death.

The notion of an age’s end presupposes divine justice in that age’s ending. And that

justice requires some manner of speculation and explanation of the negative qualities that

must be undone. The negative terms maskelles and vnblemyst call attention to those

qualities or actions (being flawed, blemishing) that must be undone, sidestepped, or

prevented.

Such speculation on death, corruption, and other negative matters emerges from

the poem in spite of the strong emphasis on the positive—purity. The poem has

consolation at its center, but its consolation is not complete until the dreamer and reader

have accounted for the less-than-perfect and filled in gaps of apocalyptic meaning.

Within the vision of Pearl the dreamer is consoled: death is the starting point, and death’s

power is argued against. But the arguments bespeak an end of death, even as death is a

necessary trouble in the present. The Pearl maiden’s assurance for the righteous presents

a promise of being judged innocent, but the explanation is anything but simple.

‘Anende ryȝtwys men, ȝet saytȝ a gome,

David in Sauter, if euer ȝe seȝ hit:

“Lorde, þy seruaunt draȝ neuer to dome,

For non lyuande to þe is justyfyet.”

Forþy, to corte quen þou shal com,

Þer alle oure causez schal be tried,

Alegge þe ryȝt, þou may be innome

By þys ilke speech I haue asspyed.

Bot, he on rode þat blody dyed,

Delfully þurȝ hondeȝ þryȝt,

Gyue þe to passe, when þou arte tryed,

By innocens, and not by ryȝte. (697-708)

[However, concerning just men, a certain man, David, says in the Psalter,

if you have ever seen it: “Lord, never bring Your servant to judgement, for

no living man is justified before You.” Therefore, when you have to come

to the court where all our cases shall be called, if you plead right you may

be refuted in argument by this same speech that I have noticed. But [may]

He who died bloody on the cross, grievously pierced through the hands,

grant you free to go when you are tried, through innocence and not [by

their righteousness]. (Trans. Andrew and Waldron; last phrase supplied by

Anderson

)]

The passage suggests a death of death, a puzzling term to which I will return later in this

chapter. Here it calls for a negation of worldly corruption. It brings a sentiment

attributed to David (who is unready to die as his son Absalom pursues him) under the

justice worked out in the crucifixion. The universal fear of death central to the poem is

countered by looking back to a sentiment of David, ever present to medieval Christians in

the universalized sentiments of the Psalter. This cyclical sentiment holds true as long as

normal cycles of life persist. The cycle depends on time continuing, on the End not

coming yet. And the gestures back in time—to David and to the crucifixion—assume the

Second Coming and the transcendence entailed by it.

Pearl in these terms suggests a death of death. Not only is one vulnerable (hence

the need for consolation), but this vulnerability stems from one’s whole environment

being corrupted. The awareness of corruption calls for a negation of that worldly

corruption. It brings a sentiment attributed to David (who is unready to die as his son

Absalom pursues him) under the justice worked out in the crucifixion. And again, the

universal fear of death central to the poem is countered by looking back to the sentiment

of David, which is codified as a truth that holds as long as normal cycles of life persist.

But the gestures back in time—to David and to the crucifixion—assume the Second

Coming and the transcendence entailed by it.

The following is from Anderson’s gloss from his edition:

…not ‘as of right,’ which is the meaning of the phrase elsewhere in this section of the

poem, but ‘by their righteousness’), because, as the Maiden says in the words of the

psalm, no one lives a life righteous enough to merit salvation. (286)

Again, for reference purposese, note that the standard Middle English text quoted here and elsewhere in

this study is that of Andrew and Waldron’s edition.

Death also enjoins the apocalyptic as it entails moral judgment or even highlights

impending judgment. As intense forms of evil persist, individuals may deem conditions

intolerable and call for divine intervention and apocalyptic resolution. But this personal

judgment is of course problematic as it expresses one person’s wishes concerning the

body or soul of another. Preoccupation with death and preoccupation with the

apocalypse both intensify under this sense of conflict. And such conflict may center on

different matters of spiritual finality. Curses against body and soul, especially evident in

the most combative of Chaucer’s Tales, illustrate this well. Interpersonal “damning,” for

one gesture related to death and assuming a reality beyond the earthly and temporal,

invokes judgment and calls for such divine intervention. For example, Chaucer’s Friar’s

Tale develops conflicting senses of justice—that justice acknowledged by the Summoner

as well as that acknowledged by the “devel.” What is most interesting in The Friar’s Tale

is the ending—the deal that sends the summoner to hell and that approximates death.

“Now brother,” quod the devel, “be noght wroth;

Thy body and this panne been myne by right.

Thow shalt with me to helle yet tonight,

Wher thow shalt knowen of oure privetee

Moore than a maister of dyvynytee.” (III.1634-8)

[Now, brother,” said the devil, “do not be angry: your body and

this pan are mine by right. You shall [go] with me to hell yet

tonight, where you shall know of our secrets more than a master of

divinity.”]

Loss of earthly life can happen at any moment. And notably the devil of the tale calls

attention to theological knowledge at this moment. Too much knowledge—particularly

of evil—ends up being a disadvantage. The summoner of the tale has been taking for

granted that he can live life on his own terms, and his end is more imminent than he had

thought it was. The story presupposes divine (and diabolical) power to change things

radically. And the presence of superhuman power contributing to the summoner-

character’s failure further diminishes human agency and humbles humans who feel in

control of their lives. And just as death is unexpected, so is the apocalypse.

These jarring last things thus shape perceptions of reality. Representations of a

person being hell-bound, even as they presuppose death and the continuance of cycles of

life and death, nevertheless are enhanced by the pervasive assertions that cycles of life

can be ended and set for eternity.

Death delimits a life, and the apocalypse emphasizes

even more how short and limited that temporal life is. In the face of a person’s death or

in the face of a world’s end, one must be vigilant, remain spiritually engaged, and keep

one’s house in order. An important consideration as one inevitably approaches death is

the theologically argued binary switch of faith and faithlessness. Chaucer’s Parson

expands on “[t]he fourthe point that oghte make a man have contricioun,” that being

sorrowful remembrance of “left” and “lorn” good. He reminds his listeners:

And therof seith God by the mouth of Ezechiel, that “if the rightful man

returne agayn from his rightwisnesse and werke wikkednesse, shal he

For further semantic play that Chaucer may present regarding demonic terms, see Glending Olson’s

“Demonism, Geometric Naming, and Natural Causation in Chaucer’s Summoner’s and Friar’s Tales.”

Tangential to my point above about knowledge, Olson points to the assumption that daemon originally

meant “knowledge,” a knowledge that Augustine argued to be disordered (251).

lyve?” Nay, for ‘alle the goode werkes that he hath wroght ne shulle

nevere been in remembraunce, for he shal dyen in his synne.’ (X.235-7)

[And thereof God says by the mouth of Ezekiel, that ‘If the righteous man

returns again from his righteousness and commits wickedness, shall he

live?” No, for “all the good works that he has done shall never be in

remembrance, for he shall die in his sin.]

Sin is “dedly,” as the Parson repeats. The technical distinction between physical and

spiritual death are conflated in the same term. The apocalyptic is particularly resonant as

it is predicated on death and conjoined to it. To the person reminded of the reality of

physical death, a term is posited that is just as bad, in fact worse. This, too, shows that

constant vigilance is necessary. And yet this information is contained within what seems

the most prosaic “tale,” which is more of a handbook.

The important matter of the End

is hidden in plain sight.

Death—the immediate and physical kind—removes the things that do not

eternally matter. The apocalyptic “birth pangs” of a new age have to be death pains first.

But, to reiterate a point made above, death calls for interpretation by those expecting an

End. Even as Philippe Ariès in In the Hour of Our Death has usefully charted

developments in the social meanings of death in the West, any death of a person socially

connected to others is an important event. Furthermore, death on any scale calls for the

survivors to make sense of it, if only to become more keenly aware of one’s own

mortality. Much of the work of interpretation has already been done and is gleaned from

Given the prosaic nature of the Parson’s Tale, I have opted not to stylize it line-by-line as poetry as I will

do for the other Tales I discuss.

On the genre of this “tale” (“handbook of penance”), see the headnote to the Parson’s Tale in the

Riverside Chaucer (956), Siegfried Wenzel’s “Notes on ‘The Parson’s Tale,’” and Richard Newhausers

“The Parson’s Tale and Its Generic Affiliations.” See my analysis of the tale in Chapter Three below.

existing treatments of death. Medieval Christian treatments of death are varied: to state a

few prominent points of cultural engagement, death is treated through funeral rites, in

theological texts related to dying, and sacramentally. But it is also an opportunity for

new meaning to be stated. Each death is a unique occasion for commemoration, insofar

as commemoration entails individual reflection. Death (situated emphatically in a precise

historic moment in John Bowers’ reading) calls for social commemoration, even

performance.

Ultimately, social interpretation assuming a reciprocal relationship

between death and apocalypse accounts for a popularization of apocalypticism unique to

this period.

The apocalyptic—in spite of its claims to secrecy—needs both to be passed

from one generation to another and to foster communication in communities of the

faithful.

As I have suggested, intersections of death and the apocalyptic are very often

difficult to ascertain because they both bespeak similar urgencies, indeed urgencies tied

to each other. Both involve some personal spiritual preparation. Individual death is the

occasion for the preparation of the dying and the consolation the survivors. It is this need

for consolation that the friar-character of The Summoner’s Tale exploits: “His deeth

saugh I by revelacioun” [His death I saw by revelation] (III.1854). The dying person’s

soul needs to be cared for, and the souls of the dead are a matter of concern for those

surviving. But in a world seen as increasingly wicked, exemplary lives and deaths are

increasingly important and are to be committed to memory.

As Bowers suggests in his challenging reading of Pearl, the poet may be seen “diligently to encode the

representation of loss in a field of religious and regalia symbolism that would have allowed interpretation

toward wider public ends” (154). For a range of methodological considerations concerning historical

scholarship on this difficult-to-place text, see Alan Fletcher’s “Pearl and the Limits of History.”

I will treat some particulars of spoken and textual means of dissemination of apocalyptic messages in my

chapters below on speech/confession and on textuality.

Saintly Action: Anticipating the End

This sense of exemplarity proves central to late-medieval culture. As one of the

most powerful and prevalent centers of exemplarity in late-medieval Christianity, saint

culture is defined by death and yet argues that it transcends death. And saint culture is

rich with notions of physical, temporal, and spiritual proximity. To note one key trend in

the Middle Ages, John Thiel explains how additional meaning radiates from the

commemorative space of the shrine: “The practice of making the shrines into cemeteries

assured the physical closeness of the dead to the saint on the day of judgment, an

intimacy that, through the power of grace and ample hope, would allow the ordinary

believer to participate in the martyr’s most favorable judgment” (71). The apocalyptic is

necessarily seen as different from daily life, and the culture generated by saints’ cults and

through hagiography constitutes one means by which the limits of daily life are

understood.

Saint culture necessarily concerns itself with anticipation of the future,

even when the apocalypse is understated.

And, as Matthew Woodcock establishes with

regard to Chaucer and other late-medieval authors, saint-culture proves particularly

useful as a font of morally suggestive meaning.

And this emphasis on exemplary

behavior may even come from apocalyptic motivations of fear of an end or hope for relief

from earthly life. The Canterbury Tales are told within a context of saint-

commemoration, and this context bespeaks Christianized death. Gatherings centered on

Sarah Salih is careful not to overstate the role of written stories within the larger domain of saint-culture:

“For devotees, a saint’s identity might well be primarily based on a shrine, on the miracles performed there

which showed the saint in action, and on the artworks which represented them” (5).

Adding to their observations on the importance of miracle-working for saints, Donald Weinstein and

Rudolph Bell note, “Prophecy and clairvoyance…were also compelling proofs of supernatural power”

(147).

According to Woodcock, “…there is not only an overlap between religious and secular discourses used

to represent the numinous, superlative qualities of a hero/ine, but authors repeatedly play with the professed

distinction between sacred and worldly heroism in order to increase the didactic efficacy of their works”

(156).

saint-commemoration are designed to teach from examples and cannot help but center on

human behavior and on the goals pursued in limited lifespans. But they also emerge from

a belief in the transcendent within model believers’ lives. As Emmerson and Herzmann

have noted in their seminal work The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature,

some sense of apocalyptic calling and destiny appears in the very collective enterprise of

the death-commemorating pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales.

In performing

something purportedly aiming at holiness, pilgrims or other devotees often fail.

Hope for transcendence of death is reasserted in the apocalyptic, but so are the

notions of the pervasiveness of evil and the potential eternal death. So pervasive

discourse about saintly behavior may yield to discourse about the unsaintly and its effects.

Evil within apocalyptic fervor is seen as pervasive and quite likely irreversible. And this

emphasis on evil of course is supposed to urge believers on to noble behavior. Moral

consistency must be measured against apparent hypocrisy. In a clear case of unsaintly

behavior, the Pardoner even tips his hand to his audience about his hypocrisy: “Thus kan

I preche agayn that same vice / Which that I use, and that is avarice” [“Thus I can preach

against that same vice that I use, and that is avarice.”] (VI.427-8). The first line of this

sentence establishes the evil lined up with his religious practice (“preche”), but the lack

of contrition shown by again may be the most troubling. A lack of contrition denies the

imperative to prepare for any form of divinely ordered and unexpected end, through

natural death or otherwise. And eagerness to persist in sin (and vocal demonstration of it)

may be the quality that makes him easiest to judge. The pilgrims can be read very

In Emmerson and Herzman’s study, see especially pages 155-61. Emmerson and Herzman here move

from the concept of a pilgrimage to the specific pilgrimage sketched in the Tales: “Having argued that the

pilgrimage cannot be understood fully if divorced from its eschatological implications, we believe that it

necessarily follows that The Canterbury Tales must also be examined in terms of those implications as well”

(157).

straightforwardly as imperfect humanity, parallel to the large company in Piers’ field of

folk, some committed to work and others to pride. They necessarily forget the fact that

they have no control over their lifespans, or of broader conceptions of time. Hypocrisy

and moral inconsistency create the obliviousness necessary for a crucial hour (of the end

of a life, or of the end of an age) to be unknowable. Narrative death in the Tales, it can

be argued, serves as a check against such forgetfulness, albeit a check couched in fiction.

The notion of an end, as it is reemerges, suggests the prevalence of an apocalyptic

narrative arc in the lives of all.

Saint culture not only argues for the efficacy of holiness in individual Christians

in late medieval culture; it also suggests the limits of secular power, especially in

narratives of cultural conflict. The apocalyptic furthermore involves the reading of

large spans of history, spans containing very many deaths. Recounting of historic deaths

emphasizes impurity and divine judgment, as in Clannesse. Death wipes out great power

in the case of Nebuchadnezzar:

That ryche in gret ryalté regned his lyue,

As conquerour of vche a cost he cayser watz hatte,

Emperour of alle the erþe and also the saudan,

And als the god of the grounde watz grauen his name. (1321-4)

[That noble man ruled for his lifetime in great royalty, as conqueror of

every region he was called caesar, emperor of all the earth and also the

sultan, and also his name was inscribed as the god of all earth. (Trans.

Andrew and Waldron)]

Soon thereafter, the poet succinctly lets us know Nebuchadnezzar’s accomplishments

were for naught: “Bi a haþel neuer so hyȝe, he heldes to grounde” [“However great a man

he is, he falls to the ground” (Trans. Andrew and Waldron).] (1330). Nebuchadnezzar is

utterly ineffective, unproductive, unexemplary, and unsaintly. Saint culture and the

biblical narratives on which saint culture are based must offer not only saints but foils to

those saints. Ancient narratives and narratives contemporary with a fourteenth-century

audience (and all sorts of narratives in between) are necessarily conflated. They blend

with each other to present a consistent texture of daily life that accounts for good and evil,

miracles and punishment. Narratives of exemplary good and damned evil show a need

for holiness.

Death and physical deterioration, as in the visually resonant late Nebuchadnezzar,

are interpreted as one form of divine judgment just as transcendence of death on the

surface of saint’s stories marks a positive divine judgment. Wherever the power of God

cannot be seen in secular power, God’s power must be shown to exceed and deflate

secular power. In the hagiographic Second Nun’s Tale, the Second Nun gives us

Cecilia’s deflation of secular power as well:

Almachius seyde, “Ne takestow noon heede

Of my power?” And she answerde hym this:

“Youre myght,” quod she, “ful litel is to dreede,

For every mortal mannes power nys

But lyk a bladdre ful of wynd, ywys,

For with a nedles poynt, whan it is blowe,

May al the boost of it be leyd full lowe.” (VIII.435-441)

[Almachius said, “Do you not take any heed of my power?”

And she answered him this: “Your might,” she said, “is to be dreaded very

little, for every mortal man’s power is nothing but like a bladder full of

wind, surely, for with a needle’s point, when it blown, may all the boost of

it be laid very low.”]

While the implications of the apocalyptic for power are treated in a later chapter, suffice

it to say that death is often conceived of as a form of divine justice. There is a flattening

of secular power and an emphasis on divine power. Or rather, it appears to be an assertion

that power is only legitimized divinely. The narrative of the physical weakness and

deterioration of evil rulers is to be contrasted with saintly narratives of posthumous action

and incorruptibility, as is suggested by the preservers of Cecilia’s story. Overall, the

reader is asked to acknowledge connections across Christian-framed history. An

individual ruler may entertain thoughts of ruling forever but can never realize it.

Individual limitations of errant rulers, however, give way to the empowering of

believing (and comprehending) subjects most commonly associated with hagiography

and saint culture. Death can be transcended by those who believe, as they are engaged

and as they comprehend. To think back to the question of saint-culture, hagiography calls

for the reader to position the text and the saint in relation to her/himself as well as within

a Christian (and therefore apocalyptic) scheme of history.

To be sure, various forms of saint culture seek to make audiences see their present

realities as connected to historic saints.

Alford’s notion of the “scriptural self” can also

Chester Scoville’s argument connecting saint-fascination to late-medieval religious drama suggests how

integral to an understanding of medieval Christianity saints were: “…the central characters of the plays are

the saints, the heroes, and the virtuous; and…the function of these central characters was…to unite the

community of the audience for holy living” (7). Scoville offers a corrective to those he sees as over-

help to bring this notion into focus. Alford, in reading Bonaventure’s Life of Saint

Francis, finds a supreme example in which biblical comparisons are necessary and

frequent reference points. On one hand, as I have suggested above, hagiography

embodies exemplary living. But it also works through its use of the past for a strong

argument about what the future should or will be. Hagiography thus operates by a

typological logic, through gestures backward and forward. It argues for historical

connections with the present and future. Friedrich Ohly highlights the “intensifying”

quality of typology in this way:

The specific thing about typology lies in its synoptic view of what is

divided in time, in the juxtaposition of two linked scenes out of the

succession of time, in the rendering visible of a simultaneity of what is not

simultaneous, in such a way that the old points to the new as a sort of

intensification, always across the barrier of time and the historical

appearance of Christ, as the center of the ages and as the turning point in

the history of salvation. (40)

Auerbach, too, discussed this connection as he outlines figural interpretation: “The two

poles of the figure are separate in time, but both, being real events or figures, are within

time, within the stream of historical life” (“Figura” 53).

This time reference further

reading gruesomeness and villainy as central, and in doing so he asserts that many read early modern

theatrical tendencies onto medieval biblical drama.

In his examination of this development of Christian history, Auerbach highlights the important reference

points of the Incarnation and of the Second Coming:

Only the understanding of the two persons or events is a spiritual act, but this spiritual act

deals with concrete events whether past, present, or future, and not with concepts or

abstractions; these are quite secondary, since promise and fulfillment are real historical

events, which have either happened in the incarnation of the Word, or will happen in the

second coming. (53)

complicates the minimal typology laid out within the New Testament.

Passages that

claim the past and the future become fodder for increased speculation, increased linkages

as medieval exegetes attempt to make sense of the past, present, and future. Apocalyptic

interpretation may generate new meaning, arguing for previously unseen connections

between scriptural texts. A very forceful generator of meaning in the late Middle Ages is

Joachim of Fiore, in whose teachings some scholars find revised conclusions.

And in

the generations after Joachim’s deeply creative yet enigmatic conceptions of the

apocalyptic, the Christian West has to deal with increasingly complicated and fiercely

argued notions of time.

Connections between acts and deaths are often facilitated by the manner of telling.

In Bonaventure’s example, Alford notes that the material of the narrative is most often

deeds, less so dialogue. Deeds, after all, matter, inspire repetition by others. Furthermore,

Alford notes that hagiography-influenced culture is evident in lives such as that of

Richard Rolle in which his sainthood is anticipated: “His biography, written in

anticipation of his being canonized, is complemented by the autobiography of his own

extensive writings. The evidence of one is qualified or reinforced by that of the

other….he partly staged the chronology of his life, which appears to have been a series of

calculated gestures” (14). What is related post mortem, Rolle and others of his

Ronald Reid has compared apocalypticism and typology thus:

Typology and apocalypticism differed in that the former involved biblical prophecies

which had been fulfilled whereas the latter concerned those which were yet to be.

However, both involved the same exegetical method, which presumed the historicity of

scriptures and interpreted them as foretelling the future. (232)

As Bloomfield suggests, we cannot assume that Joachim, for example, is a consistent thinker.

Bloomfield maintains, “To put together his views in an orderly fashion does much violence to the reality of

his vivid and inconsistent thought” (“Joachim of Flora” 261).

Joachim stands out as a major thinker extending typological meaning in the Middle Ages. Bernard

McGinn points out that, for Joachim, scriptural meaning is “far too deep and varied for any human

interpreter to exhaust” and that Joachim allows for “the inexhaustibility of Scripture” (Calabrian Abbot

124).

contemporaries steeped in saint-culture must have realized, depends on some biography

attesting to holiness for circumstantial evidence. Chaucer’s pilgrims’ hypocrisy and their

distortions of themselves—the Pardoner’s use of greed as theme and personal vice—

often depend on references to the biblical and later Christian stories. The Pardoner seems

to undercut the stories he tells: “Thanne telle I hem ensamples many oon / Of olde stories

longe tyme agoon. / For lewed peple loven tales olde; / Swiche thynges kan they wel

reporte and holde” [Then I tell them many examples of old stories from long ago. For

unlearned people love old tales; such things they can well report and hold”] (VI. 435-8).

However, his work depends on widespread assumption of the stories’ historicity and

moral applicability. The Pardoner tells, repeats, rhetorically spins, but he still appears

doomed.

In hagiographic texts death is a step toward sainthood, and posthumous action—

transcendence of death—is evidence of a person’s worthiness for veneration. Death may

coincide with the ending of a narrative, or so it seems: there is still the need for meaning-

making, interpretation of death. Langland, in anticipating death, foresees what is to come.

The saint-culture invoked in Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales gives us a

glimpse of the apocalyptic implications of hagiography’s necessary dissemination and

devotion. As for Piers, Langland’s gesture toward the Legenda Sanctorum in B.11.161

most tellingly invokes a variety of textual examples, assuming wide legitimacy of

hagiographic texts, here following up on the knotted theological case of Trajan.

This

awareness of saint narrative contributes, too, to Langland’s sense of the world’s decline.

The inexhaustible textual references only begin to illustrate what Steven Justice has recently called Piers’

“at once incompletely literary and oppressively textual” qualities (“Literary History and Piers Plowman”

52).

On Langland’s “sense of decline from pristine beginnings,” see Simpson (“Religious Forms” 103).

Such legends define death and seek to inspire future action. And saints are here invoked

collectively, as the saintly subset of martyrs is invoked in John’s Apocalypse 6:9-10:

Et cum aperuisset quintum sigillum vidi subtus altare animas

interfectorum propter verbum Dei et propter testimonium quod habebant.

Et clamabant voce magna dicentes usquequo Domine sanctus et verus non

iudicas et vindicas sanguinem nostrum de his qui habitant in terra.

[And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of

them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they

held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord (Holy

and True), dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell

on the earth?]

Already in John’s vision the refuge that saints have found is to be contrasted with earth,

here identified as a site of wickedness. In the present time of medieval apocalypticism,

the contemporary prospect of martyrdom, but so is the established historical case.

Hagiographic memory, as evident in the Second Nun’s Tale, brings to medieval

audiences evidence of divine power over secular powers, over death, and over time.

Persistent memory of Cecilia—the fact that her testimony survives—can answer the key

question of Christian authority:

“Han noght oure myghty princes to me yiven,

Ye, bothe power and auctoritee

To maken folk to dyen or to lyven?...” (VIII.470-2)

[Have our mighty princes given nothing to me, yea, both power and

authority to make people die or live?]

A hierarchy of powers is suggested: temporal power may carry limited power over life

and death, but it cannot approach divine power over life and death. Beyond the power

over individual lives, then, is power over all of time and eternity. Martyrs like Cecilia

broaden the frame of death to include eternity and in so doing may nudge others toward

apocalyptic meaning. Furthermore, the notion central to the status of all martyrs—that

they are witnesses via suffering--complicates the role of death in end-time schemes, as a

key component of judgment in John’s Apocalypse is the avenging of martyrs. The

imperfection of human exercises of authority can be seen as another factor that

necessitates the final Judgment.

Another significant aspect of death colored by hagiography and reinforcing the

apocalyptic is the suddenness with which it occurred. As Sarah Salih notes, in the case of

many medieval saints sudden and unexpected death imbued a saint’s life with meaning,

often increased the fervor with which that saint’s cult would act and would spread. The

long-remembered death of Thomas à Becket, tying sudden violence to the cause of

church authority, provides the impetus for the pilgrims’ movement. St. Thomas’ death

becomes a reference point not only for Chaucer, but also for Gower in the Vox Clamantis,

relating Thomas’ death to that of Archbishop Simon Sudbury in 1381.

Textual

recollection of injustices against church authority is but one layer of memory-making in

saint culture.

These few loci of religious meaning are the just the beginning of those death- and

time-obsessed aspects of the Canterbury Tales. The Tales encompass many areas of

medieval learning, including universal history, world-dating, astrology, and revelation.

I.14, page 72ff in Stockton’s translation; lines 1001-1162 in Macaulay’s edition of the Latin (Works, Vol.

4).

Although variations of Christian apocalypse in this period exist and although many of

these variations were in conflict with one another, they all shared a sense of collective

destiny and an awareness of doom, but also with a hope and belief that a good God is in

control. And as many die in war and in plague (recurring every generation past the mid-

century mass Death), the importance of those remaining is heightened. Ultimately, while

the Canterbury Tales are not doctrinal works, they are engaged enough with religious

meanings of death and ends to be useful in the tracing of apocalyptic meaning.

As I have suggested already, the reciprocal—even symbiotic—relationship of

death and the apocalypse is important to understanding many areas of late-medieval

culture. Both death and the apocalypse define time, bespeak limits to life, and call for

theological clarification within publicly Christian cultures. Piers’ need for allegorization

of abstract figures, The Canterbury Tales’ pilgrims’ inability to grasp theological matters

that have been officially settled, and Pearl’s narrator’s struggle to comprehend death all

show theological meaning as less stable, less easy to understand, and less easy to convey.

Of the two Jerusalems that the Pearl-maiden reminds us of, it is only the New Jerusalem

that is eternal: “In that other is noȝt bot pes to glene / that ay schal laste wiþouten reles”

[“In the other there is only peace to be gleaned, which will last forever without end”

(Trans. Andrew and Waldron).] (955-6). Consolation—arguing against the apparent

emptiness brought on by death—requires the pattern of death to end. Again, the two

hard-to-grasp terms of death and apocalypse depend on each other. The inevitable

reading of death and apocalypse together gives individuals cosmic and theological

meaning, while it conversely relates the cosmic and godly to individuals.

Furthermore, the earthly life and passion of Christ cannot help but inform how

medieval Christians would understand their own lives and apparent suffering, regardless

of suffering’s causes. The crucifixion and the process leading to that death are central to

Christian theology. Death prefigures its reversal—resurrection—and without it meaning

is lost. The very notion of an end though death is a cognitive step necessary to

conceptualize its reversal or negation. And given the centrality of death and resurrection

throughout the Christian tradition, any death is semiotically connected to Christology, as

well as suggesting fallenness and subjection to judgment. Piers indeed is incomplete

without Christ’s intervention—not just as an echo of textual record, but as a permanent

figure, jouster, office-holder.

Death in some cases is a marker of divine vengeance. In the most favorable (least

damning) construction, death is a reminder of human sin and vulnerability. In Clannesse

we get a sense of corruption that can be read in several ways. As has been noted widely,

the impurities in such different stories as those of the Flood, Zedekiah, and Belshazzar

requires a capacious understanding of purity and impurity. It can be read as universally

occurring, as something endemic to human nature. It can also be read as cyclical or

driven by historical type, well established not only in hagiography but also in texts

compiling universalized (but Canon-dependent) history, such as the encyclopedic Cursor

Mundi. In any event, the call for purity in Clannesse, largely through ancient Hebrew

examples, certainly must apply to a late-medieval audience, an audience subject to divine

judgment and subject to death, possibly both at once. As is demonstrated in the Middle

English Dictionary,

the word clannesse is a capacious enough term to describe a

number of positive qualities, and an obvious enough marker to be seen as clothing:

If þay in clannes be clos þay clech gret mede;

Bot if þay conterfete crafte and cortaysye wont,

As be honest vtwyþ and inwiþ alle fylþez,

Then ar þay sinful himself, and sulpen altogeder

Bothe Gode and His gere, and Hym to greme cachen. (13-18)

[If they are enclosed in cleanness they obtain a great reward; but if they

feign wisdom and lack courtesy, by being pure on the outside and all filth

within, then they are sinful themselves and altogether defile both God and

His utensils, and drive Him to wrath. (Trans. Andrew and Waldron)]

The greme (“anger”) here amounts to judgment. And in quick succession we see whole

civilizations contaminated, including pre-flood beings not fortunate enough to make it

into the ark. The destiny of entire peoples is at stake, so it is not merely the conscience of

the individual Christian that is indicted by mention of sin and the expectation of purity.

Fascination with death enriched the apocalypticism circulating in the period as a

sense of impending judgment affected how death was perceived. Ultimately, partly as

the result of changing understandings of death, the apocalyptic became more central in

daily life in this period.

Evidence—in forms visual, anecdotal, and recorded—

intensified a widespread sense of world-ending. Laura Smoller has traced “apocalyptic

The Middle English Dictionary, ed. Kurath, Kuhn, and Lewis, is hereafter referred to as the MED.

The often-invoked cause of plague seems traceable in some way to various social changes and to shifting

meanings of death in the period. Colin Platt, anticipating objections that he is exaggerating plague’s role in

various changes, makes his case: “Nevertheless, what chiefly stoked those tensions was a population

collapse so immediate and so prolonged as to encourage even the most conservative of landowners to

embrace change. In the last analysis, whether in the short term or long, what mattered was how many

people died in the Black Death” (King Death 177).

echoes” assigned to many recorded occurrences, including “earthquakes, hail, and rains

of toads and snakes” (170). Apocalyptic canonical texts are not self-contained: as

interpreted throughout the Middle Ages, they require a broad epistemology and

engagement with the world. Without question, all persons must watch for evidence, and

many individuals turned to ways to preserve and retrace data that may be significant to

the end of an age. With this aim, individuals need to connect spiritual and otherworldly

matters with physical and earthly matters.

And as Miceal Vaughan has noted, the

apocalyptic resonances of Nowel’s flood in The Miller’s Tale have basis in contemporary

expectation and textual culture. Medieval thinkers continued counting backward,

counting forward, gauging quantities (such as durations suggested in John’s Apocalypse),

as well as recording their work for posterity. Apocalyptic textuality accounts for the

deaths of individual writers: as long as death must persist, texts must cover gaps between

individual students looking for the End.

In the transmission of apocalyptic meaning across so many deaths, how much

meaning is lost in translation? Throughout the formative periods since the New

Testament texts were written, meaning of the last things do not change entirely. They

change incrementally. Throughout medieval (and subsequent) history terms such as

death, second coming, judgment, and heaven take on added layers of meaning: these

terms are understood with reference to things in the surrounding culture(s). Many varied

areas of cultural activity might communicate a sense of urgency. As has been noted by

various scholars, the final decades of the fourteenth century in England are marked by

Michael Gorman puzzles over this range of meanings: “One of the most striking features of Revelation’s

interpretation through the centuries is the concrete, this-worldly political character of so many of those

readings” (26).

many forms of uncertainty attributable to evil.

However, as has already been apparent,

periods of extreme disorder call for theological explanation, assurance of divine control,

assurance that this evil can be subjected to some divine historical order. One can think of

how the Last Judgment and the finality of worldly activities entailed thereby suggest a

heightening of death’s implications—to the point that the deaths seen entail the

decimation of a generation, the death of a world, and ultimately the end of a system and

way of doing things. Such devastation proves crucial to Piers Plowman and requires

continued exploration through the text’s revision (and others’ engagement post Langland

with Piers as a folk figure). As I suggested in the opening of this chapter, John’s

Apocalypse offers death as something more complicated than the cessation of a life. Cast

in broader terms, the discomfort associated with death is attributable to evil forces and

indeed proves the dualism that forms the basis for early and medieval Christianity.

So again, this period’s various instances of uncertainty are capable of apocalyptic

resonances. Young death in particular, such as that which is seen in most readings of

Pearl and invoked in various places of Chaucer’s Tales, is a sign that can feed a sense of

chaos, even as young death appears throughout human history. It is always jarring, most

often unexpected. Young death, perhaps due to heightened violence or perhaps plague,

heightens fears over when one must be spiritually accountable. Young death disturbs the

continuity of life, may cut family lines off from procreation. Families’ social prospects

may diminish, and property may change hands. What is the preferred way of dealing

with the prospect of young death, the vulnerability of even the most physically powerful?

See, for example, Norman Cohn’s Pursuit of the Millennium, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton’s Reformist

Apocalypticism and Books Under Suspcion, Penn Szittya’s Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature,

and Richard Emmerson and Ronald Herzman’s Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature.

See Emmerson’s Antichrist in the Middle Ages, Bernard McGinn’s introduction to Visions of the End,

and Curtis Bostick’s Antichrist and the Lollards. On the rhetorical importance of evil to apocalypticism,

see O’Leary, particularly his section “Theodicy and the Topos of Evil,” 34-44.

The Pardoner’s Tale presents riotoures trying to do away with “thilke traitour Deeth,” in

fact negate it on their own power. Of course they fail. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale—cast

through the perspective of a too-young-to-die but seemingly powerless rooster—

embodies fear, vigilance, even revelation. And in spite of the comic matching-up of

Chaunticleer’s fate with that of powerful historic figures, the fear of young death is a very

real one. But the invocation of the apocalyptic in a time of conspicuously irregular

mortality might be seen paradoxically as a way of restoring a sense of normal life, of

restoring conceptions of cycles of life and death as well as the assumption of a long life,

even in periods when circumstances contributed to statistically significant early deaths.

Some sense of recovery and resiliency, of course, is how English society is reshaped after

the Plague. Some marginal stability makes possible new patterns of life, and yet new

apocalyptic tensions emerge. And by the late fourteenth century, as a number of texts in

this study have shown and will show, a society destabilized by irregular death becomes

susceptible to seeing cosmic meaning in even more phenomena.

In late-medieval England, the specifics of many deaths have passed away. People

must find ways to summarize, to collapse many deaths into a few terms, and such

collapse is a literary necessity. But the erasure—the violence to memory—is something

that must be undone by the apocalypse. Death must end, martyrs must be avenged,

plagues must be remembered. And the meanings of all deaths and catastrophes must be

asserted. This meaning-making must happen as survivors likely respond emotionally and

as the most sober explanations seem inaccessible. The Pardoner’s Tale, for all its

prefatory diminishing of the teller’s credibility, still makes its audience think hard about

undoing Death that was evident in the tale’s Flanders. It still makes its audience

remember the most horrific plague years in Europe.

In spite of the deaths of many recorders of significant information, there remains

the promise that a generation will eventually witness the end. As many die in war and in

plague (recurring every generation past the mid-century mass Death), the importance of

those remaining is heightened. And again, each person’s importance is heightened also

as one reconsiders the taken-for-granted dualism central to the most dominant forms of

medieval Christianity. In a society so threatened by social and environmental instability,

the various apocalypticisms that emerge may very often be incompatible with one

another.

Explorations of apocalyptic thought tend toward a strong dualism, labeling the

other as evil and, in the terms that arise out of Christian exegesis, aligned with Antichrist.

In fact, the concept can be variously interpreted, and the variation of meaning creates

more anxiety about where evil is immediately apparent. Although it is not the objective

of this study to cover exhaustively the important concept of Antichrist in the Middle Ages,

I will briefly use this concept to illustrate the flexibility of the term, the extent to which a

high-stakes term of the apocalypse is subject to diverse and conflicting interpretations:

thinkers in one tradition will label a competing tradition as Antichristian, while that

second tradition will label the first as Antichristian. Either you’re with us, as the

commonplace goes, or you’re against us. An age in which the Antichrist is apparent is

then assumed to be an age of increased evil, of deadly chaos. Evil is understood not only

to embody the flagrantly antichristian and defiant, but it also dwells in subtle error,

deception, and false-seeming.

See Platt’s Medieval England: A Social History and also his King Death

Finally, I must highlight the term of death and consider how the concept of the

death of death bridges death and the apocalyptic. Undoing death is of course central to

the basic claims of Christianity. Paul’s pronouncement of victory over death is presented

in the Vulgate as addressing mors “death” twice in I Cor 15:55: “Where O Death is your

victory? Where O death/grave/Sheol is your sting?” Death, for Paul, is powerless, is not

permanent. And we see this denouncement of death alongside a second, more slippery

use of death in the term from Hosea 13:14. The passage from the Hebrew Scriptures,

rendered into the Vulgate, is the classic articulation of the negation of death:

Ero mors tua, o mors

[“I will be your death, O death”

]

This is a passage that emerges in Piers Plowman, albeit in the form John Alford has

shown to be a liturgical.

The form uttered by Faith in B.18 of Piers, “O mors, ero mors

tua,” is an expression of the effect of the crucifixion. But this formula, for all its

simplicity, attracts a variety of intuitive uses ranging from teaching the undoing of death

in salvation, to occasional consolation based on that teaching and even to teaching the

future eradication of death. The death of death is a pervasive philosophical term,

something that runs deeper than the references to Hosea and Paul. The death of death—if

we are to understand that all death is to be eradicated—amounts to an apocalyptic

For a philological curiosity beyond the scope of this study, see Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein’s suggestion

of how this “tautology” emerged in the Latin (84).

See Alford’s Guide to the Quotations, notes for B.17.114a on page 107 and B.18.35a on page 109. R. A.

Shoaf states in his Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word:

In Hosea, after the outcry against death, the voice goes on: “Because he shall make a

separation between brothers. The Lord will bring a burning wind that shall rise from the

desert, and it shall dry up his springs, and shall make his fountain desolate; and he shall

carry off the treasure of every desirable vessel." According to the commentaries, the one

who “makes division among brothers” is the Devil or Hell or Death. (220)

undoing of life cycles. This confusing term proves to attract in audience members’ minds

a wealth of speculation about last things.

Death may point to the apocalypse as it provides a crucial term for understanding

its instability. Several important texts are shaped by this instability and can also be seen

to respond to it. Through texts such as the Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, Pearl, and

Clannesse—death provides inroads for exploring the meaning and trajectory of life. But

most importantly, the forms of apocalypticism emergent in this period attest to their

reliance on death and their effect on how death was understood, responded to, and

processed. Death and apocalypse, too often split up in taxonomies of Last Things, are

inseparable and interdependent, and notably so amid the anxieties of the late fourteenth

century.

Death and the apocalypse have a reciprocal—even symbiotic—relationship.

While death is in some sense conceptually opposed to the End, death is also a sign of the

End. The rider of the pale horse in John’s Apocalypse (6:8) is named Death, and the End

in the New Testament is also connected to wars, famine, and plague. What forms of

death, one must ask, are apocalyptically significant? That question is not a simple one to

answer, as meaning is constructed not only through a complex of stories and theological

expositions and popular conceptions. All of these categories are essential to reading texts

as wide-ranging as The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, and Pearl although to varying

degrees in each case.

It is worth noting how the relationship between death and the apocalypse

contributes to the diversity of apocalyptic thought accessible in this period. As has been

Mention of the death of death can bring together a variety of “last things.” Milton McCormick Gatch

illustrates that the passage had been connected to the Harrowing of Hell by as early and influential of an

expositor as Gregory.

apparent in this chapter, various texts lead us to different places. There are different

ways of negotiating death and the apocalypse. The Canterbury Tales makes us consider

death within a story, whether death marks an end or whether it suggests a beginning or

continuation. Piers Plowman positions old age (Elde) as a driving force toward the

conclusion of the work, and makes us consider the urgency communicated by death and

by the apocalypse alike. Pearl, a work often considered as less than apocalyptic, as being

so narrowly fixated on death and heaven, and I make the case that the consolation of

Pearl makes the apocalyptic unavoidable.

Therefore, apocalyptic meaning—particularly evident in what I have posited

above as apocalyptic consolation in Pearl—exists in the conjunction of last things, the

way that one reference point in Christian salvation history depends on another and begs

further explanation. The notion of death’s annihilation or undoing or cessation—

whatever figure one chooses to invoke—is how one comforts against its pain, argues

against it, explains something bigger than it or beyond it. The capaciousness of meaning

and the certain promise of O death I will be thy death (made explicit in Piers Plowman)

cannot help but encourage readings beyond traditional forms of exegesis: death’s death

bespeaks that normal cycles of life will be no more, that death will be nonexistent and

unnecessary. Death’s death is the negation of a term, but it is also a deeply productive

apocalyptic term in itself.

CHAPTER TWO: “PENULTIMATE THINGS”

: ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY

AT THE WORLD’S NEAR-END

As I have argued, uncertainty about the future, made particularly vivid through

the figure of death, fueled a robust apocalypticism in England in the second half of the

fourteenth century. Death, however, is just one of the important means by which people

in the late fourteenth century in England came to understand the apocalypse.

Apocalypticism gathers meaning not only from death but also from very living things,

and things that suggest their own vitality. Late-medieval Christianity in its displays of

power and in its practices offers strong evidence of apocalyptic mentalities.

Apocalypticism is powerfully and conspicuously defined by conceptions of religious

authority and by forms of religious practice. In this chapter I will show how religious

authority and practice can be seen to give apocalypticism its legitimacy and its vitality.

Literature of the period highlights the ways in which the experience of Christianity

promoted thinking in an apocalyptic mode. The apocalyptic mode is profoundly

dualistic.

As I will maintain in this chapter, the dualistic aspects of apocalypticism are

especially apparent in contested knowledge and contested action. In the life of the mind

and in visible action ecclesiology—how and why the business of Christianity must be

conducted until the world’s end—is worked out. Competing ecclesiologies necessary

cause conflict along these lines. While many in this period assert and perform orthodoxy,

the exact location of good and evil are constructed by various individuals to suit their

own understandings and ends. In what is seen as the near-End, temporal powers are

As will be clear below, I borrow this term from Richard Kieckhefer’s “Meditating on Passion, Meditating

on Judgment: The First and Second Comings of Christ in Medieval Imagination,” 67.

See, for broad coverage of medieval apocalypticism as being defined in terms of dualism, McGinn’s

Visions of the End. See, too, Curtis Bostick’s introduction to his Antichrist and the Lollards.

debated. Status has very real social consequences and contributes to very real conflicts.

Apocalypticism takes special forms in this late-medieval environment as its claim to Last

Judgment and decisive action is foreshadowed by various acts of human judgment related

to religious authority.

Authority and the Apocalyptic: Power through Knowledge

The tension between the knowable and unknowable is one key factor defining the

apocalyptic. As much as the imminence entailed by death and the apocalypse captivates

minds, Matthew 25’s warning that no one knows the hour of the age’s end makes

individuals account for their own knowledge and ignorance. Even as the vineyard

parable of Pearl seems to point heavenward, the opening of Fitt 10 is also tied to divine

foreknowledge, an echo of apocalyptic warnings: “The date of the daye the Lorde con

knaw” (541). The exact end of the age is necessarily unknowable, and yet medieval

Christians are chastised for not knowing enough about it. And knowledge about it is

touted by those in power. Nevertheless, being in power and being in the know are not the

same thing, and in this period various claims to knowledge translate into claims to power

(or into a cutting-down of established power). These claims are necessarily unfulfilled.

As I will emphasize throughout this study, religious discourse has obvious ties to

this world, and the same is true of religious authority.

Regardless of social standing,

persons alive at a given time can only claim faith in last things, not sight of those things.

And individuals find deep meaning as they act out of faith. In the gap between the

assumption of the end and a knowable end, spiritual life is all the more significant.

Although the Wife of Bath’s claim to ignorance and her shaking-off of authority in her

On the more specific implications of written communication being tied to worldly life and to time, see

my fourth chapter.

prologue may be seen as a rhetorical ploy, it is a very necessary one: her power to

interpret (and, indeed, to know) cannot be exercised publicly.

Still, I would maintain

that her rhetorical move suggests some claiming of religious authority in earnest. She

presents her own experience as a lay person having been married, but she has to temper

her experience’s value rhetorically, even as the Pardoner encourages her with “Ye been a

noble prechour in this cas” (III.165). And the Pardoner embraces for himself the role of

preacher more directly. The Pardoner’s prologue presents a case where the speaker has

tremendous rhetorical power even when certain truths seem stacked against him. The

Pardoner knows very little content, but he knows how to persuade, and how to hold

power over others. He knows that power very often lies in the fact of speaking a few

Latin words (“to saffron with my predicacioun, / And for to stire hem to devocioun”

(II.345-56)) and in being able to present a few relics, not necessarily in a deep

understanding of those words or in those artifacts’ actual history. Knowledge on the part

of a speaker—particularly knowledge about how to relate an important religious

message—entails power and control.

Still, the apocalyptic involves a large pattern of history: power involves not only

that which is observed in society but also that which is true spiritually or cosmically.

While on the one hand tales of uncertainty make readers and listeners vulnerable, on the

other hand they may inadvertently invoke scenarios in which no one is in control—not

even the tellers. The Pardoner’s Tale concerns unpredictability, as does the Nun’s

Priest’s Tale, and both tales hinge on impending personal doom. And the Summoner

Clare Waters presents the Wife’s complicated relationship with preaching thus:

She never once refers to herself as a preacher—partly, of course, because as a woman she

cannot do so without drawing fire, but also because her character’s very existence is

predicated on the association of preaching with debased and dubious forms of speech.

(166)

character in the Friar’s Tale shows, too, the value of private knowledge and particularly

how knowledge can be leveraged against the laity. This fictional summoner created by

the Friar seeks out vulnerable persons for information about other vulnerable persons.

The knowledge necessary for the ecclesiastical court rests within those who are less than

privileged, even if that knowledge may be used against them. In this way, the story lays

bare how information is used by the Church and how certain persons maintain their

power. In so doing it suggests an increasingly transcendent order and power.

The possibility of a larger order than that which exists in official religious forms

gives some persons governed by the Church an opportunity to aspire to some religious

power of their own. This is especially clear in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, in

spite of this work’s resistance of clear-cut anticlerical categories posited by scholars of

late-medieval literature, succeeds in shifting some knowledge into the power of lay

readers.

Chaucer aggregates material critical of persons of various stations. What

results is not at all a coherent view of how to see the Church and how to approach

contemporary life; rather, the seemingly muddled bits of information give the readers

enough information to form their own view of markedly religious medieval society. The

variety of viewpoints decenter the work enough to divert from Chaucer the accusation

that he is engaging in polemic, that he is inciting a specific controversy. With no

absolutely clear authority figure in the Tales, readers are forced to question who can be

trusted.

For just a few studies defined in terms of categories that can be seen to challenge tradition and orthodoxy,

see Kathryn Kerby-Fulton’s Books under Suspicion, Robert Lerner’s The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the

Later Middle Ages, Penn Szittya’s The Antifraternal Literature in Medieval Literature, and Wendy Scase’s

“Piers Plowman” and the New Anticlericalism.

This questioning of trust is important because the reliability, amount, and

correctness of knowledge are especially at stake in the apocalyptic. But on what sources

is knowledge based? The narrator and the readers of the Tales come closer to receiving

omniscience than do the pilgrims, but they may likewise be given compromised

information. But who is to say what is enough knowledge, and what is correct

knowledge concerning ecclesiastical power or concerning the End?

The fourteenth century benefitted from a wealth of scholarly and popular

speculation on the apocalypse, and in many cases learned, clergy-produced work opened

up apocalyptic meaning that had largely been abandoned or suppressed. From one

standpoint, speculation aimed at a knowable future represents a shift from Tyconian-

Augustinian apocalypticism that proves cautious in its interpretation.

In some cases,

apocalyptic teachings effectively reverted to scandalous teachings that doctors of the

Church had warned against, specifically regarding millenarianism. The millenarianism

promoted by Joachim of Fiore in particular modeled ambitious reading of historical and

contemporary data onto the story of the apocalypse.

However, from another standpoint,

new possibilities were considered, and even when the possibilities looked old, they were

applied anew, using data from the present time: schemes of apocalyptic timing, with data

ranging from geophysical phenomena to political happenings to biblical writings to those

of Church Fathers, argued that the proximity of the end of the age was knowable. Natural

Paula Fredriksen in her “Apocalypse and Redemption in Early Christianity” has laid out three main

responses to teachings of apocalypticism, Tyconius and (late) Augustine falling into an allegorizing camp,

distinguished from those who consider apocalyptic teachings invalid and those who would hyperliteralize

and futurize. More precisely, Frederiksen attributes to Tyconius and Augustine “a reading of John that

affirmed its historical realism while liberating it from the embarrassments of literal interpretation” (151).

On the flexibility of Tyconius’ rules of interpretation, see Fredriksen’s “Tyconius and Augustine on the

Apocalypse” (24-29).

Still, John Hall underreads the historical awareness of Augustine when he makes he following contrast:

“Augustine had wanted to reduce the apocalypse to spiritual metaphor. Joachim de Fiore, and those who

followed in his wake, restored it to history” (64).

signs, as Laura Smoller has observed, became increasingly subjected to apocalyptic

interpretation.

And corruption in powerful persons marks the world as a chief enemy of

the faith. Corruption—which the Church is charged with addressing—is easy to point out

in any time and place, but a unique confluence of signs of disorder in the late fourteenth

century makes the Church all the more vulnerable. The memory of past difficulties and

the experience of present difficulties—such visible forms as plagues, floods, famine—

contribute to a sense of disorder in the late fourteenth century.

Such instability forms a

central part of an apocalyptic environment in which authority is debated and carefully

negotiated. Social instability, including that related to poverty, heresy, and expansion of

different religious orders, provides a broad field of meaning through which instability is

read as evil and as indicative of imminent doom.

Most importantly in this period, as memory of arguably apocalyptic phenomena

exist or as apocalyptic interpretations are rooted in texts, information clearly connotes

power. Competing epistemologies create competing messages with claims to truth. And

authority is thought to be based on truth values. Authority is necessarily opposed to the

less-than-authoritative, and throughout the Christian tradition the prospect of a false

teacher—someone claiming authority but lacking it—has been presented as a necessary

component of religious teaching. As various clerical orders and religious institutions

Smoller points out that the interpretive caution in many cases fuels speculation that had been previously

ruled outnwilling definitively to announce that the world was about to end, fourteenth-century authors

allowed their presentation to hover between dubbing the disease purely apocalyptic or purely natural….In

so doing, they left open the possibility that events might in fact be seen simultaneously as apocalyptic and

resulting form natural causes,….In their very human reactions to plague, these writers reopened the door to

naturalizing the apocalypse” (187).

I must emphasize the role of memory (and, perhaps, misremembering) and historical distance in one’s

capacity to read phenomena apocalyptically. Bryon Lee Grigsby’s challenging thesis that “instead of

seeing the disease as a representation of God’s anger with man for his sins, literary authors begin to see the

plague as a part of lived experience” suggests that experience alone may tend toward the de-theologizing of

natural pheonomena (125).

emerge throughout the Middle Ages, the central status of true teachers becomes even

more complicated. Stark dualism among those working for the church is in some

measure traceable to apocalypticism, particularly to continuing influence of Adso of

Montier-en-Der’s tenth-century narratization of ancient and early-medieval conceptions

of the Antichrist. G. R. Evans traces the “adversariality in all things between good and

evil” exemplified by Adso’s influential tenth-century work De ortu et tempore Antichristi

and works modeled after it” (18-19)

. She lays out how contraries function within the

view prevalent in Adso’s treatment and those treatments that rely on Adso’s framework:

[Good and evil] have opposing purposes and contrasting characteristics.

Where they interact, they are capable of causing disturbance in human

equilibrium, especially intellectually and morally.

(19)

Anything may be read as inherently good or evil, and the consequences of falling into

evil and being aligned with evil at the age’s end dictate that one must make quick

judgments. And one may very well be labeled unfairly.

Limited human judgment may

label evil falsely, and this labeling theoretically can be seen as evil. This adversariality is

apparent in various of Chaucer’s narrators, particularly in the conflict between the Friar

and Summoner.

To situate the Adsonian story clearly within this period, Curtis Bostick points to the survival of Adsonian

apocalyptic in his study of Lollard presentations of the image of Antichrist. To illustrate the longer-running

current of the Adsonian legend, McGinn in his Antichrist maintains that Adso’s letter “set the standard

Western view for centuries to come” (6), and in his introduction to Adso in his earlier Apocalyptic

Spirituality anthology McGinn further attests to Adso’s influence, even as the Adsonian text was presented

pseudonymously as coming from “such prestigious authors as Augustine, Alcuin, and Anselm of

Canterbury” (88).

Evans continues: “That is the picture of things in which the face of dualism ultimately unacceptable to

Christians persists, because it allows a power to evil which seems at odds with Christian belief in an

omnipotent and wholly good God, and thus creates a powerful tension for our authors.”

For example, regarding Free-Spirit mysticism, Robert Lerner demonstrates wide misunderstanding of this

movement within England in the late Middle Ages (The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages

195n46).

The Adsonian tradition effectively builds on previous cognitive associations with

Christ. As Kevin Hughes points out, the Tyconian-Augustinian reading of last things “is

wary of any direct continuity between historical events and the apocalyptic end, favoring

an Antichrist who is immanent, internal, and deceptive” (24, Hughes’ emphasis).

Augustinian amillennialism, in spite of the caution it exercises in using contemporary

data to make judgments about Judgment, in theory still maintains a sense of urgency.

More willing to present a vivid and identifiable narrative, the Adsonian framing of a very

personal Antichrist had tremendous capability to capture imaginations, as Richard

Emmerson suggests in his linking of Adso’s work to hagiography (“Antichrist as Anti-

Saint”). Along the same lines, Bernard McGinn credits Adso with “choosing a narrative

rather than exegetical basis for his presentation of the Antichrist legend” (Antichrist 101).

Due to its use of narrative, Adso’s work has greater appeal than more prosaic

explanatory-exegetical discussions of the Antichrist do. Furthermore, vivifying narrative

of Antichrist can be understood in relation to more exemplary forms of religious

literature, and the narrative of Antichrist attracts a wealth of contemporary reference

points.

The application of the rhetoric of Antichrist to figures working within the Church

to some extent erodes those figures’ authority and calls attention to the way that the

power is legitimized. Adsonian Antichrist rhetoric assigns a clear narrative to evil and

humanizes it. Therefore the idea that some aspect of the world is corrupt is nothing new.

Throughout the early history of Western Christianity, imperfections are quite routinely

explained in terms of sin.

However, the strong emphasis on an ever-present figure of

Antichrist evidenced by evil is a major factor in the pathology of the apocalypse in the

late Middle Ages. One of the ways that evil and heresy were explained was to ascribe

others’ activity to the Antichrist.

Beyond the life of the Antichrist, other forms of human activity in the late Middle

Ages are vividly attributed to Antichristian influence. Concern with heresy and apostasy

are heightened toward the end of the Middle Ages: believers are made to fear enemies

within and are made to take seriously deviations and defections from the faith. And fear,

which necessarily overpowers people and diminishes other feelings, may skew the

experience of the apocalyptic toward the evil, toward negative things. According to this

apocalyptic emphasis on pathology, evil becomes identifiable while good works and

qualities become fuzzy, subject to debate. Even though the apocalyptic pretensions of

individual writers pronounce a stark difference between good and evil, those writers’

views frequently clash with each other’s. The same boundaries of good and evil are not

shared by everyone.

Not only is evil able to be identified easily, but also this evil must be handled

carefully. One does not have much chance to counteract the evil, because the immanent

End is tied to it. Only that which is most clearly tied to the Church can be seen as the

most secure. However, the debate remains concerning which institutions within the

Church represent its dogmatic mainstream or, to follow another metaphor, represent its

purity. The Church must persist until the end.

For diverging considerations of the historical development of teaching related to sin (particularly original

sin), see Paula Fredriksen’s recent Sin, Alan Jacobs’ Original Sin (32) and Elaine Pagels’ Adam¸Eve, and

the Serpent (117-19).

See McGinn, Antichrist.

As I argued in the previous chapter, a sense of normal daily life ending was

echoed frequently in the late Middle Ages, and the urgency suggested by that proposition

required that the End be communicated by the Church. A rich and long-standing

example of the communication of the end is found in the York Corpus Christi plays,

which have their beginning in the second half of the fourteenth century, even as extant

texts postdate this period.

Religious meaning was communicated through the popular,

accessible, and visible vehicle of the plays.

The York Last Judgment play puts the

following in the mouth of God:

Sethen haue þei founde me full of mercye,

Full of grace and forgiffenesse,

And þei als wrecchis, wittirly,

Has ledde þer liffe in lithirnesse.

Ofte haue þei greued me greuously,

þus haue thei quitte me my kyndinesse;

þerfore no lenger, sekirlye,

Thole will I þare wikkidnesse. (Beadle, ed. 443)

[Since they have found me full of mercy, full of grace and forgiveness,

and they as wretches indeed have led their life in wickedness. Oft have

they grieved me grievously, thus have they repaid me for my kindness;

therefore, no longer, truly, will I allow their wickedness.]

Indeed, the version of the Last Judgment that survives has changed from the prior version, attested as

early as 1415, which contained Mary the mother of Jesus as a character (see Johnston and Rogerson’s York

REED volume). Clifford Davidson suggests in his study From Creation to Doom, “Mary above all

represents mercy extended to the whole body of Christ—i.e., to the Church—and indeed the quality of

mercy is the principle that is at the heart of the theatrical display” (178).

Tony Corbett’s generalization (considering multiple cycles) that “[t]he plays are devotional in intention,

part of the wave of devotional aids that swept fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England” proves a useful

claim in connecting the plays to a surrounding culture attested to by other late-medieval religious texts (80).

God will no longer suffer their wickedness, and the apocalyptic moment emerges from

humans grieving God grievously. The fact that normal order will persist is a function of

God’s grace and patience.

And the accusation that people are abusing the mercy of God

should make any audience member afraid. Wickedness of course is a term that speaks to

externalized evil, and we might assume that viewers of the Corpus Christi plays envision

their neighbors’ conspicuous signs of evil. And this appeal to filth and wickedness is also

a means by which the speaker (corporately representing professions but also by obvious

extension representing the Church) exercises power over the audience. Not unlike

Chaucer’s Pardoner, purveyors of messages in the Last Judgment play rely on the

audience’s sense of involvement with evil to keep them listening. But unlike the

ventriloquized God of the York Plays, the Pardoner is suspect in assuming God’s work

for himself: he offers his credentials immediately “[t]hat no man be so boold, ne preest ne

clerk, / Me to destourbe of Cristes hooly werk” [“that no man may be so bold, neither

priest nor clerk, to disturb me from Christ’s holy work”] (VI.339-40). Cries of urgent

religious messages may be effective, but as such messages contradict each other or

compete with each other, claims of urgency are subject to scrutiny. Contemporaries must

ask, how holy and important is this work?

Davidson points out that the Last Judgment is beyond the time of mercy but that “for those watching the

play it is still the time of mercy, and their lifetimes will be the space in which they may so order their souls

that they may at the Last Day be among the blessed” (178). Sarah Beckwith similarly notes that “grace is

never hypostatized” but steers toward the bolder conclusion that the play “makes judgment as uncertain as

possible so as to show it to be a genuinely divine mystery, which cannot be earned or presumed” (111).

The Ecclesiastical-Political Stakes of the Apocalypse

The Church carries out its work in the long period of daylight leading up to the

end of time.

The power assumed by religious institutions—in interpreting texts, in

exacting judgment, in proclaiming absolution, and in so many other sought-after

activities—is at stake in the apocalyptic moment. Various impulses for action or inaction

apply value judgments, particularly those related to the Church’s institutions and

practices. For example, Lollards undermine a traditional priesthood and undercut some

of the Church’s forms of income. And friars, seen to embody an ideal of apostolic

poverty, encroach on the work of parish priests. As one assumes that the end is near, one

must determine whether a religious institution or faction is a source of strength or

weakness. The Church by the late Middle Ages consists of various organizational parts,

and the complication to the structure caused by the friars is not soon forgiven or forgotten.

The fourteenth century proves to be a conspicuously late period for Christian

history and also specifically for the Church. Many have expected an end before, and

have been mistaken in that expectation. As Stephen O’Leary has shown through repeated

examples in his rhetorical study of apocalypticism, the failure of prediction quite often

makes believers reshift their belief: the prediction just has to be tweaked. And through

this history of vision and revision, apocalypticism assumes an increasingly complicated

structure, a structure in some ways visibly divided but in other ways visibly unified.

Every period after the Ascension in antiquity shows an increased urgency, a greater

longing for the End. And still, oddly enough, historical distance also gives those living

long after antiquity a privileged vantage point and a capacity to categorize epochs and

The often-invoked metaphor of daylight is drawn from John 9:4, “Me oportet operari opera eius qui misit

me donec dies est venit nox quando nemo potest operari” (Rheims: “I must work the works of him that sent

me, whilst it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.).

bestow historical events with new meaning. And again, the passage of time allows for

greater diversity of readings of the apocalypse.

Thus, this chapter considers how the

increasingly complicated structure of the Church within late-medieval England and

various conceptions of it strengthened apocalyptic conviction.

With an awareness of impending divine judgment, one must navigate carefully the

politics and theology of division. An impulse to follow or create a division—to be

different—may be read as discernment, as following the narrow path, but may also be

read as inconsistency, insubordination, apostasy. And unity may be read as harmony but

also as a lack of rigor, as lukewarmness. In either case, in a late and urgent moment,

some action seems urgent. The question remains, at this near-end, whether steadfastness

dictates maintaining the same social ties one is accustomed to or breaking them.

Important aspects of apocalypticism leading up to the parousia have been the

focus of much scholarship on matters that Richard Kieckhefer qualified as “penultimate

rather than ultimate concerns, in particular those having to do with Antichrist and the

thousand years preceding the final dissolution.” He elaborates: “It is these penultimate

events in salvation history that had the greatest political relevance, since Antichrist and

his minions so conveniently lent themselves to identification with contemporary political

figures…” (77). Controversies of authority have special meanings when they are

understood as penultimate things. These meanings range from apostolic continuity, to the

influence of Antichrist to apostasy to ultimate dominion. Readings of Scripture and

contemporary data alike are subject to novel readings, even as they appeal to tradition.

See Francis Gumerlock’s edition of medieval works arriving at very different conclusions concerning the

seven seals of John’s Apocalypse. Gumerlock’s generalization on late-medieval shifts in interpretation is

worth noting: “Ecclesiastical interpretations, dominant in early medieval exegesis of the seven seals, gave

way to historical interpretations in the later Middle Ages” (17).

The poles of strictly “Augustinian” historically cautious amillennialism and of radical

chiliasm can equally cause us to misjudge apocalypticisms imagined at any given time.

Add to this the dynamic of forestalled judgment that we see in Gower (who will be

considered next) and his professed theology of division, and we begin to see an

increasingly complicated power-based apocalypticism developed in the late Middle Ages.

The time before the End—the more that it is extended—becomes the space of

increasingly divergent yet productive apocalyptic speculation.

Divided We Fall: Gower, Apocalypti-Schism, and Further Divisions

Gower’s unique approach to the instability of his time can be traced in his engagement

with the papal schism. The papal schism’s overlap with this period sets the stage for

wide uncertainty. The papal schism of 1378-1417 de-centered the Church and fueled

controversies over authority to which Christians in the West should defer. Gower

unambiguously presented division as tied to evil:

…For Senne of his condicioun

Is moder of divisioun

And tokne whan the world schal faile

For so seith Crist withoute faile,

That nyh upon the worldes ende

Pes and acord awey schol wende (1029-34).

[For Sin of its condition is mother of division and token of when the world

shall fail. For Christ says without fail, that nigh upon the world’s end,

My goal in this study is to highlight that various apocalyptic resonances—many formalized, many not—

pervade late-medieval England. Elliot Kendall makes the generalization that “late medieval apocalyptic

was predominantly chiliastic” (50). This position seems overstated, particularly in his application to Gower,

as I will suggest below. Still, the position that most late-medieval apocalypticism was consistently affected

by and aware of chiliasm holds true and informs the present study.

peace and accord shall go away.]

Here Gower is keenly aware of the pattern of division, a repeating narrative, as well as

the reality of the specific End of the age. And these two are connected. Gower is careful

to emphasize the biblical grounding for his theology of division.

Division, the Gospell seith

On hous upon another leith,

Til that the regne al overthrowe:

And thus may every man we knowe,

Division aboven alle

Is thing which makth the world to falle,

And evere hath do sith it began. (967-73)

[Division, the gospel says, lays one house upon another, until the kingdom

overthrows and thus may every person we know, division above all is the

thing that makes the world to fall, and ever has done since it began.]

Division is proven by the beginning marked by creation, as well as by the End. Division,

for Gower, is a great wrong, a sign of faithlessness and of a lack of discernment. But it is

perhaps most legible in visible social disorder. By arguing that division is so destructive

as to destroy monarchic power, Gower grounds his position not only in the Gospel but

also in terms of the theology of monarchic order and disorder extrapolated from ancient

Hebrew history. Disorder in the house leads to disorder in the kingdom. The highest

forms of worldly power can be compromised by such division. Gower presents an all-

encompassing theory of power, a rule concerning Christian headship.

References to Gower’s Confessio in Middle English are to Peck’s edition.

But it is also one that allows for historical continuity despite worldly power going

through many cycles. Gower continues to track the history of destructive division

through the Flood and the construction of the Tower of Babel. And most telling is how

he builds on the prophecy of peacelessness quoted above:

And alle charité schal cesse

Among the men, and hate encresce;

And whan these toknes ben befalle,

Al sodeinly the Ston schal falle,

As Daniel it hath beknowe,

Which al this world schal overthrowe,

And every man schal thanne arise

To Joie or ells to Juise,

Wher that he schal for evere dwelle,

Or straght to hevene or straght to helle. (1035-44)

[And all charity shall cease among people, and hate increase; and when

these tokens happen, all suddenly the stone shall fall, as Daniel it has

known, that all this world shall overthrow, and every person shall then

arise to joy or else to bitterness, where he shall forever dwell, either

straight to heaven or straight to hell.]

These terms laid out by Gower are as apocalyptic as it gets. Indeed Gower posits a

sudden fall that will break the cycle of constant rising and falling of world powers. The

heightening of destruction as the End approaches is clear enough for Gower. And he

grounds it in Danielic apocalypticism.

In spite of the necessary rupture in earthly life,

the chaos brought about by division is in Gower’s conception eternal. Harmony—or at

least the best approximation of harmony available on earth—is found through unity under

visible power. The greatest visible manifestation of power in the late-medieval Christian

west is the Church. Still, even when power does not have all the trappings of the Church

in the Christian West, it must still be legitimized by the Church.

As Gower emphasizes the judgment that is tied to division, he highlights

impending judgment. Those who beget conflict through divisions will suffer division-

caused conflict perpetually. But in earthly life division is seen as something that

necessarily causes other divisions and confusion. For Gower the emergence of Lollardy

at this divisive moment is no accident. Gower in particular sees Lollardy as tied to the

Antichrist and as being pivotal in negative occurrences about to unfold in Christian

history. The concern with Lollards as schismatics of course does not go away, the more

that Lollard thought seeks to distance itself from mainstream religious practice. The

theme of Lollardy causing division continues into the early fifteenth century, where Friar

Daw’s Reply obviously draws on the tensions of the fourteenth.

And so is the comounte treuli oppressid.

The sunne is eclipsid with al his twelve pointes

By erroure and heresie that rengnith in the Chirche.

Now is oure bileve laft, and Lollardi growith,

Envie is enhaunsid and aproched to preestes

In late-medieval Europe Danielic apocalypticism is at times invoked to ground claims of living in the last

days of the world. As Chris Given-Wilson notes in Chronicles, his study of late-medieval historiography,

the scheme derived from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 provides one structure on which conceptions

of English history were grounded. Given-Wilson points to this scheme and to the Six Ages of the World

scheme as maintaining “that this was no ‘middle’ age, but the last age of the world” (116).

That shulden enforme her flok in ground of Goddis lawe,

To love her God sovereynli and sithen her brothir. (Dean, ed., Six

Ecclesiastical Satires, lines 10-16)

[And so is the community truly oppressed. The sun is eclipsed with all its

twelve points by error and heresy that reign in the Church. Now is our

belief forsaken, and Lollardy grows, envy is enhanced and approached

priests who should instruct their flocks in the foundation of God’s law to

love their God sovereignly and subsequently their brothers.].

The shepherds are corrupted, and so are the sheep in their care. Friar Daw’s Reply

continues.

Bot not for thanne now is taught hindring

of states,

And pursuynge of poverte that Crist hath approved.

Now is that seed of cisme sowen in the Chirche,

The whete fadith with the floure, our fode is forto feche,

Foxes frettid in fere wasten the cornes,

And Cristes vine is vanishid to the verray rote. (lines 17-22)

[But not for then now is taught hindring of estates, and pursuing of

poverty that Christ has approved. Now is that seed of schism sown in the

Church, the wheat withers together with the nourishment it affords,

foxes consumed by fear waste the corn, and Christ’s vine is vanished to

the very root.]

In Dean, ed,, Six Ecclesiastical Satires.

Sundering is another option proposed by Heyworth (138).

The Heyworth edition’s gloss, which I use in my translation: "The wheat withers together with the

nourishment it affords, and we have no food” (138). As noted above, all texts cited above are from Dean.

Just so that the clear application to sin cannot be missed, Friar Daw pins envy on

Lollardy. As Dean notes, the allusion to the story of Samson and the foxes of Judges 4-5

“is meant to convey general devastation.” However, the strongest emphasis is on growth:

Lollardy is unwanted and parasitic while the growth of Christ’s church is inhibited by

Lollardy.

Religious Power Constructed, Debated: Dueling Dualisms

Where corruption or other shortfalls are seen in the Church, new ecclesiologies

are decisively forged or inadvertently arrived at. The earthly power of the Church and its

need for change (and/or steadfastness) are central concerns of all of the chief strains of

late-medieval apocalypticism, as McGinn argues in his his chapter “Apocalypticism and

Church Reform: 1100-1500” in The Continuum History of Apocalypticism. Here McGinn

categorizes medieval apocalypticism in capacious terms:

Apocalypticism can be thought of as constituting a broad stream of

religio-political beliefs and practices that can be used by many different

groups in a society (both high and low), as well as for a variety of

purposes, both those that try to “reform,” and therefore generally support

and strengthen societal order, and those that threaten or subvert it. (293)

Building on McGinn’s work, Bostick’s tripartite model of apocalyptic proposes that the

apocalyptic has generally been used to justify existing authority against threats to that

authority, to call for reform to the Church, or to subvert or displace the Church’s power.

Religious power, insofar as persons in power shift, is a moving target, as is

religious practice. As may be illustrated in Wyclif’s public life, in those claiming to

build on his work, and those understood by anti-Lollards to stem from his work,

negotiations of power conceived as reformist may very well take on a subversive

character, or be seen in that way. Malcolm Lambert recounts a famous story of Wyclif

and how certain friars related to him over time:

His stress on the need for poverty in the church and his attacks on the

possessioner orders made him a natural ally of the friars, above all the

Augustinians, who kept on terms with him longer than any other group. In

1377 four doctors from the mendicant friars were ready to defend Wyclif

in St. Paul’s. An Augustinian, Adam Stocton, described Wyclif on his

copy of the De potestate papae as venerabilis doctor; only later was this

crossed off in favour of execrabilis seductor. It was only with the

eucharistic heresy that he was abandoned by the friars. (258)

Extreme favor and extreme disfavor hinge on certain doctrines, and heresy as a legal

matter can be subject to the privilege of official records and therefore subject to human

perception and construction.

But most directly, this example shows the flexibility of

theology in the apocalyptic moment and the capacity of the politics to change.

Facing a proliferation of religious messages, one might very well find comfort in

the fact that others have already made sense of a seeming conflict, such as the conflicted

roles of friars and parish priests. But one might just as easily see the need to react against

a ready-made explanation. Established explanations are seen to be vulnerable, for

example, in the Wife of Bath’s appropriation of medieval exegesis and her own working-

out of biblical lessons. Also within the Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner’s claims to power

See Ian Forrest’s work The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England for dissection of how heresy

was defined and determined.

as well as the Carmelite claim to the tradition of Elijah and Elisha

are subject to

questioning. And through individuals’ objections, new forms of apocalypticism can be

seen to emerge.

Reformism and Power

As I have begun to suggest, apocalypticism, despite having certain parameters, is

fluid, and each instance of apocalypticism I sketch throughout this work amounts to some

sort of hybrid. I trace this hybridity to textual constraints but also to a range of social

concerns. I will get into the textual machinations of this apocalypticism in my closing

chapter, but here I must address how reformist tendencies in apocalypticism—threats

against the existing power—contributed to organizational instability for various parts of

the Church. Reformism in its sense of reshaping and in its sense of correction (the two

senses necessarily overlap and coincide) proposes that something must change.

Various attempts at ecclesiastical reform are traced to families of texts and

auctores, either by careful attribution, by assumed authorship, or even by feigned

authorship. Joachism is one of the many lenses through which authority was reimagined

in apocalyptic terms in the Middle Ages. Regardless of the philological traceability of

Joachite or Pseudo-Joachite

texts in late-medieval England, the rapid advance of the

friars is fueled by Joachite prophecy. Friars are often seen as the physical embodiment of

Joachite prophecy, a project whose credibility is tied to anecdotal evidence of fraternal

corruption. The reputation of Joachim, however textually corrupted it may be, looms

(especially for friars) in the late-medieval period. Even as Joachite texts are suppressed,

the friars appear as Joachim’s words incarnate.

Invoked in The Summoner’s Tale, III.2116. See Riverside Chaucer note (878).

See Kerby-Fulton’s Reformist Apocalypticism for the role of Pseudo-Joachite texts in late-medieval

England.

Other traditions seen to provide lenses for spiritual life included Saint-Amourian

antifraternalism addressed by Penn Szittya, or the anticlerical strains that Wendy Scase

explores in her “Piers Plowman” and the New Anti-clericalism. Scase corrects

generations of assumptions of monolithic traditions and builds the case for anticlericalism

uniquely fitted to the second half of the fourteenth century:

When we examine the careers and writings of anticlerical polemicists and

of clerical apologists, and the disputes in which they were engaged, in the

Piers Plowman period, we do not find simply a repetition of the earlier

clashes, but debates modified by the new, wider, less stable, less

predictable, more dangerous implications the old differences now had for

all clerics. (Scase, “Piers Plowman,” 7)

The uniqueness of the debates speaks to unique conceptions and interrogations of various

forms of ecclesiastical power. And the lack of predictability is the environment in which

apocalypticism thrives—both in the genesis of reformist thought and in responses from

on high to threats to Church authority. Evil is always invoked, but evil’s agents and

manifestations are never exactly agreed upon; fear is likewise always evident to some

extent, but the object of fear varies.

Perceiving Evil in the Moment

Those who are not Christian or who would thwart some professed Christian goal

are to be feared within Christian apocalyptic. One factor making the apocalyptic

especially powerful, as Kieckhefer suggests, is the fact that evil from authoritative

scriptural and patristic texts can be tied to contemporary political figures. The figure of

the Antichrist serves as the most powerful rhetorical figure through which dualism is

managed within the Church, without it, and along margins of it. The use of the term

Antichrist is the most powerful way of marking evil in human activities.

As scholars

including Emmerson, McGinn, and Bostick have noted, the figure bridges the human and

the supernatural.

The impending arrival of Antichrist is very often taken for granted and seen as a

benchmark in the world’s history, as is evidence of the mention of the presence of the

Two Witnesses in the Parlement of the Thre Ages’ treatment of Greek history:

Aftir this Sir Alysaunder alle the worlde wanne,

Bothe the see and the sonde and the sadde erthe,

The iles of the Oryent to Ercules boundes -

Ther Ely and Ennoke ever hafe bene sythen,

And to the come of Antecriste unclosede be thay never - (332-36)

[After this Sir Alexander won all the world, both the see and the sand and

the sad earth, the isles of the Orient to Hercules’ boundaries—there Elijah

and Enoch have been ever since, and they will not be released until the

coming of the Antichrist.]

Within this historical scope, the Two Witnesses, Elijah and Enoch, highlight long

expectation, vigilance but also patience. Late-medieval apocalypticism has the

disadvantage of being historically detached from the oldest of predictions of the End

recorded in the Hebrew and Christian traditions. Nevertheless, the late-medieval vantage

point has the advantage of claiming and categorizing centuries of history.

The linking of a general notion of Antichrist with a specific human Antichrist appears long in developing

in early Christian history. For the distinction and for the genesis in the 2 Thessalonians tradition that leads

to the personalization of the Antichrist, see Kevin Hughes’ Constructing Antichrist.

Along with the extensive appropriation of and categorization of history that late-

medieval apocalyptic entails, it also entails a long-standing priesthood, and it begs a

genealogy tracing deeper and deeper back in time. Fraternalism is to be new but also

grounded in apostolic poverty. It portends the end and connects with the present

(especially apocalyptic) moment, and it also recovers truth traceable in the canon. The

theology legitimizing the parish priest must not only trace itself back to patristic sources,

Pauline prescriptions, and apostolic evangelism, but also to Levitical order and leadership.

Religious leaders in the apocalyptic moment calls must make competing claims to

chosenness. And along with that sense of chosenness must come some sense of being

special, typically cast as purity.

The Model of Priestly Purity: Something Above “Above Reproach”

The strong preoccupation with signs of evil and the Christian teaching of

universal human sinfulness leads one to ask continually, what is apparent sinfulness

opposed to? Purity—a seemingly unattainable human goal—is nevertheless a standard

invoked to various ends throughout the history of Christianity. The pastoral epistle of 1

Timothy is known for its prescription that those leading the Church be above reproach.

This provides the most conspicuous and well-known canonical grounding for notions of

purity. Beyond this, clerical purity also has deep roots in Levitical law, as is apparent

through texts such as Clannesse.

Spiritual purity’s exemplification in Clannesse

proves to owe much to markers of status, as is clear when the poet early on alludes to the

“Blameless” in the terms of the Rheims New Testament (1 Tim 3:2: “It behoveth therefore a bishop to be

blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behavior, chasted, given to hospitality, a

teacher.”) and inreprehensibilis in the terms of the Vulgate (“Oportet ergo episcopum inreprehensibilem

esse unius uxoris virum sobrium prudentem ornatum hospitalem doctorem.”).

Ties to Levitical grounding of priestly purity have been posited in Chaucerian scholarship as well. See

Kaske’s “Summoner’s Garleek,” in which exegesis of Numbers 11:5 is traced.

Beatitudes’ privileging of the pure in heart.

This is particularly true of status tied to the

Church and to clergy. The very issue of purity—being spotless—has stong connections

to social status for status in Clannesse and Pearl. Status is certainly important in power

as displayed in the Church, and Clannesse in a few key moments specifically highlights

priestly purity. In spite of theologians’ assurances that impure priests’ acts are

efficacious, clergy are to set an example of purity.

Purity as applied to humans is often

tied to exemplarity. As I suggested in the previous chapter, exemplarity, a cornerstone of

saint culture, is often argued after the fact. However, contemporary examples emerge as

well, in the Pearl-Maiden, whom we must assume to have lived recently, and

contemporary clergy. However, the touting of contemporary, visible human models of

purity lends itself to the perceptions of contradictions among laity and among competing

clerical factions. The conspicuousness of priestly work, including speech, is a

tremendous point of clerical vulnerability.

This vulnerability sheds light not only on the

real priests idealized in orthodox terms but also on the relative convenience by which

anticlerical satirists were able to impugn their human targets.

The Church and its workers are to set themselves apart not only by spiritual

example, but in very physical terms, as the rules laid out in Leviticus 21:17-23 provide

physical models for the priesthood even into the Middle Ages:

Loquere ad Aaron: homo de semine tuo per familas qui habuerit maculam,

non offeret panes Deo suo, nec accedet ad ministerium eius: si caecus

fuerit, si claudus, si vel parvo vel grandi, vel torto naso, si fracto pede, si

Matthew 5:8.

On late-medieval debates, see Minnis’ Fallible Authors, as well as Ian Christopher Levy’s “Was John

Wyclif’s Theology of the Eucharist Donatistic?”

Clare Waters relates clerical speech and women’s speech to each other, arguing that both were especially

singled out in the late Middle Ages (167).

manu, si gibbus, si lippus, si albuginem habens in oculo, si iugem scabiem,

si impetiginem in corpore, vel hirniosus. Omnis qui habuerit maculam de

semine Aaron sacerdotis, non accedet offerre hostias Domino, nec panes

Deo suo: vescetur tamen panibus, qui offeruntur in Sanctuario, ita

dumtaxat, ut intra velum non ingrediatur, nec accedat ad altare, quia

maculam habet, et contaminare non debet Sanctuarium meum. Ego

Dominus qui sanctifico eos.

[Say to Aaron: Whosoever of thy seed throughout their families, hath a

blemish, he shall not offer bread to his God. Neither shall he approach to

minister to him: If he be blind, if he be lame, if he have a little, or a great,

or a crooked nose, if his foot, or if his hand be broken, if he be

crookbacked, or blear eyed, or have a pearl in his eye, or a continual scab,

or a dry scurf in his body, or a rupture: Whosoever of the seed of Aaron

the priest hath a blemish, he shall not approach to offer sacrifices to the

Lord, nor bread to his God. He shall eat nevertheless of the loaves, that

are offered in the sanctuary, yet so that he enter not within the veil, nor

approach the altar, because he hath a blemish, and he must not defile my

sanctuary. I am the Lord who sanctify them.]

Imperfections as small as maculae, blemishes, are significant. This preoccupation with

corporeal imperfections is not lost in the medieval Christian priesthood and is invoked on

many occasions in the Middle Ages. This section of Leviticus notably covers numerous

aspects of human activity and perception. So many things can go wrong. Not only the

disfigurement of the body is significant, but also any irregularity evident on the body

such as a scab or a blemish. The emphasis on the body may very well make one self-

critical, but it also provides plenty of ways of seeing imperfections in others.

Since antiquity, this concern with imperfection continued to be applied with

earnesty. The priestly perfection in medieval exegesis is constructed not only on

prescriptions attributed to Paul, but also through the continuity assumed from the ancient

Hebrew priesthood. As Ephraim Radner notes,

…medieval exegesis simply read off the Levitical prohibitions and

warnings in these chapters as diverse elements that might signify the

variety of potential ills attributed to priests. Each was explained through a

malleable allegorical template. Hesychius, normalized in the Glossa

ordinaria (Patrologia latina 113.358-59), for instance, takes the list in Lev.

21:18-21—blindness, lameness, mutilation, deformity, skin problems—

and applies each defect to a particular vice or spiritual weakness (pride,

ignorance, lassitude, indiscriminate moral perception, carnality, etc.). The

constraints on marriage in Lev. 21 or the levels of familial approach to the

food of the altar in Lev. 22 follow a similar line of application. (Radner

227)

Purity is therefore readily apparent, and visible imperfections are often seen to betray

hidden spiritual ones. Physical qualities of the body show spiritual ones, and therefore

spiritual life is capable of being read in physical features. Symmetry and consistency in

history are constantly argued for: continuity of marriage and priesthood persist until the

End. And the End can be determined because earlier things: Creation, institution of

marriage, Fall, Flood, institution of priesthood, are all traced clearly and organized

systematically. Traditions of power and consistency may be asserted; however, power in

the present may be considered more tenuous.

Visibly legitimate power and purity in the moment are hard to see and easy to

disprove. Therefore, even though the obligation of purity applies to all, the figure of

purity is one that puts clergy in a difficult position. Purity in the beginning of Clannesse

is presented in the example of a priest, but the figure becomes increasingly complicated

the more that it aggregates meaning. Clannesse very quickly moves on to articulate

purity in the terms laid out by Christ in the Beatitudes:

“Þe haþel clene of his hert hapenez ful fayre,

For he schal loke on oure Lorde with a leue chere”;

And so saytz, to þat syȝt seche schal he neuer

Þat any vnclannesse hatz on, auwhere abowte;

For He þat flemus vch fylþe fe fro His hert

May not byde þat burre þat hit His body neȝe

Forþy hyȝ not to heuen in haterez totorne,

Ne in the harlatez hod, and handez vnwaschen.

For what vrþly haþel þat hyȝ honour haldez,

Wolde lyke if a ladde com lyþerly attyred,

When he were sette solempnely in a sete ryche,

Abof dukez on dece, with dayntez serued?”’ (27-38, Andrew & Waldron)

[“‘It turns out very well for the man with a clean heart, for he shall look on

our Lord with a loved face.’—which is to say that anyone who is wearing

any uncleanness anywhere about him shall never come to that sight; for

He who banishes all filth from His heart cannot endure the shock of its

approaching Him. Therefore do not hurry to heaven in ragged clothes, nor

in the hood of a beggar and with hands unwashed. For what earthly man

who possesses high rank would be pleased if, when he was placed

ceremoniously in a splendid throne, above dukes on the dais, served with

delicacies, a fellow came meanly dressed?” (Trans. Andrew and

Waldron)]

The sense of encouraging reversal commonly associated with the Beatitudes is dampened

if the terms of purity—often with socioeconomic coloring—seem unattainable and

foreign. The pure in heart, regardless of stature, are said to see God. As the

commonplace goes, the exalted are humbled and the humbled exalted. The imagery,

taken from a gospel, takes on fresh meaning in medieval England and necessarily uses

the semiotics of noble/peasant as its frame of reference. Binaries such as sated/hungry,

clean/dirty, and exemplary/unpresentable become the expressions of purity and impurity.

Cleanness, then, is transformative and readies one for the presence of God. Just

as knowledge and ignorance are at stake in the apocalypse, so too is purity and impurity.

Worldly power connotes power, stability, and preparedness. Everyone’s power can be

conventionally seen as lined up with de facto wealth/poverty and station. The discourse

of poverty—to which I will return later in this chapter—lines up with unpreparedness,

and the appearance and demeanor of nobility are inherently noble. The simple

reassurance that the pure in heart shall see God is expanded by the writer of Clannesse to

tie in images of class, images of appearance suggesting station, de facto power and

privilege legitimized.

Again, the pathological orientation of apocalypticism is important here. The

pathology of the apocalypse apparent in this period leaves room for persons to be

condemned according to a variety of criteria, and the terms by which clergy are judged

become extremely flexible. Although the means by which people are judged tend to

make laypeople more vulnerable to judgment than clergy, it is not surprising that

increasingly the laity come to use widely touted standards of purity to judge clergy.

Anticlerical and Interclerical Filth-Slinging: Economies of (Im)Purity

Contested power between clerical factions, a topic that emerges frequently in

interclerical and anticlerical literature, can be tied to limited money, limits of other

resources, limits of space, and the extent to which laypersons will entertain clergy’s

requests for religious services. But as clerical factions—parish priests and friars, to

sketch two broad groups—have competing claims to legitimacy and embrace different

rules, the conflicting standards of purity and correctness suggest a tight economy of

purity. The forms of corruption suggested in Piers Plowman and in the Canterbury Tales

lead one to think what exactly purity might look like in practice and how it might (or

might not) be sustainable over a long period of time. And if the standard for clergy is to

be above reproach, interclerical conflict that necessarily manufactures criticism of others

minimizes unquestioned purity.

In some cases allegations of impurity may be seen as very local, but in other cases

clerical problems may appear more systemic within the Church. The likely Lollard

character Jack Upland, after laying out his understanding of historical orthodoxy,

expounds on the difference between Christian and Antichristian activity done in the name

of the Church.

And thus hath Crist taught bothe bi dede and bi word, as Holi Writ berith

witnes in many placis, and thus was Cristis Chirche governed a thousand

yeer and more. But Anticrist hath govun leve to leve al this and to do

another maner. (Dean, Six Ecclesiastical Satires 119, lines 15-17)

[And thus has Christ taught that both by deed and by word, as Holy Writ

bears witness in many places, and thus was Christ’s Church governed a

thousand years and more. But Antichrist has given leave to leave all this

and to do another manner.]

Laypeople are caused to stray because leaders are made to stray. And this is happening at

a late, millennially-defined moment. The Church, kept pure enough for upwards of a

millennium, becomes impure as it comes “to do another maner”: Jack speaks not of

gradations of purity or teaching but of a qualitatively different manner. Furthermore, to

underscore the pattern for which Jack argues, a sweeping historical generalization is

necessary for this construction of a long period of consistent religious practice within the

Church. An apocalyptic vantage point very often serves not only to cast doubt on the

present but also to idealize the past. Furthermore, when one draws a strong contrast

between a heterodox present and an orthodox past, one is privileging the historiography

that argues for consistent and long-standing orthodoxy. The past exists in simple and

pure terms while the present, accessible in many more forms of data, is impure because it

is complicated.

Dean dates the work to “the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century” (Six Ecclesiastical Satires 115).

References to Jack Upland and to Friar Daw’s Reply are to Dean’s edition.

As the discourse continues, the terms in which corruption is cast depend on an

ideal split between Church and world:

For he geveth leve to preestis of parischis bothe highe and lowe to leve

prechinge and to do lewid mennes office; and yit thei takun hire of her

parischis never the lasse as offringis and tithis and othere possessiouns

dowid for almes, and as for worldli bisines. (17-21)

[For he gives leave to priests of parishes both high and low to leave

preaching and to due lowly persons’ office. And yet they take payment

from their parishes nevertheless from offerings and tithes and other

possessions given as alms, and from worldly business.]

Impurity, in Jack’s construction, arises from letting spiritual matters become corrupted by

“lewid mennes office” and “worldly bisines.” The lewid men and all matters of the world

are too visible. And furthermore, the priests are leaving the preaching and other duties

with which they were charged. The ascetic separation that would keep the business of the

Church purer may not be possible at all; this untouched religious authority and perfectly

unworldly religious practice might only ever be argued and never realized. This

construction of orthodoxy, in large, is a function of texts. Jack continues to frame

heterodoxy in accessible terms, which we might see as a glimpse of an observer’s

perception of a priest’s non-devotion. The presence of impurity seems to preclude any

counterevidence that would suggest purity.

Thei marren many matins and massis with-out devossioun, and herto

sacramentis schulen be soolde or els gete no man noon; and lest thei

schulden studie in Goddis lawe, he hath ordeyned hem to studie in othere

dyvers lawis for the more wynnynge. And as anentis ensaumple of prestis

lijf in doynge, who doith more worldli werkis thanne thei, or more

covytous, and suffre mai thei no wronge but if thei plete anoon, and of alle

men thei mai worst suffre to be repreved of her defautis, be thei never so

many. (21-27)

[They mar many matins and masses without devotion, and hereto

sacraments shall be sold or else no man gets anything; and lest they should

study in God’s law, he has ordained them to study in other divers laws for

the more winning. And concerning the example of priests’ life in doing,

who do more worldly works than they, or more covetous, and they may

suffer no wrong if they plead at once, and they of all people may suffer the

wordt to be reprieved of their defects, be they ever so many.]

Many parish priests who “marren many matins and masses with-out devossioun” have

been lead astray and are leading others astray. In this construction, they are

compromising the Church’s local leadership. Not unlike Gower’s argument on division’s

profoundly destructive effects, here a series of effects are asserted to result from clerical

corruption: services are performed heartlessly and the sacraments are simonized when

they are not abandoned altogether. Certainly, documents and debates of the later Middle

Ages attest to various religious services being monetized. But the argument raised

against simony too often naively assumes a demonetized (and therefore “pure”) system of

religious practice. Evil persons working in the name of the Church have, in Jack

Upland’s presentation, turned the Church’s virtues into vices.

Situating simony in the context of the obvious and very public sins of apostasy and

blasphemy, Wyclif presents the morality in this way:

Whereas apostasy is generally, according to its underlying principle, a

turning away from religion by man, blasphemy, at its root, is a slandering

of God’s power; simony, however, according to its underlying principle,

as a striving to destroy God’s plan. (On Simony 29).

Simony in these idealized terms thus runs counter to creation but also to the trajectory of

creation, which is headed toward final judgment. And beyond the assumption of

apocalyptic evil in simony, individuals suspicious of simony may feel moved to mark

simoniacs or inveigh against them out of apocalyptic necessity. Apocalypticism in the

Christian tradition, for all its appearance as challenging or convoluted, makes use of very

accessible and nearly universal human tendencies to distinguish oneself from the other, to

privilege one’s own (necessarily infrequent) perception, to lament what is lacking in the

present while to cherish some ideal (often associated with the past).

The invocation of purity, however, is not only evident in broadly anticlerical

rhetoric. It is also invoked against Lollards, against friars individually, and in defense of

various clerical factions. Although all of the permutations of anticlerical, interclerical

and proclerical rhetoric cannot be treated here, one might consider how the unique friar-

against-Lollard dynamic suggested by Friar Daw’s reply finds its own convenient terms.

Friar Daw’s Reply, dated to the early fifteenth century but directly engaged with Jack and

speaking to concerns contemporary with the late fourteenth century, throws charges of

evil back at Jack:

But, Jakke, bi my lewte, lowde thou lyest,

For telle me bi oure counseile: what lord hath ben confoundid,

Or what prelat of ony pepil put in ony peril?

But sith that wickide worme - Wiclyf be his name -

Began to sowe the seed of cisme in the erthe,

Sorowe and shendship hath awaked wyde,

In lordship and prelacie hath growe the lasse grace. (68-74)

[But Jack, upon my honr, you are lying loud, for tell me by our counsel:

what lord has been confounded, or what prelate of any people put in any

peril? But since that wicked worm—Wyclif is his name—began to sow

the seed of schism in the earth, sorrow and destruction have arisen widely;

in lordship and prelacy has grown the less grace.]

For Friar Daw Lollardy is far more insidious than anything that friars or other factions of

the Church have been responsible for. But most telling is the framing of Wyclif as

wormlike and the construction of Wyclif as a sower of schism and as someone who

awakens evil qualities. Wyclif, in terms here paralleling the demonic, is an originator of

evil. Daw continues:

Jak, thou seist with symonye the seven sacramentes we sellen,

And preien for no men but yif thei wil paien.

God wote, Jakke, thou sparist here the sothe,

And er we departen us a-soundre, it shal wel be shewid.

But oon is the sacrament that we han to dispensen

Off penaunce to the peple whan nede askith. (75-80)

[Jack, who says with simony we sell the seven sacraments and pray for no

people unless they pay, God knows, Jack, you here are avoiding the truth,

and before we go our separate ways, it shall be evident. But there is one

sacrament that we have to dispense, tht of penance to the people when

need requires.]

The allegations of simony, dependent on convenient data, are ultimately false, according

to Friar Daw. The truth consists not of a weighing of the evidence regarding simony but

rather of the authority that the Church has independent of that debate. Central to the

debate are questions of allegiance and orthodoxy: Who is to be trusted? Who is lying?

Whose speech presents correct doctrine?

The late-fourteenth century texts known as “Sixteen Points on Which the Bishops

Accuse Lollards” and the “Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards” further illustrate

evidence of a crucial ecclesiological conflict.

The bishops’ Sixteen Points and the

Lollards’ Twelve Conclusions attest to disagreement on the legitimacy of the Church and

on who represents good or evil in this moment. These texts must be examined for what

we can reasonably assume that they are—forceful constructions of others’ supposed false

teaching. False teaching, however constructed, presupposes the falseness of the

enterprise. And true and false are of course opposed in stark dualistic apocalyptic terms.

False teaching is argued as cause for vigilance, and false teaching upon which power is

constructed (or by which legitimate power is undermined) must be exposed, as the

Bishops’ Sixteen Points and Twelve Conclusions attributed to the Lollards do.

This

For both texts, see Anne Hudson’s Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, 19-29.

As I cite these controversial lists, I seek primarily to establish that textual attestations to controversy exist.

I must stop short of presuming these works to be as documentary as they have previously read. For a recent

exposure shows how power is seized through rhetoric, through the dissemination of

messages, and through burgeoning literacy.

All of the Points frame heterodox Lollard teachings, all of of which in some way

translate into a minimization of ecclesiastical wealth and power. The Conclusions,

spelled out more carefully than what we must imagine the Bishops’ accusations were,

attest to fierce debate over the power of the Church (and by extension the power of the

individual):

Trewe cristen men schulden answere here aviseliche, trewliche and

mekelich to þe poyntis and articlis þat ben put aȝens hem: aviseliche þat

þei speike not vnkonnyngliche, trwliche þat þei speike not falseliche, and

mekeliche þat þei speike not prowdeliche in her answere, and þan schal[l]

be grace in þer speiking or answering be þe helpe of Crist. (Hudson,

Selections, lines 50-55)

[True Christian people should here answer thoughtfully, truly, and meekly

to the points and articles that are put against them: thoughtfully that they

speak not unknowingly, truly that they speak not falsely, and meekly, that

they speak not proudly in their answer, and then shall be grace in their

speaking or answer by the help of Christ.]

Again, the dualism is implicit in claims of true and false teaching. This dualism is made

especially clear in the Bishops’ call for markedly “Christian” behavior in response to

harsh claims. The legitimacy of power is determined in very absolute terms.

scholarly correction, see a critical reading of the Conclusions in Wendy Scase’s “The Audience and

Framers of the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.”

Friar and Summoner: Framing Church Corruption

Many forms of instability, arising from many different sources but consistently

threatening established order and making individuals feel vulnerable, contribute to

apocalyptic mentalities within this period. Specifically considering ecclesiastical

authority, one must imagine on how many fronts ecclesiastical authority is being called

into question. This question is important insofar as marginally religious figures such as

pardoners and summoners suggest how widely the Church’s power is being asserted. In

the Canterbury Tales the Pardoner shows his trade in indulgences to be transparently

corrupt but also rhetorically very effective as he can point to the sins of all and then

leverage secrets of sins against those who confided in him. Church workers’ claims to be

entitled to people’s most compromising secrets implicate not only the indulgence trade in

late medieval culture, but also upon practices of penance.

The summoner character of

the Friar’s Tale similarly uses his work to extort money from those, such as the widow,

who can be maligned based on her circumstances. The Friar’s summoner from the very

beginning of the tale treats privacy and information as a commodity, effectively reversing

the ideal pattern of confession as he aggressively accuses.

And he can be so aggressive

at his work because of the official Church entity that he represents.

Chaucer’s Summoner and Friar, uniquely pitted against each other, show

ecclesiastical power as aggressive, as clearly opposed to the interests of many laypersons.

These characters work for the Church, but they can be seen as more antagonistic than

shepherdly. Ultimately, Chaucer’s friars and summoners—those contained within tales

and those telling them—all concern themselves with framing good and evil. Setting such

On the exploitation of secrecy regarding confession in the late Middle Ages, see Beth Allison Barr’s

“Three’s a Crowd,” and also Karma Lochrie’s Covert Operations.

I will treat the implications of privacy in my chapter below dealing with speech and confession.

a moral agenda in its own right connotes power. And they extend their own limited

claims to power to gain advantage over others. More specifically, they all judge, and

they do so decisively and quickly. Quick and wide-ranging justice is practiced by the

Summoner in particular. The Summoner’s imperfections are apparent already in the

General Prologue: “…As hoote he was & lecherous as a sparwe…” [As hot he was, and

lecherous as a sparrow.] (I.626). The Summoner embodies hypocrisy very tellingly. As

Seth Lerer observes, “Chaucer’s Summoner abuses his position by associating himself

with (and ultimately, getting money from) the very sexual transgressions that the church

courts were supposed to punish” (264). The very real threat of someone being taken into

church court extended across society and certainly would have resonated with those lay

members within the company of pilgrims.

In indicting the work of summoners, the Friar makes a case for the illegitimacy of

the enterprise in which a thinly veiled wrong is involved, tracing it back to its

ecclesiastical authority. In the opening of the Friar’s Tale, the scene is set by the

invasiveness of the archdeacon’s power, and the summoner is the extension of that power.

And this power soon comes to encompass more and more aspects of life. In the opening

indictment of the summoner’s practices and the system of Church justice, the friar paints

a hellish picture of a system that can ensnare just about anyone. Absent a long tradition

of anti-summoner literature parallel to the understandably rich antifraternal tradition, the

indictment of the summoner might seem unique to a few texts. As Jill Mann points out in

her Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, the Chaucer may very well be drawing on the

negative associations of summoners laid out in Piers Plowman. Still, a major point

illustrated in the Friar’s setup is that the texts are stacked against parishioners (especially

those who do not pay into the system very generously) and in favor of those who work

for the church. People are made to feel guilty, and it is the willingness of people to be

thus taxed and manipulated—through guilt—that makes the system work.

The authority of the Church, aggressively criticized and legitimized in the period,

is all-encompassing. The Church has a great deal of control over human activities. Such

an expanse of activity gives the summoner opportunity for manipulation and bribery, and

the whole enterprise can even be taken as a form of thievery. This summoner character’s

corruption is most clearly seen in his exploitation of a sick widow:

“…May I nat axe a libel, sire somonour,

And answere there by my procuratour

To swich thyng as men wole opposen me?”

“Yis,” quod this somonour, “pay anon—lat se—

Twelf pens to me, and I wol thee acquite.

I schal no profit han therby but lite;

My maister hath the profit and nat I….” (III.1595-1601)

[“May I not ask a libel, Sir Summoner, and answer there by my procurer

to such a thing as people will oppose me?” “Yes,” said this summoner,

“pay at once—let’s see—twelve pence to me, and I will forgive you. I

shall only make a little profit by it. My master makes the profit and not

I.”]

“This false theef, this somnour” (1348) has his work exposed as devilish, a charge that

the real Summoner must reflect back at the Friar. As we entertain the image that the

Summoner gives us in his prologue, we must imagine the friar objectively hell-bound (or

in an alternate demonic reading, hell-born) but also hell-oriented in motivation, through a

double meaning of “So was the develes ers ay in his minde.” The broad claims of

friars—seen as overstepping by parish priests and others—in the Summoner’s story are

extended to the point of divinely inspired vision. The friar uses his claim to vision to

exploit people and to tell them what they want to hear: “His deeth saugh I by

revelacioun…I dar wel seyn that, er that half an hour / After his deeth, I saugh him born

to blisse / In myn avision, so God me wise!” (III.1854, 1856-8). It should be noted that

claims to revelation are here put in a friar’s mouth, and not spoken by the pilgrim. The

friar of the Summoner’s Tale achieves a masterful balance between finding what he wants

and telling people what they want to hear.

What people want to hear, of course, is that they are in good standing and that evil

is chiefly outside of them. Some other person, or some other faction, or some foreign

area of life is the problem. In a moment already understood as apocalyptic, people’s

awareness of imperfections in others adds to hypersensitivity about evil. And there are

plenty of conspicuous problems to be seen. The Friar, of course, is not immune from

charges of conflict of interest and of taking advantage of laypersons either. The Friar

presents a unique form of conflict in religious practice, as he resolves one problem (the

difficulty or inapproachability of penance) by presenting another (exacting a high fee).

To put it charitably, he comes across as morally compromised. As David Raybin reminds

us, demonic references run throughout the Canterbury Tales, particularly in the Friar’s

Tale (“Goddes Instrumentz” 94). The friar, characterized as “a wantowne and a merye”

(208) and as “[s]o muchel of daliaunce and fair langage” (211) in the General Prologue,

is rendered simultaneously sympathetic and antipathetic for friendliness and

loquaciousness.

Ful swetely herde he confessioun,

And plesaunt was his absolucioun:

He was an esy man to yeve penaunce,

There as he wiste to have a good pitaunce. (I.221-24)

[Full sweetly he heard confession, and pleasant was his absolution: he was

an easy man to give penance, there as he expected to have a good

pittance.]

Friars seem to be in any event succeptible to criticism. Therefore, very early on, the

superficiallly positive social qualities of the Friar unravel to show that this look of

happiness and this willingness to talk (and listen) freely has a cost.

Through the characterizations of the friar and other clergy or religious officers in

the Tales, good and evil are effectively tied to money and the willingness to pay within

the medieval sacramental system. The Antichristian in the Summoner’s Prologue and

Tale has been traced by Alan Fletcher in his study Preaching, Politics, and Poetry in

Late-Medieval England, who shows the work’s strong consistency with Lollard

Antichrist rhetoric that was readily accessible when Chaucer was writing.

The

Antichrist, as McGinn notes, “is first and foremost the great deceiver, the arch-hypocrite”

Fletcher weighs pre-Lollard as well as Lollard possible connections with the demonic story in the

Prologue:

It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the motif in the Summoner’s Prologue had some

Wycliffite resonance and currency by the time Chaucer was writing. It might be thought

that arse-infesting friars would have been a natural enough way of depicting a

particularly stinking group of heretics, especially when the raw materials from which

Chaucer put his defensive conceit together may have already been traditional. It remains

the case, however, that in the decade in which he wrote, the antimendicant polemic most

nearly consonant with his chosen antimendicant collocation was coming from Lollard

pens. (Preaching, Politics, and Poetry 288)

(Antichrist 5), and the Summoner works hard to heighten the sense that the Friar is

deceptive and hypocritical. The tale, in spite of the seeming originality noted by some

scholars

, casts a wide net and indicts many friars by implication, arguably all of the

orders. Just as the Church (archdeacons and summoners particularly) has much power

over people through the ecclesiastical courts, the friar wields much power through

confession

—particularly by making confession uniquely accessible.

This friar-character of the Summoner’s Tale, for starters, is preaching at a church

(III.1714), foregrounding the turf wars that the ascendancy of the friars caused in late

medieval Europe. The summoner also indicts the friars’ commitment to building—they

have more than sufficient shelter, as well as food:

“Yif me thanne of thy gold, to make oure cloystre,”

Quod he, “for many a muscle and many an oystre,

Whan othere men han ben ful wel at eyse,

Hath been oure foode, our cloystre for to reyse.

And yet, God woot, unnethe the fundement

Parfourned is, ne of our pavement

Nys nat a tyle yet withinne oure wones.

By God, we owen fourty pound for stones. (III.2099-2106)

[“Give me then of your gold, to make our cloister,” he said, “for many a

mussel and many an oyster has been our food (when other men have been

full well at ease) to raise our cloister, and yet, God knows, underneath, the

Benson suggests, “The Summoner’s tale of a hypocritical friar has neither a known source nor any close

analogues” (877). But that philological point aside, the tale relates to a rich antifraternal tradition in the

later Middle Ages. Friars were the butt of jokes when they were not having outright venom directed at

them. Penn Szittya has sketched out a tradition of antifraternal literature traceable to William of Saint-

Amour, but the friars made plenty of enemies wherever they went, even as they proved popular with some.

See Chapter Three below for my extended discussion of the implications of confession and speech.

foundation is hardly formed, nor is there a tile of our pavement here yet

within our dwelling. By God, we owe forty pound for stones.]

The infrastructure required by the friars is not at all cheap. And rather than

circumventing the complicated and costly structures of the late-medieval church, the

friar’s supposed ethic of poverty adds to the cost. And to complicate matters further, the

value in trade of the friars’ services (and the friars’ very worth) is at stake.

And yet such perceived value undercuts the ideal of apostolic poverty

maintained by friars. The costs of fraternal activities are indicted in Pierce the

Plowman’s Crede, traceable to the late fourteenth century. In that text the Franciscan

describes his way of living, at first grounding his work in modesty and poverty:

We hondlen no money but menelich faren,

And haven hunger at the meate, at ich a mel ones;

And haven forsaken the worlde and in wo lybbeth

In penaunce and poverte, and precheth the puple,

By ensample of oure life, soules to helpen;

And in povertie praien for all oure parteners

That gyveth us any good, God to honouren,

Other bell other booke, or breed to our fode,

Other catell other cloth to coveren with our bones,

Money or money-worthe—here mede is in heven. (Dean, Six

Ecclesiastical Satires, lines 108-117)

But how much have they indeed forsaken the world? The ascetic split between spiritual

and worldly is not so pronounced as friars would claim it to be. But in these

constructions of fraternalism—those found in the Summoner’s Tale and those found in

Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede—we are seeing projected corruption, performed

hypocrisy. To drive home the point about the cost—indeed, largesse—of fraternalism,

Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede maintains that the work of the Friars Minor has some

overhead. He continues:

For we buldeth a burwgh, a brod and a large,

A church and a chapaile with chambers alofte,

With wide windowes ywrought and walles well heye

That mote bene portreid and paynt and pulched ful clene

With gaie glittering glas, glowing as the sonne. (lines 118-122)

Simple poverty suddenly isn’t very simple, and it entails certain comforts that many

wouldn’t enjoy. In the apocalyptic moment—any post-Antiquity moment awaiting the

end—human behavior is important, and friars through apostolic example purport to be

exemplars, figures approaching living saints. In these fraternal claims past and present

(typically opposed/contrasted in apocalypticism, as I have suggested above) are

combined. And this combination of the past and present—this heavy emphasis on

tradition in spite of the perceived newness of the fraternal institution—strikes many as

uneasy.

We overstep as interpreters of literature and history if we read these constructed

friars—however similar to their real counterparts—as historical figures. But we must

read the vivid narrative characterizations of friars as important points in the history of

apocalyptic rhetoric. The fictional friars embody contradiction, hypocrisy, conflict of

interest. In Chaucer, the Summoner’s Friar’s appeal gets worse by narrative design. The

Friar is keen on asking for nice food, and he responds to someone’s claim of lack of food

by asking for even more valuable goods. He asks for others to trade their own security,

to give whatever last thing they has that represents a small amount of security. And just

as a layperson contemplates losing everything for religious services, the Friar ups the

ante: he invokes the apocalyptic and the prophetic.

“Now help, Thomas, for hym that harwed helle!

For ells moste we oure books selle.

And if yow lake oure predicacioun,

Thanne goth the world al to destruccioun.

For whoso wolde us fro this world bireve,

So God me save, Thomas, by youre leve,

He wolde bireve out of this world the sonne.

For who kan teche and werchen as we konne?

And that is nat of litel tyme,” quod he,

“But syn Elye was, or Elise,

Han freres been—that fynde I of record—…. (III.2107-17)

[Now help, Thomas, for him that harrowed hell! For otherwise, we must

sell our books. And if you lack our preaching, then the world goes all to

destruction. For whoso would deprive us from this world, he would

deprive the world of the sun. For who can teach and work as we can?

And that is not something recent, he said, but since Elijah was, or Elisha,

there have been friars—I find record of that.]

In the fictional friar’s words, very much is resting on the preaching of the friars. They

are uniquely equipfped to teach and work: “For who kan teche and werchen as we konne?”

They are irreplaceable. Their work’s importance is grounded in biblical authority, in an

ancient tradition. Their work is grounded, according to the Carmelite line that he uses, in

the long tradition of biblical prophecy.

So anyone speaking to a friar is speaking to

someone with a unique blessing (and sometimes gifted with foreknowledge). And if you

would not give up your gold to forestall them giving up their books, you are getting in the

way of the Gospel. The friar, narrowly focused on his own interests and unable to

balance them with those of the many persons doing religious work in his country, makes

an ambitious argument for his own superiority. It is an argument that rests on the friars

offering something essentially the same as what ancient prophets offered. And in that

vein, conflict can be justified. Being unpopular can be reconciled with truth.

The lack of sustainability of the fraternal enterprise was recognized in many

corners of the late-medieval Christian West. Szittya points out the antifraternal strains

not only in the end of the B-version of Piers Plowman but also in the “bidders and

beggeres” of the Prologue (line 41). The evil of the friars is seen in terms of not just

speech but also action. Szittya points out the rhetoric employed against an enterprise that

involves begging:

As the minstrels pervert the true function of words, so able-bodied beggars,

soliciting alms under false pretenses, undermine a social order founded on

work. (257).

On the Carmelite narrative tracing their history to Elijah and Elisha, see the note to line 2116 in the

Riverside Chaucer (878).

But as is apparent in the condemnation of friars in Piers Plowman, fraternal

disassociation from work can be easily seen as a departure from Christian virtue and a

disassociation from the signs of the Church. Szittya clarifies the indictment of friars as

he expands on Sire Penetrans Domos:

He is no representative of any living friar but rather of an idea, or ideas,

about friars….But he is also a symbol within the terms set uniquely by

Langland’s own poem. As a representative of the two signal features of

the friars’ life, mendicancy and the secular apostolate, he reflects the two

major problems on which Langland has focused from the field full of folk:

word and work, the right use of the divine gift of speech and the proper

contribution of one’s labor to the profit of human society. (284)

As much as friars have tried to define their work uniquely, they cannot prevent others

from holding them to universally accepted standards of religious practice. They

distinguish themselves from clergy and from laypersons, but in so doing they invite

behavioral comparisons.

Friars seem more conspicuous targets than some other pilgrims simply because of

their work out in the open and their need to engage with people whom they might not see

frequently. Laypeople hesitate to trust friars, but friars might not know whom to trust

either, given their broad exposure to society and itinerant practice. But broad exposure

also correlates with broad access and a mobility that parish priests and other clergy do not

enjoy. As the friar of the tale argues that he is better equipped than others (by implication,

better than a parish priest), he also benefits from a mobility that other clergy do not have.

He uses the convenience that he offers—he makes house calls, after all—to justify his

existence, even as he horns in on some work that others would have done otherwise.

Although readers must take care to distinguish between the pilgrim Friar and the

Summoner’s friar for the sake of reference, readers of course are invited to read the two

together. The Friar’s Tale and Summoner’s Tale work hand in hand because of how

neatly the characters are to line up with the pilgrims. Unsympathetic pilgrim-storytellers

join with the purportedly (but problematically) honest Chaucer to give us insights that the

pilgrim Friar, again characterized in the General Prologue as offering a kinder, gentler

confession, is all the more dangerous—in some theologians’ eyes, at least—for making it

so easy. Furthermore, through simony he has made confession (an emerging part of the

sacramental system which will be discussed in the next chapter) a competitive enterprise

by making a sacrament easier in exchange for money.

Ultimately, apocalypticism in this period intensifies through developing (some

developing longer than others) conflicts regarding religious authority. And this is further

intensified by social exposure and the capacity of individuals to judge. The authority of

the Church is at stake in the apocalyptic: one must determine whether patterns of activity

and teaching should change remain constant. The dualistic nature of apocalypticism

furthermore has been used at various moments in the history of Christianity to define the

legitimacy of power. Individual religious leaders can be seen as anti-Christian, and

whole factions are idealized, questioned, or demonized in apocalyptic terms. This

moment in England is witness to the continued conflict between such factions as parish

priests and friars, between Wycliffites and those who come to question Wyclif, and

among many other factions. Either you are with us or you are against us, as the

commonplace goes, and the prospect of an end to the world makes affiliation all the more

important.

I began this chapter alleging that apocalypticism was further fueled through

religious authority and religious practice. I remarked how the literature of the period

highlihgts the ways in which the experience of Christianity promoted thinking in an

apocalyptic mode. Instances of this apocalyptic mode being expressed through authority

and practice are evident in, as I have shown, works as varying in aim and audience as the

Canterbury Tales, Clannesse, Pearl, the York Plays, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, the

Lollard Twelve Conclusions, and the Bishops’ Sixteen Points. Religious power and

practice are conspicuously understood in terms of apocalyptic narratives, and the

evidence dictates that we must understand not a monolithic late-medieval apocalypticism

but rather various dynamic apocalyptic views evident in the forms of Christianity itself.

Apocalyptic implications are more pervasive in the writings of the period than is

generally acknowledged. As I will show in the next chapter, these broad concerns about

authority and practice lead into more specific concerns about speech and confession. We

must consider, then, not only how speech is curtailed and how a growing culture of

required confession may make persons individually vulnerable, but also how speech itself

is understood dualistically.

CHAPTER THREE: CONFESSION AND THE END

The Christian apocalyptic tradition through the Middle Ages has strong ties to

confession, a practice that requires awareness of time as individual Christians look

reflexively backward at sin and forward in hope. Concerns with confession and concerns

with an End remain strong in texts ranging from the Canterbury Tales to pastoral

literature, as sacramental confessional practice and apocalypticism vary or are in states of

flux. The prospect of judgment, which is essential to the apocalypse, may make

individuals turn to penance, a sacrament of which confession is a constituent part. Even

as individual formalized penance develops in the medieval period, the apocalypse

provides a strong conceptual basis for the consistency of the practice because it grounds

the mechanics of penance in a sense of ancient tradition as well as contemporary practice.

As the modern exponent of confession Bernhard Poschmann maintains, penitential

practice assumes a transhistorical and apocalyptic imperative, showing an awareness of

all history and defining itself in terms of the apocalypse. Poschmann makes a forceful

case for penitential practice as an apocalyptic imperative:

The Apocalypse provides an instructive element to the apostolic teaching

on penance. In the introductory letters the moral condition of the Church

is depicted in a few bold strokes. Those who have been censured are

required in the plainest terms to do penance. For less serious failings,

even for those which of their nature lead to spiritual ruin, such as

negligence and tepidity, all that is required is repentance and emendation

(2:5; 3:1-5, 15-19). But the bishops must not tolerate grave sins, such as

idolatry and unchastity, in their churches. They will be severely judged if

they do not take action against these offenders, i.e., if they do not expel

them from the community (2:2; 2:14-16; 2:20). (18)

The strong association between penance and the End should come as little surprise. A

close look at Apoc. 2:5, which Poschmann cites from a distance, shows how John’s text

resonates with the apocalyptic:

Memor esto itaque unde excideris et age paenitentiam et prima opera fac

sin autem venio tibi et movebo candelabrum tuum de loco suo nisi

paenitentiam egeris.

[Be mindful therefore from whence thou art fallen: and do penance and do

the first works. Or else I come to thee and will move thy candlestick out

of its place, except thou do penance.]

Here in his Apocalypse’s letter to the angel of Ephesus, John invokes memory and

expectation, as well as the threats of an end and of judgment. Layered on top of this is

the social context of John writing to scattered churches, conveying divine correction in

absolute terms. The principles of penance here are seen to argue for universal and

systematic practice. John’s Apocalypse has been frequently understood as invoking a

broad and age-long ecclesiology and as delineating principles for conducting the business

of the church and interactions among adherents to Christianity; as such, it was understood

for centuries of late antiquity and Middle Ages to address the social realities of the

church.

Penitential practice thus has deep roots in the Christian tradition and accounts

for a wide range of human activity. And it can seem an unstable way to respond to

As E. Ann Matter states, “All of the Apocalypse commentaries from the Carolingian world thus show the

continuing assumption of the text as an allegory of the Church, and a continuing process of filtering

specific interpretations from earlier commentaries to support that assumption” (49). Matter also, with a nod

to Paula Fredriksen’s “Tyconius and the End of the World” (74-75), is careful to note that this strong

emphasis on present religious practice can be traced back as far as Tyconius (Matter 49n39).

human activity since it requires human activity itself. It responds to social realities as it

redefines its own complicated social reality. In this chapter, the apocalyptic urgency I

have sketched in the previous two will be explored through its connections to confession,

a wide-ranging set of practices that includes the giving and receiving of officially

sanctioned confession as well as practices of secrecy and revelation that stem from or

react to it. Confessional culture, to be sure, is long in developing, and this chapter will

illustrate the various layers of apocalyptic meaning accessible to Christians in the late

fourteenth century, some of them emerging for the first time during that period and some

being echoed from previous periods. The second half of the fourteenth century witnesses

an intensity of apocalyptic thought amplified by confession particularly in its

prefiguration of judgment. Confessional meaning-making is worked out in this period in

clearly clerical literature but also through rich development in narratives presented in

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in Clannesse, and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The notion of correction that anticipates final judgment pervades late-medieval

English culture. From this vantage point, confession marks the uneasy middle stage of

penance, a reemerging point of vulnerability that expresses the need and fear of an end.

And for many people, as will become apparent later in this chapter, this simple

chronology (or even narrative) of penance proves problematic or essential. It is also

simultaneously powerful and unstable as it embodies speech and action, both of which

are said to be consequential in this world and the next.

Confessing Christians must

accept all of these consequences on faith, as is argued in prescriptive manuals but as is

Julian Wasserman and Liam Purdon highlight the “performatory” within confession and show the

problem it poses for representation: “Language as a symbolic act composed of signifiers is separate from

that which it signifies. Yet with the special category of performatory language, this vital distinction

collapses” (660).

100

also attested to by repetition, by popular practice. Not unlike apocalypticism,

confessional fervor does not go away simply because an end has not arrived yet.

Individuals must continuously struggle to make sense of what is to come and what they

have done. The apocalypse and confession perpetuate themselves and each other, and

they are uniquely equipped to do so in this period. Confession, projected from a variety

of perspectives as a debatable, stabilizing, or reforming mechanism, also proves to be a

site of corruption. Confession, as it becomes debated and expanded, attracts countless

value judgments applied to speech. Confessing speech—variously characterized as based

in contrition and sincerity—is viewed as increasingly important within an apocalyptic

frame. In this chapter, it will be clear that the existence of conflicting views and forms of

confession makes confession in this period especially powerful, volatile, and anxious

about an End. Apocalyptic assumptions in the late fourteenth century work reciprocally

with the developing practices of confession. And these connections are also tied to those

I have drawn from death and ecclesiastical authority. Ultimately, I will show that

confession, an increasingly important religious practice in the late Middle Ages, is a

center of secrecy, vulnerability, and exposure, and embodies the apocalyptic in its

requirement for revelation.

Urgency, Lateness and the Stakes of Confession

Penitential practice—confession particularly—has the potential to communicate

all the guilt, uncertainty, and urgency of the apocalypse. The imperatives for penance

and for works from Apoc. 2:3 are rendered thus in the mid-fourteenth century, in the

biblical text of a parallel Middle English and Anglo-Norman apocalypse commentary:

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Forþi biþenk þee what þou art. & do penaunce. & þe werkes þat þou

dedest aforne. Oiþere bot hou do I shal come to þee sone. & remewe þee

& þi Candelstik out of his stede bot ȝif þou do penaunce. (Fridner 12)

[Therefore meditate on what you are and do penance and the works that

you did before. Or else I will come to you soon and remove you and your

candlestick out of its place unless you do penance.]

The imminence of coming is especially emphasized here. The added vernacular threat of

coming sone, “soon,” here hinges on the exercise of penance.

The suddenness is even

more apparent in the beginning of the third chapter, where the letter to the church of

Sardis describes coming like a thief:

I wot wel þi werkes. ffor men seien þat þou art ded and þou lyuest. fforþi

wake and conforme hem þat ben dyeande. I ne fynde nouȝth ȝoure werkes

ful bifore god. & forþi biþenche þe hou þou haste herd & kepe it & do

penaunce. And ȝif þou ne wilt nouȝth I schal come to þe als a þeef whan

þou ne schalt wyte no word. (Fridner 21, citing Apoc. 3:1b-3)

[I know well your works. For men say that you are dead and you live.

Therefore wake and conform them who have been dying. I find absolutely

nothing of your works before God. And therefore conciser how you have

heard and keep it and do penance. And if you do will do nothing I shall

come to you when you shall know no word [of it].]

The parallel Anglo-Norman text in this commentary supplies the adverb tost (having meanings including

“soon” and “quickly”), which is certainly parallel to the sone of the Middle English translation.

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Death, confession, and apocalypse are conjoined in the concepts of spiritual death, in the

judgment of deeds, in the image of the thief.

In the power to assert another’s spiritual

death or to question one’s own spiritual vitality resides the capacity for rebuke or self-

correction. The commentary on this text reads as follows in the Middle English:

By þat þat þai hane þe name of good lyf and ben dede. bitokneþ þe

ypocrites þat han werkes of holynesse. and þe entent yuel. hem he

þreteneþ þat he schal come as a þef. and bynyme hem her godes þat þei

han.

[By which they have the name of good life and are dead. This means the

hypocrites that have works of holiness and the evil intent. To them he

threatens that he shall come as a thief, and take from them their goods

that they have.]

This identification of hypocrisy allows for conflict to be construed from different

perspectives, and there are those who seized upon the contested state of penitential

practice for correction as a sign of apocalyptic disorder. Credited with one such

apocalyptic view that does not shy away from conflict, William of Saint-Amour, whose

thirteenth-century antifraternalism was alive and well in late-fourteenth century

England,

was careful to highlight in his interpretation of these same chapters, Apoc. 2-3,

profound cause for fear as correction is resisted even as certain false persons will seem

good:

The Vulgate threat of coming as a thief, veniam tamquam fur (3:3) is widely argued to be parallel to the

apocalyptic fur in the Vulgate of Matthew’s version of the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24:43).

Goods here seems a better semantic fit than the defensible but less likely gods.

See Penn Szittya’s Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature.

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Quartum signum est quoniam, appropinquante fine seculi et adventu

Antichristi, quidam qui apparebunt in ecclesia sanctiores. Et tamen facient

quod displicet Christo [et] corrigentur per aliquos, iuxta visionem beati

Iohannis de correctione ecclesiarum, Apo. II et III. Ipsi autem

correctionem sustinere nolentes, suos correctores trident in tribulationem

et procurabunt ut ab omnibus odio habeantur, et ut etiam aliqui ex eis

occidantur. (Geltner 80)

[The fourth sign is that, with the approaching end of the era and the advent

of the Antichrist, certain men will appear in the church to be holier. And

yet they will displease Christ [and] will be admonished by others,

according to the vision of the blessed John regarding the correction of the

churches, Apoc. 2 and 3. Those men, however, refusing to endure

correction, will cast their correctors into tribulation, cause them to be

hated by all, and even have some of them killed. (trans. Geltner 81)]

Corruption is defined in broadly applicable terms: inconsistent morality, pervasive

conflict, demonstrable violence. The letters of Apoc. 2 and 3 can be used as gauges and

predictors of the state of the church, particularly as individuals fear or seek an end. And

appearances of good can be deceiving. Hypocrisy, lax correction, and general

heterodoxy appear as behaviors that are difficult to reverse, suggesting that these

perceived threats are to be resisted when possible. And perhaps most tellingly in this

prediction, many people will resist ecclesiastical correction, of which confession is a

routine and important part. Confession thus may be seen as a sign of the Church

functioning. And irregularities in confessional practice may suggest something is amiss.

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Many of the contested or corrected aspects of confession depend on the timing of

one’s end or the world’s End. The necessity of confession is affected by death and

apocalypse. Furthermore, confession cannot be made without making public certain

expectations about its own lateness. It can never come quite early enough: penitents

lament the gap in time between transgression and confession. But it also comprises a set

of practices that by themselves suggest late accommodations to patterns of sin.

Confession, like apocalypticism, mirrors a world out of control, and even control is

something commonly gauged according to a time frame: consider the rapidity of

confession or of correction. In the late Middle Ages, some efforts to improve confession

as a sacramental practice brought about unintended social and religious changes. Along

these lines, Gina Brandolino notes the following:

Religious texts written in response to the Fourth Lateran Council to

educate Christians so that they were able to make good confessions—a

practice that afforded the church more power to intervene in the everyday

lives of its faithful than it had before—paradoxically also provided

Christians with opportunities to pursue more independent devotional

practices. (406)

And the fact that confessional practice appears in a state of flux is further complicated by

the fact that adaptations to confessional practice may make certain formalized aspects of

practice appear “late,” even in its second century of heavily formalized practice

stemming from Lateran IV.

Its variance and its late appearance both make it appear unstable. It is of

contested necessity, but it also in official doctrine makes claims of deep and repeated

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necessity. It must adapt to ever-shifting behavior, and it is also tied to scholarship and to

official pronouncements of doctrine. To account for various theological constructions of

penance and the contributions of scholasticism in particular, Lee Patterson has said that

“penance was an event that had both a subjective and objective existence” (374). Special

problems within penitential theology emerge, as Patterson further explains that “the

Scholastics readjusted the focus of penitential attention and made the weighing of the

remissive value of sorrow, whether by the priest or the penitent himself, both less delicate

and less ultimate.”

Yet the memory of penance as more ultimate must still remain in such a widely

commanded and now-ritualized practice. With that said, as Patterson accounts for

shifting trends or new developments, one must still acknowledge coexistence of a variety

of conflicting yet mutually exacerbating positions. The natural gap between theory and

practice may also escalate any conflict that arises and may be seen to provide evidence of

moral inconsistency in others. The same tendency to judge examined in the previous

chapter applies here. The sense of apocalyptically-informed conflict intenstifies as

individuals cannot agree about the necessity and urgency of confessing. Even the most

straightforward exercises of penance were called into question. In his study of the late-

medieval genre known as the “form of conscience,”

Michael Cornett suggests a widely

observed disconnect of confessional practice, a problem of tradition often apparent but

frequently glossed over in arguments for confessional continuity:

Since the fall of man from Eden, sinning was the natural state of affairs;

confessing sins to a priest was not. By the time that the church ordained

Known in other languages by various terms, including the French examen de conscience, as Cornett notes

in his extensive list (8-9). For a further consideration of penitential literature, see the discussion below of

constancy and change in penitential manuals.

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that all Christians needed to confess their sins annually, what penitents

were expected to say and what priests were expected to hear had to be

taught. (3)

Preoccupation with penance necessarily requires instilling some new knowledge—and it

also requires constant reminding and education. It was a focus of lay education, as

examples in this chapter show. Even in its most conservative and stable manifestations, it

is just as concerned with a spiritual endgame as those who, contrarily, would hold that it

amounts to spiritual and social danger. And the constantly replenishing economy of sin

causes this process to be constantly repeated, with the promise of finality that keeps one

anticipating an end. One might maintain that the approaching end of the age

paradoxically generates more need for confession, even though it would purport to do the

opposite. Repetition can dull the conscience, but it also indicates perceived necessity.

More frequent repetition may be a sign of increased apocalyptic engagement, of never

knowing when one’s life’s end or the age’s End will come. In fact, arguments for more-

frequent-than-annual confession abound even as the practice of annual “Easter duty” is

seen to crystallize following Lateran IV.

The lateness of various confessional practices,

juxtaposed with the ancient grounding of confession that Poschmann and others maintain,

may be understood in the late fourteenth century to connote improvement and clarity, a

preparation of not just individuals but of the whole Church.

Authority and Vulnerability: Concerns Raised by/in Confession

Recent scholarship has drawn extensive connections between authority and

confessional practice in the late Middle Ages, showing a wide variety of concerns shared

See Guido’s Handbook for one example, in which he reminds us that explicit confessional rules were

simply written to counter those who failed to confess regularly: “Besides, that decretal was not issued for

the negligent but against the negligent” (189).

107

by the two.

Confession, constantly aware of death and stemming from the Church,

bespeaks urgency and accountability, both of which are matters central to the Last

Judgment.

100

This is primarily evident in an individual’s vulnerability, which includes

the soul’s vulnerability addressed by penitential practice and also one’s vulnerability to

her or his confessor. The sacramental process of penance (and auricular confession in

particular) intersects significantly with apocalypticism as it anticipates an End and

underscores religious authority. Nevertheless, apocalypticism can be constructed from a

number of different perspectives, as Curtis Bostick reminds us, and it can also be geared

toward the reform of the Church or the supplanting of religious institutions or

practices.

101

The conflict is readily apparent in an age when Wycliffism appears to chip

away at the Church’s formalized penitential practice.

102

Late-medieval Christians must ask then, can anyone in this world be trusted with

one’s most compromising secrets? In a less-than-favorable but still realistic construction

of clerical power, the power afforded in religious terms and that promises spiritual

benefits may increase the risk of social harm. Then again, from another standpoint, can

anyone afford not to share such secrets and become absolved before it is too late? Is

penitential practice changing too much, or is it not changing enough or in the right ways?

All of these concerns are very real as individuals are confronted with eternal

A thorough survey of secondary literature is provided by Masha Raskolnikov in her “Confessional

Literature, Vernacular Psychology, and the History of the Self in Middle English” (especially pages 4-12).

100

Recent studies by Cornett, Little, and Lochrie (Covert Operations) have variously traced the uniqueness

of applications of confessional practice made in late-medieval England. For a sense of just some of the

modern works finding meaning in the long history of Christian penitential practice, see (in addition to

Poschmann, cited above) Anciaux and (more recently) Kidder.

101

Again, see Bostick’s fruitful “tripartite taxonomy”: apocalypticism can be usefully if broadly

categorized into the accommodative, the reformist, and the subversive (15-16).

102

For a sketch of recent scholarship on Wyclif and those affiliated with him, and those accused of

following him, see the introduction to Hornbeck, Lahey, and Somerset’s recent Wycliffite Spirituality

volume.

108

consequences and a fleeting world. And the broad classifications of medieval

apocalypticism accounted for by Bostick can help us to understand these implications for

power in confession. In particular, confession necessarily has implications for

individuals’ autonomy and for the clerics’ power. And such various expressions of

apocalyptic engagement may be subject to what Anna Lewis identifies as the “doctrinal

flexibility” of the period.

103

The flexibility and the rhetorical facility with which meaning

can be argued are especially important as confession is a conspicuous center of religious

activity and of speech as well as a source of individual and social obligations for

everyone.

Confession seeks to highlight the wrongs encountered in life, to make sense of an

unfathomable amount of data. In the terms laid out by Chaucer’s Parson, “every idle

word” (X.157) should be accounted for; one is responsible for every small deed done.

104

Confession is a crucial part of this accounting for words and deeds. A wide variety of

late-medieval English texts attest to this strong concern with cautious confessional speech,

to the concern that words uttered aloud (even in confidence) have very real consequences.

Confession, grounded in the repeated need for penance and the imminence of an end,

takes on apocalyptic resonance as it connotes urgency and as it creates a moment and a

space in which a penitent must be committed, honest, and forthcoming. Confession

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Lewis explains, “The doctrinal flexibility of [certain works tied to Wycliffism] suggests that the

boundaries between heterodoxy and orthodoxy had yet to be tightly drawn and points to the complexity of

religious belief in the later Middle Ages” (“Rethinking the Lollardy of the Lucidarie,” 210). Furthermore, J.

Patrick Hornbeck summarizes “recent scholarly consensus” thus: “the notions of a monolithic Lollard

movement and a linear dissemination of heterodox views from the academic to the popular context are

vastly oversimplified, if not in fact simply inaccurate” (196).

104

For the purposes of this study, I simply focus on the invocation of idle words as one widely invoked

form of perceived wrong and as evidence of religion-grounded conflict. However, presenting a challenging

and nuanced configuration of “idleness” with regard to Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, Adin Esther Lears

suggests that idle talk may in some cases be seen as “confessional” while not necessarily “passive or

unproductive” (207).

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brings to bear a seemingly inexhaustible theology and may be seen as the ordering and

application of countless theological teachings.

105

In true scholastic form, it becomes a

matter of intense and detailed textual discussion. Again, the possibilities of its subject

matter are endless. Confessional discourse, in its ability to put one on the spot, and in its

measuring against perfection and completion, gains importance in an ending age. It

represents scrutiny and inquiry that will not stop until the end of time. The reminder of

the end of an age highlights that penitential practice should be a constant focus, even a

mode that one should seek to assume.

106

Confessional engagement therefore requires

first and foremost purposefulness of speech. And it makes this requirement even as

individuals sense that they can never be purposeful and aware enough.

So what form(s) can a confessional engagement take? Confessional practice may

mirror evils, and can be seen as a way of indicating—if selectively—prevalent sins.

Furthermore, confession is uniquely equipped to address perceived evils that emerge

within a given culture. The material or content of confession—that which is confessed—

is necessarily variable. But beyond this, as many scholars have argued, confession has

been observed to change with regard to form and response as well as to content.

107

105

On the development of practices related to penance, Henrietta Leyser, drawing on Anglo-Norman

sources, maintains the strain of apocalyptic urgency established prior to the fourteenth-century environment

with which my study is primarily concerned:

Apocalyptic anxieties added urgency to the business of saving souls. From the early days

of the church knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer had been seen as fundamental for salvation.

The Gospels themselves provided two versions of the prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke

11:2-4), but the seven petitions of Matthew’s version, as opposed to the five of Luke’s,

gave added scope for heptamerologies, the seven-ness of things so beloved by medieval

theologians, and it was this version which ultimately prevailed. Thus for Robert

Grosseteste and his circle the 7 petitions could be aligned with the 7 deadly sins, the 7

virtues, and the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit. (9)

106

Studies positing a confessional mode as such include Peter Brooks’ Troubling Confessions as well as

Thomas Docherty’s recent Confessions: The Philosophy of Transparency.

107

For a few studies exploring the development of penitential practice within late medieval England, see

Lochrie (Covert Operations), Little, Cornett, Curry Woods and Copeland, and Haren, as well as Handling

Sin, the influential collection edited by Biller and Minnis.

110

Concern over the stability of practice emerges in treatments of confession in the

Canterbury Tales. This applies to the pilgrim Friar, to the Summoner’s fictional Friar, to

the Pardoner claiming to absolve, and of course to the Parson. The malleability of

confessional practice helps us to understand the instability in the period. Significant

conditions include many of those already treated in this study: class mobility after the

Plague, various anticlerical and interclerical movements, Wycliffism, as well as various

class-related changes, which can lead to a perception of increased sin or of novel sins.

While social change or new ideas do not seem at first glance central to confession,

confession does adapt to changing cultural conditions. Oddly enough, the lateness (again,

the sense that the end of time can possibly arrive very soon) suggested by developments

within penitential practice seems to run parallel to other long-brewing phenomena in

medieval England—particularly with regard to conflicts in clerical authority, as I have

argued in my second chapter.

108

As penitential practices are fine-tuned, overhauled,

minimized, or resisted (all with implications for individuals and for the Church), the

ground of penance is less stable.

Past, Present, and Proximity to the End

All actions done in the name of confession heighten an awareness of last things

and add to the various forms of social instability that are read in apocalyptic terms. In

particular, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the confession of Gawain directly after he

receives the girdle shows the strong awareness of death and of Last Judgment promoted

by confession:

Syþen cheuely to þe chapel choses he þe waye,

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W.A. Pantin in his The English Church in the Fourteenth Century aligns the trajectory of post-Lateran

IV confession with that of interclerical conflict (156-157).

111

Preuély aproched to a prest and prayed hym þere

Þat he wolde lyste his lyf and lern hym better

How his sawle shulde be saued when he schuld seye heþen.

Þere he schrof hym schyrly and schewed his mysdedez,

Of þe more and þe mynne, and merci besechez,

And of absolucioun he on þe segge calles;

And he asoyled hym surely and sette hym so clene

As domezday schulde haf ben diȝt on þe morn. (1876-84)

[Then he makes his way first of all to the chapel, approached a priest in

private and asked him there if he would hear his confession and teach him

better how his soul should be saved when he should pass away. He made a

clean confession there and revealed his sins, the greater and the lesser, and

begs for forgiveness, and asks the man [i.e. the priest] for absolution; and

he absolved him reliably and made him as clean as if doomsday had been

appointed on the next day. (Trans. Andrew and Waldron)]

The words of the confession are hidden from the reader, but the fact of the confession

cannot be missed. Moving from leave-taking in the previous lines into confession, into

the merry-making of the lines that follow these, confession is to be contrasted with

publicly conspicuous practice:

And syþen he mace hym as mery among þe fre ladyes,

With comlych caroles and alle kynnes joye,

As neuer he did bot þat daye,…. (1885-7)

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[And then he makes himself as cheerful among the noble ladies, with fine

ring-dances and all kinds of joy, as he never did except on that day,….

(Trans. Andrew and Waldron)]

And disagreements regarding confession frequently stem from the visible nature of these

practices (as with matters of authority noted in the previous chapter).

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The Pearl-poet

in writing Gawain, even as he makes no strong pronouncements on confessional practice,

still suggests a struggle to see deeper meaning in the practice. Nicholas Watson in his

“The Gawain-Poet as a Vernacular Theologian” situates the theology undergirding

Gawain within what is made more explicit in Pearl, Patience, and Clannesse. As

Watson shows, considered with other works in the manuscript, the ethic of confession in

Gawain calls to mind the memory of a divine covenant, perhaps refracted through the

memory of the narrator.

110

Along these lines Watson has argued for an ethic of popular

theology within Gawain. With reference to Patience, Watson constructs a theology in

very accessible terms.

Like its predecessors in the manuscript, Patience shows how easily God

forgives those who do penance, how he must be obeyed, and how his ways

109

Robert Goltra and others go so far as to deem the confession invalid (see Goltra 9-12 and, for a generous

yet compressed bibliographic sampling, Wasserman and Purdon 662n11, as well as the notes to Vantuono’s

edition (See 221-23 for his notes for lines 1876-84)). The circumstances and brevity with which this

confession is presented may speak to its orderliness or its properly observed confidentiality may certainly

be constructed to suggest procedural incompleteness or what Charles Sleeth calls “a strangely unemotional

manner” (175). To shift the ground of confession further in the work, Sleeth reads the chapel as part of a

faery-world “deception” (178). Ann Astell, not as inclined as most readers to isolate the confessional

scenes in her treatment of penance in the work (see her Political Allegory 191n88), instead reads the poem

as more systematically expressing penitential need toward the end of Richard’s reign (117-137).

110

Watson emphasizes the covenantal has he works out the theology:

The God revealed in Pearl takes no notice of how hard individuals have labored,

only of the ‘couenaunt’ (562) he established with them through the sacerdotal

machinery of baptism, confession, penance and mass: a covenant by means of

which those who live below the sphere of the ‘spotty’ moon, ‘mokke and mul’

though they are (1070, 905), can attain miraculously to the ‘wemlez, clene and

clere’ pearl of salvation, so pure and precious that it resembles ‘[th]e reme of

heuenesse clere (737, 735). (“The Gawain-Poet as a Vernacular Theologian”

304-305)

113

(like his sense of humour, (443-78)) are strange. What it adds to its poetic

partners is this implicitly self-deprecating picture of a prophet of wrath,

who himself makes as great a demand on the divine patience as anyone

because he has failed to learn the simple moral lesson he must preach.”

(“The Gawain-Poet as a Vernacular Theologian” 310).

When Gawain confesses after receiving garter, he seems to assume ease of forgiveness.

This confession, understood by some to be questionable and unorthodox, on its face still

illustrates some popular understanding of a need for penance.

111

This particular

confession, elevated in importance as it is gauged against impending last Judgment, thus

seems (if we concede its efficacy) all the more adequate if likelier death could come

soon.

112

The story, which must be told here from a considerable distance in time, can be

seen to highlight the seeming lateness of the apocalypse: preparation for an End can seem

extreme and its claims hyperbolic only in the past, as we have certainty that it did not

arrive.

As I have suggested, instances of confession and apocalypticism set in the past

such as those apparent in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight still connect with other

instances of confession and apocalypticism in late-medieval culture. And this holds true

even if the conversations about confession often diverge, often have very different

aims.

113

The frequently polarized views of confession (and more broadly, penance) still

111

Assuming a sort of middle ground between those who have been troubled by the confession and those

who situate it within a logic defined by the poem itself, Mary Braswell maintains that “the narrator is

decidedly tongue-in-cheek” at this juncture (97). Even Braswell’s construction presupposes some keen

awareness of details of confession.

112

As Ad Putter suggests, the impending meeting with the Green Knight may add an earthly resonance of

judgment in this passage (Introduction 94).

113

The presumed divide between scholasticism-shaped texts and other texts is articulated by Lee Patterson:

“Indeed, although scholastic sacramentalism made its way into clerical confessional manuals it found

almost no presence in the vernacular works of fourteenth-century England” (375).

114

coexist.

114

The Church argued variously for the correctness and urgency of confessional

practice. The proliferation of texts arguing this confession and urgency serve as crucial

(if conflicted) reference points for this practice required of everyone.

Such preoccupation with confession can be marked in the approaches to penance

extant in penitential manuals and related literature.

115

For example, the Manipulus

Curatorum (Handbook for Curates) of Guido of Monte Rochen, which circulates widely

in Western Europe and persists long after its early fourteenth century composition

116

Spain, acknowledges patristic divergences in confessional teaching, divergences that

translate into contemporary differences. Guido’s work succeeds in framing conflict so

that future generations can embrace the theology of confession productively, but it also

maps past disagreement. Given the variance in treatments of confession, crucial meaning

would be missed if one fails to examine penitential practice in terms of survival, tradition,

and stability. With one eye on practical theology and the other always on tradition, Guido

maintains that the confession “was instituted in the new law by Christ” (183).

Confession, as a necessary component and mechanism within penance, as a connector to

institutions of power old and new, is here shown to address wrongs in practical terms.

The roles of confessor and penitent are in considerable flux, as are methods of

observation, surveillance, inquiry, even resistance. From a human perspective,

confessional engagement (just like apocalyptic engagement) seeks a moving and/or fuzzy

target. As the implications of confession for the individual, for itself as part of the

114

Hornbeck is careful to note confessional manuals among “points of contact between scholastic thought

and local practice” in late-medieval England (36).

115

For an account of how the definition and study of literature of pastoral care was largely developed by

the scholar Leonard Boyle, see Joseph Goering’s “Leonard E. Boyle and the Invention of Pastoralia.”

116

Thayer suggests a date of 1333 (“Support for Preaching” 123).

115

institution of penance, and for the institutional Church are brought to bear, it gets less

stable and fuzzier for individuals.

Personal and Impersonal

However, individuals engaging with confession in the Middle Ages (as now)

show conflicted meanings as it is read from multiple perspectives. Debates concerning

change and continuity have been sketched out in various ways in recent scholarship.

Abigail Firey suggests in the introduction to her recent edited New History of Penance a

modified understanding of the sacrament, particularly as it developed in the Middle Ages:

The homey image of private confession, with the confessant and

confessor in quiet colloquy, heads bend together, must be

juxtaposed to that most impersonal, bureaucratic, centralized, and

juridical of penitential institutions, the Apostolic Penitentiary of

the Roman Catholic Church, where modern researches tread

delicately around the seal of confession in order to help us

understand how internationalized the standards and expectations

for resolution of individual and particular penitential needs had

become after the 12

century. (6)

These two poles both contribute to the reality of penance by the later Middle Ages.

These complications of confession effectively extend its reach. As confessional practice

has developed by this period, it is a center of secrecy, vulnerability, and exposure.

Furthermore, it extended beyond the formal confessional act itself, which was already

supposed to account for all human activity.

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Other forms of social control and exposure within a religiously informed culture

may just as easily assume functions like those of the official sacrament, as appears in the

social power assumed by Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Friar’s summoner character. Since

rubrics for confession necessarily cast a wide net and since speech itself can in so many

ways be categorized as sin, confessional discourse indeed must accommodate any area of

speech. Its roots are in less literate times but time in which speech assumed a wide range

of functions and possibilities. As Peter Brooks puts it, “Confession as we know it

originates in an oral culture, as a private verbal exchange that possesses mystery and

power” (95). And as Susan Phillips has illustrated, confession comprises an important

part of late-medieval culture, affecting (and affected by) a wide variety of speech

practices (121). Confession opens one up to scrutiny to which one is otherwise not

subjected, suggesting that any bit of information may be requested and required.

117

The

parsing of detail by confessors and those directing confessors translates to greater

exposure for the penitent.

Confessing sins in great detail, after all, offers far less risk in the face of death and

the apocalypse than not confessing does. Even in a work such as Gower’s Confessio

Amantis, where love-related confession may seem innocuous, confession-minded detail-

hunting proves important. Even here the term confession is capacious and carries

resonances of awareness of an end, deeply personal communication, copious detail, and

required practice. Its ambiguity, its seeming replication, and its bleeding-over into other

117

This preoccupation with evil as marked by speech has been noted by Edwin Craun (Lies, Slander, and

Obscenity) as well as by Sandy Bardsley, who situates preoccupation with speech-sins within a culture

heavily influenced by Lateran IV:

Among these closely scrutinized and annotated sins were the Sins of the Tongue,

regularly granted a chapter or more in the expansive and encyclopedic pastoral

manuscripts that proliferated starting in the early thirteenth century. In England, the

Church enforced its jurisdiction over speech not only from the pulpit and confessional but

also by means of its courts. (146)

117

practices serve not to weaken it but to generally suggest a feared and meticulously

stylized set of practices. Confessional protocols look ahead to behavior but are also

based on centuries of observed behavior and anecdotal evidence. Individuals making the

strongest case for official confessional practice appeal to the sense of a long tradition and

to the necessity of continuity until one’s end.

As time passes, too, confessional practices adapt to new cultural problems and

perceived trends in sins. Thus priests must adapt to a number of cultural circumstances,

as is apparent when Guido states, “Truly the priest should vary his questions according to

the variety of those confessing” (235). Confession assumes a basic rhetorical form and

assumes that the confessor is in power, but given this structure much of this form can be

flexed, adapted to circumstances. The term confessio as it appears in the title of Gower’s

Confessio Amantis may suggest different shades of meaning and may be seen to connect

with different objects of confession but in multiple senses suggests vulnerability, as Ardis

Butterfield points out:

Translated as “The Lover’s Confession” or equally “The Confession of the

Lover” it can mean either a confession made by the lover, or one made

about the lover. Even before we begin reading, then, we might be led to

wonder whether the confession will be direct or indirect, in the first person

or the third person, within the lover’s control or at the lover’s expense.

Thinking about the nature of confession provides a further sense of

potential ambiguity. The lover (whether directly or indirectly) could be

making a simple admission that he is a lover (this is what being a lover is

like); on the other hand (more enticingly) he might be about to express

118

something shameful or scandalous about being a lover. (“Confessio

Amantis and the French Tradition” 165)

The Confessio presents an agglomeration of knowledge within a confessional

framework.

118

Peck in his introduction to the Confessio in his first volume connects

confession and narrative:

Confession nurses by healing the cracks in the psyche which have come

about through the degenerative anxieties of time and careless beholding.

The one confessing must find a narrative for his chaotic behavior, a “tale”

that can be read and weighed by the interrogator. (7)

And even as, as Edwin Craun has shown, some of the corrective theological edge of

orthodox auricular confession has been stripped away in key parts of the Confessio, it

presents an intimacy and a long engagement with narrative details that encompass many

areas of life.

119

And in the tension it creates regarding what exactly is to be confessed, it

proves to be malleable and to be capable of connecting to just about anything.

Confession attaches itself to various other discourses and practices, managing to

control people even as it is flexible. The all-subsuming nature of confession becomes

apparent in several other vernacular texts, particularly in the social implications I sketch

out in Chaucer below. Confession and secrecy are inextricably linked and both deeply

social, particularly as confession becomes increasingly formalized after Lateran IV and as

118

For Marjorie Curry Woods and Rita Copeland (in their “Classroom and Confession”), “Gower’s

Confessio Amantis suggests how much classroom and confessional were bound up in medieval mentalities”

(377).

119

Craun notes, in his examination of the Confessio’s tales of Constance and of Demetrius and Perseus,

“Absent throughout the confessional sequence is the catechists’ usual way of claiming authority for his

knowledge of verbal sin: the ‘sentence’ with its appeal to biblical texts, to a monastic exemplar like St.

Bernard or to a Paris master like Thomas Aquinas” (Lies, Slander and Obscenity 153).

119

Pecham’s Syllabus of 1281 includes penance in its program of lay education.

120

Karma Lochrie reminds us, “Secrecy is never a solitary activity” (Covert Operations

121

Secrecy, in some cases necessary to confession and protected within its promise of

confidentiality, nevertheless always bespeaks fear of revelation, the breaking of

confidentiality.

122

Confession, situated as a part of the still-developing sacrament of

penance, is a practice that adapts to circumstances.

123

But it also highlights the very

terms of evil by which impending doom is seen. Pierre Payer’s work on the development

of confessional literature shows how some of this foundation was laid: the rich literature

from (roughly) 1150-1300 provided various foundations, various points of departure in

theological discourse about penance.

124

Payer’s assertion that the literature of penance of

that earlier period is markedly new suggests a changing engagement with confessional

120

The Pecham Syllabus marks an important post-Lateran IV development in England, particularly in as it

requires teaching of the sacraments. For a concise contextualization of Pecham’s Lambeth Constitutions of

1281, see Stephen Lahey’s John Wyclif (10). For an outline of its components, see Jones 408-410.

121

Lochrie elaborates on this, beginning by quoting a phrase from Kim Lane Scheppele’s Legal Secrets, 14:

“’Secrets are always located in particular social contexts,’ including the context of the medievalist and the

Middle Ages, though it may not always seem particularly social” (Covert Operations 3-4).

122

Annemarie Kidder offers this sketch of how confidentiality was widely understood to work:

First, confession was to take place in private at every stage, and so were the acts of

penance. Unlike in the public penitential practices up to the fifth century, there was no

exomologesis or corporate knowledge of the sins committed and the congregation as a

whole was not involved in the process. Even though the nature of some of the penance

precluded secrecy, as in the case of prescribed fasting or excommunication, the

penitential process itself leading up to the penitent’s restoration to the church assemble

and to the end of the discipline was kept private. (29)

123

As Lochrie further maintains, “If confession was itself a hegemonic discourse of the Middle Ages, it

was clearly a flexible one that could adopt various forms and adapt to various purposes in the literary texts

that drew upon it.”

124

Payer situates confessional changes within a broader program of reform:

Lateran IV marked the culmination of earlier pastoral concerns and gave impetus to

widespread pastoral renewal in the thirteenth century. It went some way in advancing the

reform in faith and morals that was envisaged by Pope Innocent III in his letter of

convocation, “to uproot vices and plant virtues, to correct excesses and reform morals, to

eliminate heresies and strengthen the faith.” This was initiated by mounting a frontal

attack on heresy, by encouraging the education of the parish clergy, and by streamlining

ecclesiastical disciplinary rules, for example by paring down the consanguinity rules from

the unwieldy seventh degree of relationship to the fourth degree. The provision likely

having the greatest effect on both clergy and laity and on the life of the Church generally

was the well-known twenty-first canon requiring all Christians of both sexes once they

had reached the age of reason to confess their sins at least once a year. (16)

120

practice precipitated by those texts. It, too, begins to account for diverging traditions and

trajectories of penitential practice. To mark one general area of social change addressed

through penance, sexual activity was marked as a particular site of corruption to be

addressed through penance.

125

The pastoral literature over generations provides layers of

textual responses to perceived change and plenty of fodder for those looking for change

and signs of evil.

126

This literature continues to be influential into the late fourteenth century and

accounts for divergence in penitential practice and for an undercutting of the perception

that penitential (and specifically confessional) practice is standardized, uniform. This is

because confessional literature necessitates more confessional literature.

127

This

literature has effects on less prosaic texts as well. As Nick Gray illustrates, Langland in

Piers seems familiar with some confessional literature (60). And the Parson’s Tale,

which I consider in more detail below, on its surface pushes for confessional regularity

but in practice confession may not work so neatly. Whether or not it fits neat conceptions

of confessional practice is but one concern; another is how popular it is and how much

individuals are willing to participate in it frequently. Recent scholarship has complicated

our understanding of Chaucer’s points of reference regarding penitential matters. Henry

Ansgar Kelly has recently suggested that Chaucer was exposed to not just those by

125

This is the focus of Payer’s study. Elizabeth B. Keiser also examines how the priest-prescribed ethos of

abstinence and moderation applied to sexual activity within confessional practice in the late Middle Ages

(60-63).

126

Regarding the long development in the Western Church in the later Middle Ages to make lay and clergy

alike identify and classify sins, see Tentler, 52-53.

127

On the variety of extant fourteenth works and on their functions, see scholars ranging in emphasis from

Payer to Kelly. See, too, Michael Haren, who examines at length the Memoriale Presbiterorum as

“exclusively devoted to confessional technique” and as “a thoughtful application of the continental

canonical tradition to the mid-fourteenth-century English scene by a puritanical though sensitive observer”

(Sin and Society in Fourteenth-Century England 1). And on the Dominicans’ dominance (more so than

Franciscans) in penitential literature, see Fleming, An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature, 12.

121

Raymond of Peñafort and William Peraldus but also of “later developments” (239),

teachings consistent with if not traceable to John Burgh’s Pupilla oculi and William

Lyndwood’s Provinciale. What emerges in these later traditions, according to Kelly, is

“a sense of moderation and common sense…in deciding the fine points of law and

punishment at the close of the Middle Ages. Those qualities undoubtedly contributed to

the popularity of frequent confession in the 14

century” (266). In principle, penance can

be seen as aiming for stability in society and within the church, as well as the

strengthening and restoration of the individual.

As it strengthens and restores, confession may function as a check against

assumed instability. Instability in the apocalyptic moment may make confession more

difficult, may show the pervasiveness of out-of-control sins. The confessions uttered by

the sins in Passus 5 of the B-version of Piers Plowman bear this out. As is apparent in the

mention of Roberd at the end of the cardinal sins’ confessions in this passus, confession

and Doomsday are clearly connected., even if the exact temporal distance between the

two is uncertain. Alongside the sins’ confessions, Roberd the Robber’s appeal shows this

awareness of Doomsday:

But for thi muchel mercy mitigacion I biseche:

Dampne me noght at Domesday for that I dide so ille!” (B.5.470-471)

[But for your bounteous mercy I ask for mitigation: damn me not at

Doomsday for that I did so ill!”]

Confession addresses the prospect of judgment, indeed makes judgment comprehensible

in worldly terms. And, again, death (typically more explicitly or intuitively tied with

penance than Doomsday is) proves as a crucial starting point for seeing the end of an age

122

in worldly and tangible terms. The fact that death’s inevitability and its implications for

the body are invoked to penitential ends illustrate how central confessional discourse is to

an individual’s daily experience. In fact, various reference points from daily life add

layers of meaning to confession in this period.

Frames of Confession

Various evocative metaphors for confession long predate this period and are well

established in late-medieval England, and this variety of metaphors gives confessional

practice much of its power. Composed slightly earlier than the period central to this

study, the influential and textually diffuse poem Prik of Conscience, which connects

one’s death-day with the Day of Judgment in application to the individual soul, echoes

the importance that had been afforded to penitential practice and specifically to auricular

confession. In the Prik of Conscience, the sacrament of penance is stressed repeatedly in

the discussion of the dreads of death.

For in heven may no soule be sene

Tyl hitte of synne be clensud clene

With penaunce here as clerkus wote

Or in purgatory wyth fyre hote.

And soules that are clensed here

With almesdede and penaunce sere

Aungelles shul wysse hem the way

To heaven blys that lastuth ay. (III. 878-85, Morey ed.)

[For in heaven may no soul be seen till it is cleansed clean of sin with

penance here as clerks have known or in purgatory with hot fire. And

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soules that are cleansed here with almsdeeds and much penance angels

shall make known to them the way to heavenly bliss that lasts forever.]

Penitential practice in general and confession in particular are preparatory, and

anticipatory. They cleanse endemic filth. As Gawain is made “clene” (1883), so are all

the penitent. And in Clannesse, receiving penance is said to make one as pure as a pearl

(1121-32). As I illustrated in my first chapter, death and the apocalypse—both related in

their assumption of finality and their implications for the individual on earth—are both

fueled by fear and hope. Fear and hope, both motivators, are enhanced by images such as

those of fire, and penance is also made more vivid by analogy to the body.

To step back farther yet, the three main conceptual schemas of penance already

present in early medieval Celtic penitentials—bodily health, “judgment and justice,” and

“life-pilgrimage”—all underscore the apocalyptic (Connolly 164).

128

Yet confession is

even more conceptually complicated and has attracted such a wide variety of metaphors

and abstractions that in the thirteenth century

129

Robert Grosseteste in his treatise

Quoniam Cogitatio assembles the following characterizations of confession:

So, confession is . . . the vomiting up (euomitio) of rottenness and poison;

the fulfillment (effectus) and demonstration (ostensio) of humility; the

removal (ablatio) of the veil that hides God from us; the concealment

(absconsio) of sin from the eyes of God; the coming forth (processio),

128

Connolly explains his taxonomy:

1) The first symbol is that of disease and wholeness where sin is understood as illness,

penance as curative and the confessor as healer or physician of souls. 2) The second is

that of judgement and justice where sin is considered as offence, penance as reparation

and the confessor as merciful judge or animadversor. 3) The third is the image of life-

pilgrimage and suffering. Here sin is seen as a wandering from the right path, penance

thus becomes re-orientation and the confessor is portrayed as a fellow-traveller, fellow-

sufferer or anamchara [“soul friend”]. (164)

129

F.A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering propose an approximate composition date of 1240 (353).

124

with Lazarus, from the tomb; and a bringing forth (deductio) unto the

eternal confession of God’s praise. [Confession] is the revelation

(manifestatio) that there is truth in us, the coming back (reditio) to God,

the obtaining (impetratio) of forgiveness, the refuting (euacuatio) of the

devil’s accusation, the growing sweet (indulcoratio) of God, and the

gathering up again (recollectio) of us from dissipation to wholeness. (qtd.

in Mantello and Goering 343; translation, ellipsis, brackets, and

parentheses theirs)

Connected to the many abstractions are the bodily metaphor of vomiting and other

appeals to the physical. It is through the body that the work of the confessor—by

analogy to medicine—is professionalized and spelled out in specific terms.

The health model already underscored in the mid-seventh-century Penitential of

Cummean in particular communicates soul-health in very tangible terms, as is

immediately clear.

130

Here begins the Prologue of the health-giving medicine of souls. As we

are about to tell of the remedies of wounds according to the determinations

of the earlier fathers, of sacred utterance to thee, my most faithful brother,

first we shall indicate the treatments by the method of an abridgment.

(Trans. McNeill 99)

This parallel between soul-health and body-health continues to develop through Lateran

IV’s Canon 21, Omnis utriusque sexus. Leonard Boyle presents some implications of the

health model:

130

Dated by McNeill to c.650.

125

When dealing with souls, the Council said, the confessor should know

them as well as any competent medical doctor is presumed to know the

bodies he treats for injuries or illnesses. The confessor should not only be

able to assign a suitable penance to penitents but just as a doctor does in

the case of his patients, should be in a position also to suggest to the

penitent just what is the cause of his or her trouble, and how best to

prevent its recurrence. If, on his or her side, the penitent had to confess all

sins as completely as possible, the priest for his part had to be as discreet

and understanding as any doctor, diligently probing the penitent’s

character and background in addition to the circumstances of each sin.

(32)

131

Soul-care, thus professionalized, makes the layperson by definition unqualified and

inexpert. If one concedes that physicians can achieve better results than one caring for

oneself, then how much more the priest must be uniquely competent regarding the care of

the soul.

Parallel to the very individual accountability and vulnerability required in

apocalyptic Christianity, this model renders confession in very personal terms. This

notion of healing, in its mapping of sin-countering mechanisms onto the body,

underscores individual needs and the potential for continuance of sin to compound its

damages if left untreated. Katherine Little’s reading of Hawkin’s confession in Piers

Plowman further nuances these implications for healing and problematizes reform:

131

As Boyle further suggests, “There was nothing startlingly new in this new approach: the concept of

medicus animarum was an old and indeed hackneyed one. What makes the approach important in the

history of the cura animarum and of pastoralia is that this is the first time that the precise role of the

confessor in relation to the penitent was authoritatively set before the church as a whole. Now, officially,

the confessor must not only be a dispenser of penances but also a counsellor of souls” (32). See, too,

Lochrie and Payer, as they assert the pervasiveness of the health model in the later Middle Ages.

126

Certainly Hawkin’s confession emphasizes not so much the details of the

sins, although it also relies on traditional accounts of the seven capital sins,

as the process of recognition itself for everyone involved. This emphasis

is clear in the way in which both Hawkin and the dreamer “take heed”

(13.315, 318); in the dreamer’s watching, “waitede wisloker” (13.342);

and in perceiving, “Pacience parceyved” (13.354). In this second

sequence, confession is the process by which one becomes aware of one’s

sins and sorrows for them, and although this process is certainly meant to

reform the penitent (Hawkin wishes that he had never been born at the end

of passus 14), that reform does not include the social world that he

inhabits. Indeed, the dreamer awakes before a contrite (and absolved)

Hawkin returns to the community. (26-27)

In Little’s terms, the social corruption so often read as pessimistic within an apocalyptic

scheme can still be accounted for even as individuals—even many of them—may be

reformed. Reform, in fact, very often is defined by difference from the outside social

world. This concern over a corrupt and even dying world is necessarily apocalyptic.

And as this is considered as connected to health, this is not to say that the health

narrative resists the apocalyptic. Rather, it points to the discourses of the body, to centers

of meaning that must also be affected by the apocalyptic, even as they fall outside the

present study. Confession, thus affecting the individual in ways seen as parallel to health

concerns, is seen as affecting people on the most intimate level and addresses spiritual

pains or discomforts that work on their own inexplicable-to-humans terms. And although

prophecy typically allows for negative terms of a covenant to be withdrawn, the threat of

127

a negative outcome must be always taken seriously.

132

The apocalyptic, again, resists

being disproven. And confession, like the Last Judgment whose hour is unknown, may

be seen to build its layers of meaning because of uncertainty and ignorance: more and

more persons are compelled to look for an end, to grasp for certain meaning.

Confession, as it requires repeated action while not knowing an exact end,

psychologically mirrors apocalyptic mis-guessing. And, as time progresses, more and

more cultural forms—including those of penitential practice—magnetically assume

apocalyptic meaning.

133

The confessional assumption of impending judgment also has

rich cultural resonances traceable to antiquity and developed already in the early Middle

Ages, provides a font of meaning in later centuries. As Peter Brown has noted, “In the

Christian imagination, the moment of death was an exact reflection, in miniature, of the

terror of the last Judgment” (5).

134

However, in the moment, judgment seems absolute,

irrevocable, and representative of monolithic Christendom. Confession emerges as a step

in making oneself right with the Church and with God. Contrarily, it marks a step away

from the world. Positioning an individual from the outside world thus provides a general

impetus for introspection to identify evil that must be remedied. One’s usual life-patterns

132

This sense of withdrawal, negated or downplayed in some of the most vociferous forms of Christian

apocalypticism referencing John, remains an important part of prophecy for many, particularly in late-

medieval England for Gower.

133

On the magnetic quality of apocalypticism, see McGinn’s “John’s Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic

Mentality” (16).

134

Brown continues, building on the work of Frederick Paxton, finding especially useful Paxton’s sense of

the “liminal”:

Theologians might be able to keep the ‘particular judgment’ of the soul, after death,

separate in their minds from the general Last Judgment of all resurrected souls and bodies

at the end of time. But the fact that both were experienced as moments of intense and

perilous ‘liminality’ telescoped the two judgments in the minds of believers. Both caught

the individual at a dangerous time, stripped of all customary forms of definition: stripped

of the body and of an entire social persona by death; rejoined to a body, but not yet

attached to a society at the moment of the resurrection, the human person waited in a

state of painful depletion before the throne of Christ (“Amnesty, Penance, and the

Afterlife” 45, citing Paxton 6).

128

and environment must be resisted. Confession addresses and confronts evil deeds,

practices deemed to be rooted in sin, as is especially apparent in the stated purposes in

manuals. However, it also represents a discourse that is claimed by authors and that

indeed can be claimed by individual confessing sinners.

135

To be sure, confessional practice is challenging to priests in ways that it is not to

laypersons. And this tremendous pressure on priests has built up over centuries of

penitential regulation and justification, again through the increased parsing of detail about

how to care for souls.

136

In closing out his discussion of penance, Robert Mannyng of

Brunne in his early fourteenth-century Handlyng Synne

137

explains how penance counters

the demonic: “…For y shal telle þer of more / At shryfte whan y come þore. / God ȝyue

me grace so to telle / To shame alle þe fendes of helle” (10947-50).

138

Notably, Mannyng

points to the judgment to which the less-than-careful priest is subject:

Þe prest wote neure what he menes

Þat for lytel curseþ hys parysshenes.

135

With reference to confession within the Canterbury Tales, Jerry Root maintains that “the discourse of

confession makes possible the manipulation of subjectivity” (102). Regarding the extent to which

confession may entail power for the penitent, see Lee Patterson’s Chaucer and the Subject of History,

Katherine Little’s Confession and Resistance, Masha Raskolnikov’s Body Against Soul, and Robyn Malo’s

recent “Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve’s Series.”

136

The legalism naturally caused by parsed-out detail must be accounted for, even considering Craun’s

very useful generalization: “Despite prescribed models, the priest had considerable latitude (and power) in

directing any confession” (Lies, Slander, and Obscenity 134).

137

Mannyng’s work is a hybrid translation and adaptation of the Anglo-Norman Manuel des Péchés

(modern edition with French apparatus by Arnould), as discussed by Klaus Bitterling in his introduction to

the modern edition of another text derivative of the Anglo-Norman Manuel, the Middle English Of Shrifte

and Penance (Bitterling 15-16).

138

As Boitani notes in English Medieval Narrative,

There is, however, a fairly sharp limit to Handlyng Synne’s realism: it is as colloquial and

detailed as one could wish, yet it belongs in the history of Western mimesis to a pre-

individual, pre-psychological stage. Its characters are types, not, in fact, characters.

They never go beyond those gestures that define them as examples of certain ways of

behaving. They are frozen into sketches by the author’s deliberate (and declared) refusal

to violate pryvetee. (25)

Nevertheless, the narrative components present in Handlyng Synne are seen by Curry Woods and Copeland

to “offer the penitent a certain relief from the pervasive control of the penitential system itself, providing a

kind of distraction through the appeal of narrative” (396).

129

Þat yche shepherd ȝyfþ no gode kepe

Þat betecheþ þe wlfe hys shepe.

At þe last acounte shal he mysfalle

Whan he shal answere for hem alle. (10889-94).

[The priest never knows what he means, that for little he curses his

parishioners. That each shepherd gives no good keep that puts the wolf in

charge of his sheep. At the last account he shall find misfortune when he

shall answer for them all.]

The stakes of ecclesiastical politics discussed in the previous chapter are in sharp contrast

here, as clergy must fear the ultimate misfortune. Also, the difficult working-out of sin in

the sacrament of confession prefigures final judgment. Thus heavy responsibilities fall

on the priest. Clergy are to guard what they say. They are instructed to speak in certain

ways, but they are also uniquely empowered to speak. Their speech is made conspicuous

through confessional practice.

139

The requirement of confession works hand in hand with structures of

ecclesiastical authority that were considered in my second chapter. This requirement and

the ecclesiastical power grounding it both take on special meaning in an ending age. And,

in terms articulated by Karma Lochrie, the very fact that the power is questioned shows

how theological meaning may be seen as contested and contingent:

Why should confession to a priest be necessary, in other words, if a sinner

felt sorrow in her heart for her sin? The priest’s interventionist role in the

process of forgiveness was at stake, and the coordination of the personal

139

This connects with late-medieval thinking on the capacity to preach, as has been discussed by Murphy

(Rhetoric in the Middle Ages 269ff), Minnis (see Fallible Authors), and Fletcher (Preaching Politics, and

Poetry).

130

and institutional roles in confession became necessary (Covert Operations

27).

The priest, who is commanded to assure confidentiality and in this way to be socially

neutral, nonetheless makes penance socially complicated. This is readily apparent in the

complications regarding confession that emerge with regard to Chaucer’s Parson’s

seemingly exhaustive treatment of confession and the Friar’s assumed authority. This,

too, may be seen in the Pardoner’s scandalously assumed claim to absolution (VI.387).

The restoration promised in penance—and, essentially, one’s right standing—must be

mediated by an authority figure, and the Pardoner is willing to assume that role.

Challenges from different directions thus make the work of the priests contested and

conspicuous.

In confessional practice, the conspicuousness of authority—just how visibly those

in a confessor role make their power known—is but one factor contributing to

confession’s intensification of apocalypticism in this period. Scrutiny of such

conspicuous authority and visible forms is also important. As Katherine Little has

established, a demonstrable shift toward emphasis on the speaking subjects of confession

is borne out by late-medieval vernacular texts.

140

To build on Little’s point, the

modeling of confessional discourse or the channeling of it to non-penitential ends all

serve to destabilize penitential practice, to make it look irregular. And it may have marks

of difference in the first place, given the individuality of the penitent and the

distinctiveness of what she or he might disclose. The irregularity of confession, as

140

Katherine Little makes an important distinction regarding the textual emphases observed around the turn

of the fifteenth century: “In contrast, the vernacular treatises, such as Jacob’s Well (c. 1400-25) and the

Boke of Penance (late fourteenth century), detail what is expected of penitents themselves and in this way

draw attention to how penitents will (56) confess, will become speaking subjects” (55-56).

131

evident in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale, is precisely where many late-medieval thinkers

make inroads in their attempts to delegitimize Church authority. The friar character of

The Summoner’s Tale fails to give laypersons in contact with him the sort of care they

might expect, if only by analogy to parish priests. This is most evident in the pilgrim

Friar’s light handling of confession suggested in the General Prologue. The conflict

created by Chaucer regarding friars’ penitential practice in fact makes confessional

discourse appear less orderly and stable.

141

As Jerry Root has observed, the

problematizing of confession through the Friar challenges the authority by which

confession has been established and continues to be dispensed in the Tales.

142

Confession and Religious Politics

And friars’ competition with parish priests in the market for confession makes

more confessions logistically possible but also is cited to add a layer of uncertainty to

confessions heard by friars. The friars contribute to increased frequency of penitential

activity. Confession, in prominent medieval understandings of the sacrament of penance,

is not only supposed to be administered by any priest but by one’s specific priest.

143

This

concern is echoed in Guido’s Handbook: “Although all priests have the keys, as has been

said, yet not all have the matter, that is, the parishioners among whom they may exercise

the use of the keys, but only those to whom the care of souls is regularly committed, who

141

On the apocalyptic resonances asserted with regard to friars, see Szittya’s Antifraternal Tradition as well

as Dean’s World Grown Old, 72-81. On Langland’s illustration of the friars’ debatable poverty and

motivation for the care of souls (including confession), see Aers, Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative

Imagination 48-51.

142

To exemplify how power within confession may be shifted, John Wall suggests that even in the Parson’s

Tale, which seems a markedly clerical text, there might be a nudge toward lay authority: “…Chaucer’s

adaptation is significant. Raymond’s work was a handbook for priests to help them hear confessions,

whereas the Parson’s Tale bears the mark of having been adapted for the lay penitent who is to make his

confession” (189). Furthermore, Root’s comparison of Parson and Friar is instructive: “The Friar, in fact,

takes up the same position as the Parson on the importance of a controlled and legitimate use of the

confessional word. However, the Friar’s assertions, unlike the Parson’s, are immediately and dramatically

juxtaposed with other competing social and individual voices” (98).

143

On controversies of sacramental authority and jurisdiction, see Lea (I.307-8).

132

have the use of the power with respect to those whose care is committed to them” (194).

This sense of order posits a place for each layperson and may be seen to address the

competition for penance in the late-medieval period.

And while turf wars between parish priests and friars are waged, others abandon

entirely assumptions of the need for specialists in confession. The very sense of right and

wrong required by orthodox penitential practice becomes complicated as Wycliffism

circumvents and indeed inveighs against formalized penitential practice. And the

confessing role of the priest is indeed contested in this period not only by Wycliffism but

by friars as well.

144

Little further notes, “One of the defining characteristics of Lollardy

is the rejection of auricular confession” (49).

This pronounced rejection that holds steady from Wyclif on though his followers

speaks to the apocalyptic resonance with which confession is seen. Curtis Bostick

paraphrases Wyclif’s Cruciata:

Especially in these dangerous days, conceivably the last days, the faithful

must be on guard against the ‘pseudopapas’ and their accomplices, that is,

the ‘monks, canons and friars’ [599, 15-19]. These abettors of the

Antichrist and abusers of the sacrament of penance appeared in the

pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216) when Satan was loosed” (67).

145

144

The controversies of ecclesiastical legitimacy related to Wycliffites and those related to friars are not

without their connections. In citing Henry Knighton and his reference to the antifraternal apocalypticism of

William of Saint-Amour found within Knighton, Andrew Cole points out that “antifraternalism gets a new

target—the Wycliffites” (35). Cole cites page 249 of the Martin’s edition of Knighton’s Chronicle for its

Amourian reference, “which some have applied to the mendicant friars, but which better apply to those new

people, the Lollards.” And while Wyclif projects friars as a form of apocalyptically significant evil, Szittya

maintains that Wyclif’s extreme construction of friars in De Fratribus has no deep theological structure:

“Its purpose is rhetorical, not exegetical, insult, not interpretation” (Antifraternal Tradition 176). Wyclif, it

should be noted, consistently challenges the confession obligated by both priests and friars (Rex 47).

145

Bostick here cites key passages in 2:598, 599, 622.

133

Practically, too, Richard Rex, synthesizes De blasphemia chapters 8-11, Trialogus IV.23-

4, and De eucharistia et penitentia 329-43:

His emphasis on the importance and inscrutability of predestination

renders the medieval practice of auricular confession almost redundant,

and certainly far from compulsory (though he allows that it can be helpful

in particular cases). Contrition alone can secure forgiveness, but only the

elect can be truly contrite. There is no need for confession to a priest,

because neither priests nor anyone else can tell who is predestined, and

thus who is truly contrite; nor, even among the contrite, could they

possibly know how guilty and how contrite they were. Only Christ could

truly absolve, and therefore priestly absolution was a devilish and

blasphemous presumption. Even when it is useful, confession can be

made just as well to a layperson or to God. Wyclif’s hostility to auricular

confession in practice was exacerbated by what he saw as its exploitation

for immoral purposes and financial gain, as well as by its association with

the friars. (46-47, 159n71)

In side-stepping and destabilizing shrift of mouth, Wyclif and others assume theological

agency—the ability to situate right and wrong apart from official teaching. And as they

do that, they also clearly allocate certain powers to Christ, a move that challenges

presently upheld human authority in the Church.

134

The appropriate application of power was a chief concern of the larger Lollard

movement, however limited it may have been.

146

A problem of power is presented in the

ninth of the twelve Lollard Conclusions:

Þe ix conclusiun þat holdith þe puple lowe is þat þe articlis of confessiun

þat is sayd necessary to saluaciun of man, with a feynid power of

absoluciun enhaunsith prestis pride, and ȝeuith hem opertunite of priui

calling other þan we wele now say. For lordis and ladys ben arrested for

fere of here confessouris þat þei dur nout seyn a treuth, and in time of

confessiun is þe best time of wowing and of priue continuaunce of dedli

synne. (Hudson 27, lines 114-20).

[The ninth conclusion that suppresses the people is that the articles of

confession that is said to be necessary to people’s salvation, with a feigned

power of absolution enhances a priest’s pride, and gives them opportunity

of privy calling other than we will now say. For lords and ladies are

arrested for fear of their confessors that they dare not say a truth, and in

time of confession is the best time of vowing and privy continuance of

deadly sin.]

These allegations have a certain currency toward the end of the period, regardless of their

precise construction or composition.

147

Here “feigned” absolution suppresses laypersons

in particular. Confession in these terms may be false, opposed to “treuth.”

148

Much of

146

For some sense of limitations scholars have placed on a once more broadly conceived Wycliffite, see the

works of Richard Rex and of Andrew Larsen listed below.

147

For a discussion of the “framing” of the Conclusions, see Wendy Scase’s “The Audience and Framers of

the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.”

148

This elusive term, which has been explored at length by Richard Firth-Green (A Crisis of Truth), among

others, in this context at least hinges on whether truth (in our sense) as opposed to falsehood is uttered in

the confessional.

135

the machinery of the Church is challenged here and is seen to be aligned with deception,

overestimation of human authority.

This concern is apparent in views articulated by Wyclif himself. As Stephen Penn

points out, Wyclif has trouble accepting the three-part penitential theology wholesale,

even if he can discuss confession on its own terms:

Underpinning [the traditional tripartite definition of penance] was the

assumption that any or all of these three things represented the

sacramental quiddity or materia, to which a generic label could be

assigned. Wyclif’s rejection of this formulation was grounded in a simple

philosophical problem: it assumed that the sacramental materia consisted

in three generically distinct parts, each of which was also distinct in

temporal terms (since none of the three parts could exist simultaneously).

(284; brackets mine, parentheses Penn’s)

Wyclif’s penance may be seen to streamline it out of a genuine need and sense of urgency.

These three parts embody their own chronology as confession itself orders sin and must

be executed in advance of an end. Even so, Wyclif is concerned with confessional

efficacy and indeed can allow for confession to be rightly done under clerical

authority.

149

More importantly, Wyclif seems to consider penance as an organic whole,

undoing the broad perception of penance as taxonomized through scholastic parsing of

detail. As Wyclif assumes that teaching should be transparent, this reaction may be seen

149

McCormack is careful to note that followers of Wyclif, despite raising some serious objections, were not

as unequivocally opposed to auricular confession as has been thought (Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent

186). And as Penn further clarifies, “Wycliffe’s penitential theology served to realign penance with the

contrite subject, and hence to restore to him or her a freedom that had been obscured by the papal decrees

of Innocent III. It was not his intention, however, to consign the priest to the realms of redundancy. A

good priest, he recognized, might serve to assist the subject in his search for contrition of the heart, and,

ultimately, for the forgiveness that could only be properly conferred by God” (286-87).

136

as a crucial clarification of oft-repeated teaching, a confession for confession. It appears

motivated more by a fear of divine justice than by fear of consequences meted out by

fellow humans, as is invoked in the ninth conclusion cited above. The implications of

knowledge for power, as were apparent in the previous chapter and as will appear in the

final chapter, are certainly important here.

Narrating and Teaching Confession

Many in the late Middle Ages feared confessional obligation, but others found

comfort in it. Individuals may have communicated their sins out of fear of social

consequences or out of hope of absolution. People in late-medieval England who are

conditioned to view daily life in terms of Christian morality are awash in stories of sin,

stories that they are obligated by the church to relate to a member of the clergy. To

return to an example quoted above, Gower’s expansive Confessio Amantis situates

confession within a context of teaching through narration. And yet, as the Prologue

suggests, teaching is qualified as the work by Gower’s “somewhat of lust, somewhat of

lore” (19). Confession suggests something long and drawn out. Gower’s qualification

may suggest it is less than methodical, but it also may suggest a method that is elusive,

making the reader shut out from the clerical logic of the process. Furthermore, as Peck

illustrates, the confessor-penitent dynamic is used to address matters of love under such a

capacious rubric that it rivals that of sin-engaged confession.

150

From Peck’s introduction:

…In order to help Amans see beyond his infatuation, Genius will, as the poem progresses,

ultimately instruct him in all the humanities. The climax of his argument is Book 7, in

which he explains the education of a king, lessons in governance which Amans must

learn if he is to reclaim and rule the lost kingdom of his soul. Genius knows that love

founded on mutuality, on what both Gower and Chaucer (among others) call “common

profit,” is the only love that is consistently satisfactory. Although Genius’ understanding

of higher love is limited, he can appreciate it as history has revealed it, just as Jean de

Meun’s Genius appreciates without fully understanding the “beau parc” of the good

137

Bot for als moche as I suppose

It sit a prest to be wel thewed,

And schame it is if he be lewed,

Of my presthode after the forme

I wol thi schrifte so enforme,

That ate leste thou schalt hiere

The vices, and to thi matiere

Of love I schal hem so remene,

That thou schalt knowe what thei mene.

For what a man schal axe or sein

Touchende of schrifte, it mot be plein,

It nedeth noght to make it queinte,

For trowthe hise wordes wol noght peinte:

That I wole axe of thee forthi,

Mi sone, it schal be so pleinly,

That thou schalt knowe and understonde

The pointz of schrifte how that thei stonde." (I.272-288)

[But for as much as I suppose it befits a priest to be well trained

151

, and it

is a shame if he were to be unlearned according to the form of my

shepherd with its “fontaine de vie” toward the end of Roman de la Rose. Most certainly

he can see from his natural vantage point that in the events of human behavior the love of

Cupid is inconstant and that that of Venus usually ends in mockery. History demonstrates

that this is so. That Venus would send Amans to Genius is understandable, however, in

that she owes her very existence to the phenomena of time and nature over which Genius

has perceptual jurisdiction. (xv-xvi)

151

As the MED suggests, wel thewed also may carry the meaning “well mannered,” although the root verb

theuen also carries primary meanings of “to instruct morally” or “to train.”

138

priesthood I will so inform

152

your confession that at least you shall hear

the vices, and I shall relate your material to love, so that you may know

what they mean. For what a person shall ask or say dealing with

confession, it might be plain, it needs not be made craftily, for truth will

not paint his words: What I will ask of you therefore, my son, it shall be

[asked] so plainly that you shall know and understand the points of

confession as they stand.]

Gower’s gesture to love mirrors the greater meaning-making objective of confession.

This passage shows the importance of knowledge and training, the ability to make sense

of what is confessed. Clergy elicit confessions by the promise of clarity and a

justification of the necessary risk. Confession thus brings with it a rhetoric of benefits and

obligations. It is defined not only by its product and intent but also by its obligations, its

expectations of the penitent.

153

As is suggested by some indictments of confessional practice, auricular

confession in this period often assumes much control over human activities, control that

is readily apparent in the taxonomies given in handbooks. It effectively undoes any

privacy a person enjoyed prior to the confession, and it does so in the name of healing,

which is but one layer of meaning among many. Following the Council, key

developments drew out layers of social as well as personal meaning from confession.

The layers of meaning come across as so vivid within the Canterbury Tales that some

have been led to speculate on an aging Chaucer’s reshaping of the narrative in a

152

On Gower’s enforme meaning “to teach according to an ideal pattern, with the aim of forming the

recipient of the teaching,” see Simpson’s Sciences and the Self (4).

153

As Karma Lochrie notes, “Confession did not begin in 1215 with the Fourth Lateran Council’s passing

of Canon 21, Omnis utriusque sexus, but its regulation, codification, and formulation as a discourse did”

(Covert Operations 24).

139

penitential vein.

154

In The Parson’s Tale the fear of Judgment is presented as motivation

to contrition, and it is aligned alongside the pains of hell.

155

The thridde cause that oghte moeve a man to Contricioun is drede of the

day of doom and of the horrible peynes of helle. For as Seint Jerome seith,

“At every tyme that me remembreth of the day of doom I quake; / for

whan I ete or drynke, or what so that I do, evere semeth me that the

trompe sowneth in myn ere.: ‘Riseth up, ye that been dede, and cometh to

the juggement.’” O goode God, muchel oghte a man to drede swich a

juggement, “‘ther as we shullen been alle,” as Seint Poul seith, “biforn the

seete of oure Lord Jhesu Crist”; whereas he shal make a general

congregacioun, whereas no man may been absent. For certes there

availleth noon essoyne ne excusacioun. (X.157-63)

[The third cause that might move a person to contrition is dread of the Day

of Doom and of the horrible pains of hell. For as St. Jerome says, “At

every time that I remember the Day of Doom I quake, for when I eat or

drink, or whatever I do, it always seems to me that the trumpet sounds in

my ear.: ‘Rise up, you who are dead, and come to the judgment.’” O good

God, a person ought to dread such a judgment, “there as we shall all be,”

154

On the notion of an older Chaucer compensating for the rest of the work by ending with the Parson, see

Dean’s “Chaucer’s Repentance”: “The theme of penitence…is precisely what one might expect as the

conclusion to an ambitious Ricardian narrative, especially if there is a pilgrimage and if the narrator

includes a characterization of himself as old and sick” (72). Charles Muscatine situates Chaucer’s

movement as a shaper of narrative within a range of feeling:

We see that some moods came on him late, and others were abandoned early; that he may

have been tempted here, and that he resisted temptation there. Apart from his perception

and sympathy with life, Chaucer’s great virtue is morale. It is a morale that is based, not

on a doctrinaire conservatism, but on a felt acquaintance with all the alternatives (144).

155

For evidence of the pains of hell’s long-established association with penance, see Stephen Pelle’s work

with early medieval Latin and Old English sources (173-74, 177).

140

as St. Paul says, “before the seat of our Lord Jesus Christ”; wheras he shall

make a general congregation, whereas no one may be absent. For

certainly there avails no procedural delay

156

nor excuse.]

Such a “cause” tied to the future creates a narrative and shows again how much the

apocalyptic is entangled with the everyday. As Emmerson and Herzman rightly point out,

the terms advanced by the Parson need not and ought not to reduce meaning of the rest of

the Tales. But they also need not, as they are manipulated by Chaucer, suggest a

reduction in confessional meaning or priestly agency.

157

And even if the Parson’s Tale is

not given the privileged position that others have given it (a position I do not quite see), it

presents for readers the very present spiritual and social tensions of confession in this

apocalyptic environment.

158

Once again, all are subject to confession just as all are

subject to the Last Judgment.

And nat oonly that oure defautes shullen be jugged, but eek that alle oure

werkes shullen openly be knowe. And, as seith Seint Bernard, “Ther ne

shal no pledynge availle, ne no sleighte; we shullen yeven rekenynge of

everich ydel word.” Ther shul we han a juge that may nat been deceyved

ne corrupt. And why? For, certes, alle oure thoghtes been discovered as

to hym, ne for preyere ne for meede he shal nat been corrupt. (X.164-66)

156

As the MED notes, the legal sense of essoyne used here suggests “an excuse offered, for non-appearance

in court at the appointed time.”

157

For another view, see Karen Winstead’s recent assessment: “Chaucer reduces radically both the

presence of the priest in the text and the importance of oral confession in the penitential process” (240).

158

Emmerson and Herzman maintain that the Parson’s Tale “serves as a fitting conclusion to the entire

poem. To understand it as such is not [to quote Kolve’s Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 82] ‘to

read the whole of The Canterbury Tales in the light of the Parson’s Tale, as though all the other narratives

were merely partial expressions of truth.’ It is, instead, to recognize that the Parson’s introductory

comments and sermon make explicit the eschatological perspective that infuses The Canterbury Tales by

virtue of the fact that it is a pilgrimage poem” (159; bracketed attribution follows 217n31).

141

[And not only that our shortcomings shall be judged, but also that all our

works shall openly be known. And, as St. Bernard says, “There shall no

pleading work, nor any stratagem; we shall give reckoning of every idle

word.” There we shall have a judge who may not be deceived or

corrupted. And why? For, certainly, all our thoughts are discovered as to

him, neither by entreaty nor by gift can he be corrupted.]

In presenting handbook material and not exactly a tale, Chaucer’s Parson is undoing an

important social goal of tale-telling.

159

In the collective “oure” there may be seen an

appeal to this social goal, but judgment presented thus is very personal. His move away

from narrative clashes with the communicative aims suggested by the Host, aims that

lack the corrective impulse of “textbook” penance. The Parson, given the opportunity,

intends his discourse to motivate and correct his immediate audience. The handbook,

spoken as a tale, seems less than authentic as speech, but in its relentless claims for

orthodoxy it presents a regularity against which other utterances—even in poetry—seem

irregular, faulty. Pastoral literature, particularly as it is preceded by such a mixed bag of

other genres, makes the topic of confession unavoidable, as does the Retraction that

follows it. Through the Parson’s Tale, a social ethic of meaningful communication (and

against idle words) emerges in the need to communicate matters of the soul. One must be

truthful and productive in the face of the end of an age. And the threat of a unique

moment of Last Judgment brings together a broad population, even though all persons are

to be forcibly sorted and have their fates dictated to them.

To reiterate the purposefulness of language within confession: Each person must

account for “every idle word,” every deed no matter how small. And the apocalyptic

159

See the note above on the genre of this “tale.”

142

trumpet should be sounded in minds preemptively. All are to be ready in the present age,

the age of ecclesiastical power. As penance has been institutionalized, people’s most

sinful thoughts—the necessary recognition of corruption—makes them vulnerable to the

Church. Chaucer’s pilgrims seem individually vulnerable, un-cared for. Mary Braswell

highlights this concern when she suggests the implicit need for some confessor(s) within

the Tales: “If Chaucer gathers several identifiable sinners together in the context of a

pilgrimage, it is logical to ask whether he has appointed a confessor for them” (104).

None of the pilgrims who might seem to be confessors prove very effective at it.

160

confessional practices are sketched throughout the Tales, confession seems less and less

stable. The emphasis on being vulnerable in the world is pervasive in the guidelines

espoused by the Parson. Lines 1062-63 further emphasize the necessity of being “shriven

in this present life”: “Men sholden eek remembren hem of the shame that is to come at

the day of doom to hem that been nat penitent and shriven in this present lyf. / For alle

the creatures in heven, in erthe, and in helle shullen seen apertly al that they hyden in this

world.” Nothing can be hidden, and all is to be revealed and narrated by individuals, lest

doom be revealed before wrongs can be confessed.

The apocalyptic vulnerability inherent in confessional speech itself pervades the

discourses of the Canterbury Tales, as is apparent in Chaucer’s narratorial interventions

and particularly in prologues and other utterances between tales. The Friar and

Summoner provide an effective sketch of a culture shaped by confession and its rules and

expectations for speech. In indicting the work of summoners, the Friar challenges the

160

In Braswell’s reading (see 104ff) Harry Bailly is advanced as a confessor of sorts, although such a

reading may too easily claim all tales as confession. On how the host’s engagement of pilgrims (if we

concede it is confession) connects with judgment, see Rodney Delasanta’s “The Theme of Judgment in The

Canterbury Tales,” a work upon which Braswell draws. Contrarily, Jim Rhodes’ reading more

convincingly casts the “outward journey” (and the host’s work) as “play,” as geared toward “a love and

appreciation for the things of this world and a desire to affirm the things of this life” (176).

143

legitimacy of the enterprise in which a thinly veiled wrong is indicted by the

ecclesiastical courts, tracing it back to its ecclesiastical authority. As I showed in my

second chapter, the opening of the Friar’s tale shows how the network of clerical power

has extended even to court officials such as summoners. And his making-public of sins

shows the extreme vulnerability faced by those who admitted to various sins.

Whilom ther was dwellynge in my contree

An erchedeken, a man of heigh degree,

That boldely dide execucioun

In punysshynge of fornicacioun,

Of wicchecraft, and eek of bawderye,

Of diffamacioun, and avowtrye,

Of chirche reves, and of testamentz,

Of usure, and of simonye also.

But certes, lecchours dide he grettest wo;

They sholde syngen if that they were hent;

And smale tytheres weren foule yshent,

If any persoun wolde upon hem pleyne.

Ther myghte asterte hym no pecunyal peyne.

For smale tithes and for smal offrynge

He made the peple pitously to synge,

For er the bisshop caughte hem with his hook,

They weren in the erchedekenes book.

Thanne hadde he, thurgh his jurisdiccioun,

144

Power to doon on hem correccioun. (III.1301-1320)

[Once there was dwelling in my country an archdeacon, a man of high

degree, who boldly did execution of punishing of fornication, of witchcraft,

and also of pandering, of defamation, and adultery, of church robberies,

and of testaments, of usury, and of simony also. But certainly, lechers did

he wrong the most; they were made to sing if they were apprehended, and

small tithers were horribly injured, if any person would complain about

them. No monetary punishment could escape him. For small tithes and

for small offerings, he made the people to sing piteously, for before the

bishop caught tem with his hook, they were in the archdeacon’s book.

Then had he, through his jurisdiction, power to impose correction on

them.]

The Friar, in telling of this fictional summoner, paints a hellish picture of a system that

can ensnare just about anyone. But from another standpoint, there is a wide array of evil

acts that have slipped through the self-reporting penitential system. The diagnosis of sins

closely tied to confessional practice is here geared toward condemning and not

reconciliation. Sins are identified not by the individual through introspection but by an

ecclesiastical court official. Sins are here conspicuous—damnable for being visible to

others—but also possibly trumped up.

Such practices of the ecclesiastical courts are parallel to those sanctioned within

penitential manuals.

161

Raymond of Peñafort in part 31 of his Summa de paenitentia

161

As Elizabeth Fowler explains, confessions is indeed analogous to the work borne by the ecclesiastical

courts:

By the end of the [twelfth] century, confession was considered to be a formal legal

jurisdiction complementary to that of the external forum of the ecclesiastical courts, and

145

reaffirms that the confessor has a duty to pry for details of sins, to determine such

qualities as “through whom” a sin is done, “how often,” “why,” and “when.” Some of

the points necessary to narrate are laid out by Raymond:

Per quos, scilicet, mediators et internuntios, quia omnes tales sunt

participes criminis et damnationis, et ipse est reus et obligatus pro peccatis

eorum. Item, per quos, id est, cum quibus, et pro quibus, et contra quos.

(edition of X. Ochoa and A. Diez, presented in Newhauser 555)

Through whom: namely, though mediators and go-betweens, since all

such people partake in the crime and its punishment, and the penitent

himself is answerable and responsible for their sins. Likely, through

whom, i.e., with whom, for whom, and against whom. (trans. Newhauser

554)

Accounting for such narrative details and bringing judgment into markedly apocalyptic

time additionally shake people out of their sense of security.

162

Still, a major point

illustrated in the Friar’s setup is that the texts are stacked against parishioners (especially

those who do not pay into the system very generously) and in favor of those who work

for the church. People are made to feel guilty, and it is the willingness of people to be

thus taxed and manipulated—through guilt—that makes the ecclesiastical court system

work. The excesses of the court system in the tale may be seen as extensions and

perversions of the penitential system. They show how confessional narratives may be

abused, solicited, even fabricated. To return to the Parson for comparison, he, as

the distinction between the internal and external form was the primary institutional

division of the canon law. (49)

On implications of penitential politics later than this period, see Sarah Beckwith’s “Medieval Penance,

Reformation Penance” (196-7).

162

On what Patterson terms the “contritionist bias” of Raymond’s Summa, see Chaucer and the Subject of

History 375.

146

exhaustive and exhausting as his treatment of penance is, seems to require a conspicuous

conceptual rigor absent in the Friar’s simple (but costly) penance. The narratives elicited

of the penitent are one important concern, but the story of how the confession was made

and heard in an orderly fashion may be equally important.

If one considers the Friar as one confessor, certain circumstances (beyond his

status as friar) suggest irregularities in his administration of sacramental penance. The

Friar-pilgrim within the Tales is cast as having questionable character. Characterized as

“a wantowne and a merye” (208) and as “[s]o muchel of daliaunce and fair langage”

(211) in the General Prologue, he is rendered simultaneously sympathetic and

antipathetic for friendliness and loquaciousness. I will repeat the lines discussed earlier

in the study:

Ful sweetly herde he confessioun,

And plesaunt was his absolucioun:

He was an esy man to yeve penaunce,

There as he wiste to have a good pitaunce. (I.221-24)

[Full sweetly he heard confession, and pleasant was his absolution: he was

an easy man to give penance, there as he sought to have a good pittance.]

Very early on, the seemingly positive social qualities of the Friar unravel to show that

this look of happiness and this willingness to talk (and listen) freely has a cost. His

judgment seems clouded by the potential for material gain. Furthermore, he may be seen

to dilute the sacrament of penance as he leverages individuals’ discomfort with how it is

administered elsewhere.

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Confessional speech subjects one to judgments human and divine. The Friar for

his free use of language and the simplicity with which he approaches confession may be

seen as just as easy to fault and judge as the Pardoner is. The moral compromise

suggested in the General Prologue carries over to the Tale itself, enough so to clearly

delineate evil. As David Raybin has demonstrated, demonic references run throughout

the Canterbury Tales, particularly in the Friar’s Tale (“Goddes Instrumentz” 94). The

Friar himself is quick to characterize the Summoner (and summoners) as evil. The

summoner character of the Friar’s Tale in particular is not to be trusted in his broad

dealings with people. Such an expanse of activity gives this summoner opportunity for

manipulation and bribery, and the whole enterprise can even be taken as a form of

thievery. And it stems from an elaborate sin-seeking system that is larger than the

ecclesiastical courts in which summoners work. The Friar’s summoner’s corruption is

most clearly seen in his accusatory exploitation of the sick widow quoted earlier in this

study (III.1595-1601). On the other side of that conflict within the Tales, the

Summoner’s Tale’s friar’s vision serves as a counterpoint to the comedic vision presented

by the Summoner in his prologue. The prologue and tale together thus highlight the

earth-bound nature of the pilgrims, their vantage point, and the challenge of living in faith

and not with sight of Last Things. Most importantly, they are abusers and victims of

confessional speech. Here speech—and especially talk about Last Things—uncovers

apocalyptic uncertainty and earthly vulnerability in many sites other than confession.

As we have seen, the risky business of confessing is central to the Tales. The

very narrative-sharing premise of the Tales may be seen to mirror confession in its effects,

even as its aims purport to resist confession. These persons in their roles as pilgrims (just

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as when they are penitents) are put on the spot, are forced to communicate as everyone is

on a religious undertaking. And many on the pilgrimage will judge their orthodoxy or

heterodoxy as they speak. Speech of any kind, even storytelling, is anything but an

innocent diversion. And confession’s seriousness must be asserted all the more.

Confession, again, is often viewed in terms of annual “Easter duty,” but in spite of the

seemingly minimal obligation, for at least one short session annually, the obligation is

unavoidable, maximal. The assumed delay in confession—the ability to put it off for up

to a year—is nonexistent on the pilgrimage. Stories are necessarily political, necessarily

personal. And even the retreat into the hypothetical, anonymous, or playful does not rule

out connections to the various real-world confessional practices surrounding the audience.

Perhaps here the project can be seen to unravel: How can one assume that these various

people would participate in the same sort of speech practices? Some, the Parson included,

might counter that it is more about edification, by something as practical as confession,

than about enjoyment. The prevalence of confessional speech goes a long way in

explaining the widespread social vulnerability and conflict apparent within the work. By

foregrounding speech and situating vulnerability therein, the Canterbury Tales highlight

how speech be used—and also used against one. The dialogue between the Friar and the

Summoner not only illustrates the inherent conflict between different factions of

medieval church and society, but it also lays bare the weaknesses of categories of people

for a broad audience.

Within confession, just as naturally in purportedly unorthodox extensions of

confession as within the clearly administered sacramental practice, there appears a strong

sense of judgment. And in the term proposed by Claudia Ratazzi Papka, texts of this

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period (including the Tales) may be seen as “fictions of judgment.”

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The

apocalypticism of the late fourteenth century centers on justice, specifically the notion

that justice is meted out by God in due time. And even as theology may define due time

objectively, apocalypticism is intensified as due time and just punishment are processed

by individual humans subjectively.

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This creates considerable variability, even as

apocalypticism is a social reality: one person’s judgment is modeled on others’ judgments.

As Chaucer in particular invites us to judge by presenting such contradictory perspectives

in the tales, the Tales allow readers to participate in forms of judgment and to observe

others judging.

As I have suggested, this judgment, in addition to objectifying speech, also uses

the immediacy of speech to seize power. Human and divine judgment are at stake in how

speech has been employed. It is not insignificant that the Reeve asserts his own

microauthority in “quitting” as he appeals to divine majesty:

A gylour shal hymself bigyled be,

And God, that sitteth heighe in magestee,

Save al this compaignye, grete and smale!

Thus have I quyt the Millere in my tale. (I.4321-24)

[One who guiles shall be guiled himself, and God, who sits high in

majesty, save all this company, great and small. Thus have I repaid the

Miller in my tale.]

The undoing of the first “gilour” reverses some power within the work, even though there

is little to say that the Reeve is any more deserving of credit than the Miller. The

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See, too, her “The Limits of Apocalypse.”

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As Stephen O’Leary notes regarding time, “The human experience of time is not always and everywhere

the same, but is subject to discursive manipulation” (44).

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necessarily forced ending (what is quitting if not decisive, after all?) presumes its own

sense of justice and completion. Endings here, as with the apocalypse, are elusive. In the

Canterbury Tales justice surfaces in the elusive notion of a completed and rightly told

tale. And yet justice in these terms is subjective, contestable, never resolvable. The

closure evaporates in little time as tales continue to be told, none of which restores any

sense of authority consistent with the premises of competitive and communal telling that

initiate the Tales.

Here again, subtleties of storytelling betray apocalypse-tinged subtleties of

rhetoric and power. And, as I have suggested throughout my study, the apocalyptic is not

limited to the explicitly dogmatic and exegetical. Various other discourses, each with

their own senses of control and direction, have considerable bearing on stories that are

told.

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While narrative speech—particularly for Chaucer—may seem a retreat to

entertainment, to a thought-experiment, or to some other seemingly innocuous end, it

cannot shake off all the trappings of the world in which its imaginer lived. Within this

dynamic, clerical speech brings its own set of complications. Edwin Craun in Lies,

Slander, and Obscenity discusses the Parson’s tale, focusing how the Parson’s words are

substantive and why circumstantially they are urgent:

An eschatological atmosphere in the prologue lends urgency to the

Parson’s insistent choice of nakedly moral discourse rather than “empty

fables” for this audience. The pilgrims are approaching some kind of end

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Firth-Green (Poets and Princepleasers) and Steiner (Documentary Culture) have dealt with, for example,

relationships between legal and poetic discourses. Recently, Staley has explored the extent and limits of

political influence in Ricardian England:

Though these princely powers, along with their ambitions and disappointments, have

passed, the voices of the poets they sought to command have not. We have been left with

literary texts of great beauty and subtlety; they also constitute the fragments of a

conversation about the terms of lost languages of power by those commissioned to figure

powers they at once elaborated and scrutinized. (Languages of Power 262-3).

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for both a journey and the game of storytelling. The day is waning…”

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(218)

What is substantial within confessional discourse, in these terms, is that which is aimed

heavenward, that which fears hell, and that which is profoundly apocalyptically aware.

In these terms, one is aware and engaged, and yet necessarily unsure, and always waiting.

The apocalypse, at its appointed time, appears disordered to those who do not

know the hour to expect it. It overshadows clerical practice in its presentation of

unknowable judgment: the penitential resolution may fit certain patterns, but its precise

resolution is subject to the judgment of the clergy. Debate and quitting run counter to the

order imposed by proper confession, as well as the harmony or at least harmlessness the

pilgrims might have assumed in the tale-telling enterprise from the outset. The Friar’s

Prologue lays the groundwork for the conflict that is to follow, as the Host’s requirement

that “we wol have no debaat” is quickly disregarded (1288).

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“Debaat” can be seen as a

generic shift, a move from the supposed safety of tale-telling. As the MED suggests, this

term aligns with “quarrel,” “disagreement,” “brawling,” “opposition,” “resistance”—in

other words, a broad array of interpersonal conflict. However, it also marks an important

change in the dynamic of each tale: multiple speakers, even as they make the speaking

more entertaining, do so in a way that the company of pilgrims is strained. The Friar’s

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As Craun continues, the vice of the idle word is again apparent:

The narrator refers to Libra, a figure of divine judgment (and justice), and the Parson

prays for the grace to show his fellow pilgrims “the wey, in his viage, / Of thilke parfit

glorious pilgrimage / That highte Jerusalem celestial” (X.49-51). In the pastoral tradition

of “empty words,” warnings about imminent divine judgement usually accompany

injunctions to avoid telling fables. “Empty word,” as a type of verbal sin, stems from

Jesus’ warning in Mt. 12:36, quoted in all chapters on the type: “omne verbum otiusum,

quod locuti fuerint hominess, reddent de eo rationem in die judicii” [every idle word that

men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment]. (218; Craun’s

brackets and translation)

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Hines points out that line 3.834, A frer wol entremette hym everemo, “might be paraphrased as ‘A friar

must always shove his oar in.” (164).

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summoner’s evil is largely due to how he uses speech.

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On the other side of that

conflict, the friar of the Summoner’s Tale achieves a masterful balance between finding

what he wants and telling people what they want to hear. Speech, particularly that about

consequential matters of confession and judgment, assumes power and demarcates the

(il)legitimacy of power. Most glaringly, power may be attributed to various kinds of evil,

and in effect created by such attribution. As confession proves to be yet another rich and

often overlooked cultural site (in addition to death and ecclesiastical power) through

which individuals can encounter the apocalyptic, it helps to fuel the good-versus-evil

tension that makes late medieval apocalypticism work.

Again, confession, an increasingly important religious practice in the late Middle

Ages, is a center of secrecy, vulnerability, and exposure, and embodies the apocalyptic in

its requirement for revelation. Furthermore, as Edwin Craun and others have noted, sins

of the tongue show the restrictions on speech prevalent in this period as well as the

implications of the very act of speaking, and of the presumption to speak on religious

matters. This connects with late-medieval thinking on the capacity to preach, as has been

discussed by scholars including James Murphy and Clare Waters.

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This developing

practice, in some cases more pastorally and productively administered than in others,

works on an impulse to come clean, an impulse that is hard to unlearn.

Confessional practice in this period, as I have shown in this chapter, embodies the

apocalyptic in its sense of fear and hope, its collapsing of time to put individuals on the

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As Gaelan Gilbert puts it, “In the tale, a disguised fiend instructs a corrupt summoner in the nuances of

speech genres, secretly aiming to secure the summoner’s damnation. To carry out his plan, the fiend

teaches a voluntarist hermeneutic that his own fluid onto-morphology—‘in divers art and in diverse figures’

(CT III.1486)—can later misappropriate” (52).

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See Murphy’s Rhetoric in the Middle Ages as well as Waters’ Angels and Earthly Creature, where she

illustrates that, even at their most purportedy positive, many medieval artes predicandi prove exclusionary

(21-22).

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spot, and even in its capacity to demarcate good and evil in a particular moment. It

mirrors the urgency and immediacy of the apocalyptic and urges individuals to subject

themselves to a series of small but serious judgments. Furthermore, it may lead some to

question the stability and consistency of clerical practices (and, by extension the

Church’s authority) while its machinations are mimicked or taken advantage of. Perhaps

most importantly, it encompasses so many aspects of late-medieval life that its effects are

impossible to account for—and it does this while it is invoked as the means by which

wrongs are accounted for. The tension created by a practice acting out judgment while

ignorance of when death will occur (let alone the apocalypse) is also played out in the

apocalyptic functions of text, which I will explore in my next chapter: just as not all who

pose as confessors are trustworthy, not all texts can be trusted to relay messages

discreetly across generations and within a sympathetic audience. If spoken confession

embodies power and vulnerability, then power and vulnerability may be embodied by

written texts with just as little certainty. And yet, as I will show, key apocalyptically

engaged texts in this period aspire to a stability that transcends that of spoken discourse

and of previous texts.

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CHAPTER FOUR: TEXTUAL PERMANENCE AND EPHEMERALITY

So far in this study I have examined three rich centers of apocalyptic meaning

attested to in writings in late-medieval England. Death, authority, and confession all

appear contingent as one believes that the end of normal life is approaching. But to these

centers of meaning we must add writing itself. Writing, just as all of the other centers of

meaning studied up to this point, is affected by apocalyptic concern with the trajectory of

daily life. For this reason, as I see it, texts of the period quite frequently call attention to

their own status as texts. And the act of writing, as it is made conspicuous, makes us

reconsider its functions, duration, and importance.

Apocalypticism in particular requires a consciousness of the recording and

shaping of texts. And this self-consciousness becomes especially foregrounded as the

Middle Ages develop. Brian Stock notes the following in Listening for the Text:

One element that must be reckoned with in any discussion of the history of

orality and literacy is self-consciousness, in particular the consciousness of

change. The subjective awareness of change is a potent factor in bringing

about new ways of looking at things. It is also one of their most obvious

consequences. (145)

These broad observations are certainly useful as we consider the changing meaning of

texts in this period. Change, particularly in ways of composition and ways of reading, is

invoked frequently in texts of late medieval England. As I will argue in this chapter,

lurking under the surface in many of these texts is an anxiety over the power and

limitations of writing itself. In an apocalyptic framework, how permanent or ephemeral

is writing? If time is to be no more, then writing, being tied to time and to daily life,

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diminishes in significance.

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Still, as anyone writes, she or he assumes that writing lasts

longer than she or he does. Even if daily life has an end, one’s earthly life may easily end

first. Then, in one additional turn considering the apocalyptic, one must use writing to

make information available for those who survive us.

Thus, in the very act of writing rest assumptions tied to the apocalypse,

particularly regarding how needful the conveyed information is and how long the world

is to persist. Apocalypticism is about urgency, but it is also about waiting.

Apocalypticism cannot resolve questions about the age’s end immediately and thus must

create space between the here and the hereafter. This middle space is negotiated

effectively by several influential texts of the period, including Chaucer’s Canterbury

Tales and Gower’s Confessio Amantis, as well as more explicitly devotional vernacular

works. Apocalyptic engagement with texts and awareness of what writing accomplishes

especially emerges as texts are framed by their professed authors. The apocalyptic

qualities evident in this period are thus not determined merely by a sense of urgency or

by the capacity to judge, as others have argued.

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Rather, they are seen most clearly as

one considers a variety of related concepts, concepts that include textual tradition,

contingent revelation of knowledge about the end, and the capacity of time’s end to

render writing meaningless. Several texts from this period nod toward the apocalyptic in

their assumptions of fragile posterity. However, this future is complicated: it can be

assumed to be not very long, but it will likely extend beyond individual writers’ lives.

Writers in the Christian West, after all, have access to the work of a long tradition of

170

Two foundational discussions related to time and eternity include Augustine’s Confessions XI and

Question 10 of Aquinas’ Summa.

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For just a few deeply productive studies addressing apocalyptic urgency in the period see Justice’s

Writing and Rebellion, Kerby-Fulton’s Books Under Suspicion, and Papka’s “Fictions of Judgment.”

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apocalypticists whom time has long surpassed. And even as certain texts communicating

doom or making strong claims to prophecy are suppressed, a wide variety of these texts

still circulate. Furthermore, writing, as part of daily life, itself will become obsolete. As I

will show in this chapter, the imminent apocalypticism of the late fourteenth century in

England manages to hold in tension written communication’s permanence and its

ephemerality. As is evident in the perceived value, duration, and function of various

texts (especially evident in Chaucer and Gower), those texts embody the apocalyptic

mentalities of this period. To show this, I will proceed through several factors affecting

the sense of permanence or ephemerality in texts affected by the apocalyptic, moving

generally from those concerns pertaining to the work of the apocalyptic writer to those

that emerge when a text achieves the longevity that apocalyptic awareness requires but

also substantially qualifies.

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Seers, Seer-like Writers, and Their Credibility

The perception of apocalyptic lateness in the late Middle Ages is in some very

important ways tied to the purported bearer of information. The central apocalyptic role

throughout a broad tradition of early Christian apocalypticism is that of the seer, one who

knows what is to come.

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As John Markley has shown, the role of the seer in ancient

Judeo-Christian apocalyptic literature emerges principally as an exclusively selected

person who typifies the limits of human cognition in knowing mysteries about the end

while exhibiting a strong emotional reaction to the news conveyed (108-112).

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172

The focus of my project here is on the anticipation of texts’ future effects.

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Parallels exist, too, in a wide range of eschatologically-oriented literature, as has been shown by Carol

Zaleski, even as she discusses the dynamic of the guide (52ff). This role is fluid, to be sure, and my goal

here is to sketch out some of the terms approximating an ancient apocalyptic seer to show some similarity

with authorial roles assumed in the late Middle Ages in England.

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Markley is careful to set John’s Apocalypse apart from other ancient apocalypses:

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Markley puts it, “The emotional and physical humanity of apocalyptic seers emphasizes

the contrast between the heavenly realm and the normal realm of humanity” (113). The

seer or visionary her- or himself may, too, stand out socially, as Kathryn Kerby-Fulton

observes that “medieval audiences came to expect a portrait of a social outsider who had

rejected all worldly comforts and concerns” (Reformist Apocalypticism 202). As will

become clear later in this chapter, the apocalyptic rhetor’s exclusive claim to knowledge

becomes more complicated as she or he is not merely a social outsider but an outsider in

textual terms.

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Through sophisticated reading and writing moves and through access to

languages and texts the writer sets her- or himself apart.

But even more apparently, the special status of the apocalyptic writer is tied to

age. When age is a conspicuous quality of the writer, the text may be implication serve

to stand in for a seer who will not live long enough to tell about the failing word. The

text will not last forever, but it is permanent enough to communicate essential knowledge

to future generations. The common perception of the seer as old or nearing death has

roots as old as the example of John and is also related to the fact that many of the literary

figures of the period are producing their most enduring work toward the end of their lives.

Gower is a prime example of this. As Ardis Butterfield and others have explained, this

emphasis on the end of the writer’s life certainly emerges in Gower’s Confessio

(“Articulating the Author”). In the Confessio’s last book, Gower exposes himself as

Amans, once Genius appeals to Venus and once Venus appears to Gower:

…And as it were halving a game

The book of Revelation is anomalous among first- and second-century C.E. apocalypses

in the way that it almost entirely mutes John’s cognitive humanity. In other words,

John’s cognitive humanity is never exhibited through his questions and pronouncements,

and he never asks for an interpretation of what he sees. (101)

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On the perspective of the apocalyptic rhetor, see O’Leary’s Arguing the Apocalypse.

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Sche axeth me what is mi name.

“Ma dame,” I seide, “John Gower.” (8.2319-21)

[And as it seemed half a game,

She [Venus] asked me what my name is.

“My lady,” I said, “John Gower.”]

The deity draws Amans/Gower out and leaves no question who this person privy to

special information is. Venus’ advice for Gower then seemingly undoes him, proves him

to have found a sort of futility in his long session with Genius:

Forthi my conseil is that thou

Remembre wel hou thou art old. (8.2438-39).

[Therefore my counsel is that you remember well that you are old.]

As Butterfield comments, “[t]he fourth Gower—Gower as narrator—is harder to isolate,

since in a sense he emerges only through that double shock that Amans is at once the

author, and old” (“Articulating the Author” 80). While on the one hand this revelation

may seem to negate the long work that preceded it, this revelation may also make it all

the more valuable for others—those younger who are able to heed the work’s advice on

love. Gower as an individual seeking out information may seem foolish, but as a writer

he is not foolish at all. His audience, foregrounded in his prologue (as I will discuss

below), legitimizes him as the human font of information, as does the text itself. As

Gower is specified, so is his audience. The Latin verse closing the work contains a wish

that the work remain with the British well into the future.

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Qui sedet in scannis celi det vt ista Iohannis

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For the sake of this study, I focus simply on Gower’s naming of the British people. For recent analysis

of the more complicated cultural references in Gower’s recensions and the work’s addresses to Richard and

to Henry Bolingbroke, see Irvin (esp. 57-62), Skúlason, and Coley’s Wheel of Language.

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Perpetuis annis stet pagina grata Britannis.

[May he who sits in the throne of heaven grant that this page of John

remain for all time pleasing to the Britains. (Trans. Galloway in Peck ed.)]

More than one condition must be met for this wish to be granted. In the apocalyptic

terms Gower has sketched out, it requires a forestalling of divine judgment, a

continuation of time. With this, it requires his text to persist, to be preserved for a wide

audience. His text, it is wished, should last as long as time does. Perhaps it might go

without saying that Britain should as well.

Since the apocalypse marks the end of time, the very assumptions writers must

hold about the functions and durations of texts are in part determined by the apocalyptic.

Texts themselves are subject to apocalyptically bordered time, to the period of normal

human activity. Mary Carruthers in The Book of Memory addresses the functional

aspects of even seemingly decorative elements of books containing religious meaning—

books that we must presume are designed for good, long lives. She states, “One should

consider them as images which serve to remind readers of the fundamental purposes of

these books…—books that are made for study and meditation, to be mulled over” (323).

But in turn, texts themselves affect the apocalypticism of the period in the particular

issues that arise in the textual consciousness of the period: the privileging of the

individual seer-like perspective, the capacity and necessity of texts to contain and stand in

for other texts, and the role of the active and engaged readers assuming their own unique

apocalyptic perspective. And apocalypticism, after all, as it has been concretized in

Western Christian cultures has been deeply textual. Even as it has intersected with

visionary experiences, that reporting of the vision often persists in textual records.

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With an awareness of the End, individuals must then ask, how must they

appropriately respond? Within texts that have an apocalyptic drive, there is a tension

between the need call for urgent action and the call for restraint. Judith Lieu in her sketch

of apocalyptic textuality shows the importance of the individual author.

…[V]isionary or auditory experience is necessarily predicated upon the

individual, thus creating a conceptual gap between that experience and the

possibility of its immediate reception by a wider audience. Exacerbating

this, whereas in other literary genres, including the gospel or apologetic

text, the transmission from the original eyewitness(es) to a new audience,

who themselves become part of the authoritative tradition, is easily

handled (Luke 1.1-4),

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apocalyptic presupposes that the visionary

uniquely chosen and has been equipped for an experience that cannot be

readily be transferred to others.

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The anxiety this generates is reinforced

by the repeated theme of the visionary’s imminent death or translation (2

Bar. 32.4-9, 76). (238)

This notion of the apocalyptic seer has classically been applied to John on Patmos, but a

status of seer or soothsayer deriving from John’s status by extension may be claimed by

any writer in the Christian apocalyptic tradition. As the variety of sources considered

throughout this chapter will show, some sense of seerlike apocalyptic authority can

persist widely, even in a period in which visionary work is scrutinized.

179

177

Textual references in Lieu’s original. The Luke passage here, used by Lieu as a point of contrast with

the apocalyptic, emphasizes not the newness of information but rather an impulse to verify or corroborate

what has already been said.

178

Lieu here cites Stone, Fourth Ezra 374.

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The controversies regarding visionary writing in this period are outside the scope of this study. For a

few considerations of “non-biblical vision” in late-medieval England largely through the lens of Hildegard

of Bingen’s work, see Kerby-Fulton’s chapter “Extra fidem scripture” in Books under Suspicion, 188-204.

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What happens, though, in the moment as writers have competing claims to

revelation? These notions of authenticity drawn from the ancient world continue to show

currency in the Middle Ages as Christian canonical texts reframe biblical narrative and

even mimic it. The logic evident in such direct forms of narration as gospel and

hagiography thus extends readers’ consciousness of life beyond their immediate social

frame of reference. They argue truth through claimed straightforwardness and through

affiliation with what is already held up as authoritative. Texts thus use their illusion of

permanence to nudge readers toward provocative claims about past, present, and future.

In many cases the text itself plays an important role in legitimizing apocalyptic readings

of the end, readings that might prove controversial.

And very often a text is held up as superior to speech. The first six lines of

Gower’s Vox Clamantis (before grounding the vision in the examples of Daniel and

Joseph) make this case:

Scripture veteris capiunt exempla futuri

Nam dabit experta res magis esse fidem.

Vox licet hoc teneat vulgaris, quod sibi nullum

Sompnia propositum credulitatis habent,

Nos tamen econtra de tempore preteritorum

Certius instructos littera scripta facit.

[Of ancient books those yet to come take heed,

For thing experienced commands belief.

Though common gossip holds the firm belief

That dreams do not contain a shred of truth,

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The written word assures the opposite

And tells us what has happened in the past.] (Carlson and Rigg 24-25

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Again, the written word’s supposed truth is leveraged here, given precedence over what

is spoken or what is merely grasped by the mind. Physical texts give substance to

something as hazy as a dream. Writing transforms dreams into visions more worthy of

belief. And writing is all the more powerful as it contains experience. Then, too, with

the precedence of previous visions, particularly those considered canonical,

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Gower’s

text is taken more seriously than it might be otherwise.

Gower inserts other textual complications that make his work more resilient than

previous texts and difficult for later writers to encapsulate. As Ardis Butterfield shows,

various writers of the late Middle Ages negotiate different terms for their work, pushing

responsibility on others or accepting credit or responsibility at strategic moments.

(“Articulating the Author” 91-92)

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A writer’s ethos is constructed by the sources—

which might be imagined as part of the writer’s textual experience—as well as that

material that appears to be presented originally. The suggestion of previous texts

legitimizes the text at hand.

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And the fact that information was found and thus

assembled adds credibility, connects it to something already established.

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Compilation

180

Trans. Rigg. Note that the Carlson edition opts for the title Visio Anglie.

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As I noted above, Gower proceeds to ground his vision in the visions of Daniel and Joseph, two

authorities who are also considered in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale’s wide-ranging, if dizzying, consideration of

the authority of dreams (Daniel and Joseph being mentioned in Chaucer’s Tales at VII.3128-30).

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Butterfield’s study expands beyond England and accounts as well for Machaut, Boccaccio, and others.

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As Kurt Olsson has observed with regard to Gower, “his activities of compilation do not weaken, but

energize his authorship” (5).

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For the Confessio, Olsson points to a number of examples of information being found:

Genius is a compilator who often names his sources, but even when he does not, he

reminds us that his stories are ‘found’: ‘Ovide telleth in his bok’ (1.333), ‘In Metamor it

telleth thus’ (1.389), ‘in the tale of Troie I finde’ (1.483), ‘I find ensample in a Croniqe’

(1.759), ‘I finde in the bokes write’ (1.2458), ‘Among the bokes of latin / I finde write’

(2.3187-88). Gower’s point, of course, is notmerely to show that Genius is one of those

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in these terms might be considered more of a mechanism than a structure.

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Piero

Boitani has characterized Chaucer’s composition in the Tales as “burst[ing] the formal

structure of religious collections wide open with his artifice of a pilgrimage that is no

longer a function of Christian life but an artifice of gathering tales” (English Medieval

Narrative 27).

And yet tales are gathered so that they might be appropriated, reframed, expanded

upon. Within the context of the pilgrimage, we should see this moving gathering of

pilgrims as the event, the object, and not the shrine itself. The Tales, connecting with our

very powerful impulse to tell stories and relate to them, becomes the center, creates

urgency. Stories on the whole may harness this sense of immediacy quite easily. To give

us a stronger sense of an additional resonance stories had in this period, Fiona Somerset

has recently sketched out her claim that engagement with stories typifies Lollards’

“feeling like saints”: “Narrative is for lollards an important tool for evoking and

sustaining appropriate emotion, as a means to train the will toward living in virtue”

(Feeling Like Saints 139). Somerset thus situates important meaning not just in the

surface of texts, but in the responses commanded by these texts.

Even more powerfully, Gower in the Confessio and Chaucer in the Canterbury

Tales embody sophisticated forms of commentary, as scholars have noted.

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Rita

Copeland’s profound claim about Genius in the Confessio bears repeating:

Genius allows the text, in a sense, to interpret itself: while his function is

the same as a gloss interposed between blocks of text…, Genius as

‘who these olde bokes rede / Of such ensamples’ (2.2140-41); by such references the poet

opens his work out ot the field of books, to a literary heritage.” (6)

185

On our need as readers to move beyond simplistic structural/architectural conceptions of the text, see

John Ganim’s Style and Consciousness.

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See Rita Copeland’s Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation 204-208 on Gower, as well was

Davenport, who situates “the machinery of commentary” in Chaucer’s Tales (see below in this chapter).

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interpreter is also part of the fictive narration that contains and governs the

presentation of the tales. He is as “textual” as the tales that he narrates.

(Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation 205)

Characters, we come to learn, can and must be read, and texts have character. Chaucer

and Gower may suggest that other texts are malleable and manipulable, but are the future

lives of the texts that they create easy to control? Not so much. Key late-medieval

authors’ careful manipulation of powerful stories present us with texts that resist

paraphrase and appropriation by others. In the urgency of this late, apocalyptic moment,

an author—Chaucer and Gower being notable examples—may give us texts that are

difficult to reshape without disrupting the intricately constructed levels of meaning.

Their grand projects mixing tales and advice attempt to supercede other tales and other

bits of advice, as I will suggest throughout this chapter.

The Urgent Text: Texts Making Readers

And while urgency (as I have suggested above) can be overstated in relation to the

apocalypse, it nevertheless is important. It connects the writing with life in a period

when human experience becomes even more central to writing.

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As is clear in many

texts of the period, urgency works against idleness. And since all of Christian history is

claimed by the apocalyptic, idleness’ evil is enhanced as it necessarily means denying the

reality of the apocalypse. It denies urgency as well as accountability. One place where

idleness is singled out is the prologue to Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale:

And though men dradden nevere for to dye,

Yet seen men wel by resoun, doutelees,

That ydelnesse is roten slogardye,

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See Ganim, Style and Consciousness, 48ff.

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Of which ther nevere comth no good n'encrees;

And syn that slouthe hire holdeth in a lees

Oonly to slepe, and for to ete and drynke,

And to devouren al that othere swynke,

And for to putte us fro swich ydelnesse,

That cause is of so greet confusioun,

I have heer doon my feithful bisynesse

After the legende in translacioun

Right of thy glorious lif and passioun,

Thou with thy gerland wroght with rose and lilie –

Thee meene I, mayde and martyr, Seint Cecilie. (VIII.15-28)

[And though men dread to die, yet people see well, doubtless that Idleness

is rotten Sluggardy, of which there never comes no good or profit; and

since that sloth holds her in a leash. Only to sleep and to eat and drink,

and to devour all that others earn, and to put us from such idleness, it is

cause of such great confusion, I have here done my faithful duty.

According to the legend in translation rightly of your glorious life and

passion, you with your garland made with rose and lily—you I mean,

virgin and martyr, Saint Cecilia.]

In this way making explicit the connection between idleness and communication, the

Second Nun argues for the virtue or readerly (and writerly) work. Furthermore,

translation itself is quite often a conspicuously stated textual act. Its mention affects

readers’ understanding of the text at hand, and it may then affect readers’ expectations of

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other texts. In the passage above, the “translacioun” is argued by the Second Nun to have

been done faithfully, consciously, even as Chaucer here and elsewhere presents

translations that vary from the sense-for-sense ideal associated with the Middle Ages.

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Conscious Translation

Translation, as it comes to be understood in the Middle Ages, is deeply productive

or, as Rita Copeland puts it, “a powerful form of exegetical action” (Rhetoric,

Hermeneutics, and Translation 184). This is a large part of what makes Chaucer and

Gower’s texts so elusive and so resilient as other texts seem more ephemeral. The very

language gap that necessitates translation challenges the would-be writer in the target

language to read the text afresh and to connect it to the target culture. As Nicholas

Watson notes with regard to this period, “as the English language self-consciously

invents itself in these texts as England’s sole vernacular from the late fourteenth century

on, the intransigence of the medium of English... can more and more come to the fore as

requiring divine providence, deep learning, or extravagant translatorial inventiveness, to

overcome” (“Theories of Translation”). By the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth

century, translation was recognized—at least by practitioners those in charge afraid of the

social consequences of vernacularization—as something more complicated than when it

was urged in Pecham’s program of lay education in the thirteenth century.

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Chaucer’s use of translation is especially complex. Regarding the function of

Chaucer’s translation, Lynn Staley notes, “His translation serves as a particularly

intelligent and well-focused interpretation of a text, a reading that offers a picture of the

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Tim Machan establishes Chaucer’s deviation from Jerome’s sense-for-sense standard. As he points out,

for the Second Nun and other texts, “Chaucer has gathered the ‘senses’ from two different texts and thereby

created by implication his own source and thus his own sense’” (“Chaucer as Translator” 58). Machan

points to Sherry Reames’ “The Sources of ‘Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale.’”

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In addition to the resources on Pecham’s Syllabus cited above, see Ian Johnson’s recent application of

Pecham’s “ecclesiastical imperative” to lives of Christ (18-19).

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church as composed of individual relationships (based on personal conversions) that

replace the conventions of secular society” (“Chaucer’s Tale of the Second Nun” 326).

This is entirely consistent with a predominant association of translation with exposition in

the Middle Ages.

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With an eye on theory, Roger Ellis has characterized Chaucer’s

work of translation thus:

…Chaucer’s practice, as opposed to his theorizing, is regularly radical,

and points to his assumption of authorial roles even when he professes to

be functioning as a fidus interpres.

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The most striking instance of this

comes when several of his pilgrim-narrators presume to contest the issue

with the sources from which they are translating. We have already seen

this happen in the prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale. It also happens in

the prologue to the Clerk’s Tale, whose narrator casts a coolly critical eye

over the Petrarch text he is proposing to translate and cutes most of its

prologue as “impertinent”…. (“Translation” 454)

This “radical” reality, though, is not what Chaucer projects to his audience. Emphasizing

sources in the first place can be considered a conservative posture. As sources are

mentioned, the author claims to connect to prior knowledge. Chaucer is able to present

stories without reducing them to merely his invention. Carolynn Van Dyke has argued

with regard to the General Prologue that Chaucer “plays [an]…unassertive role as shaper

of the text” (237).

192

190

See Rita Copeland’s Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages. Ian Johnson, too,

rightly highlights “the dominant conception of translation in the later medieval period, when it was seen as

something akin to commentary or exposition” (15).

191

The oft-cited phrase appears in Horace’s Ars Poetica, lines 133-34.

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She continues: “He does not of course merely transmit facts, as the persona will pretend to do in the

mock apology, but he deviates little from rhetorical and formal conventions” (237).

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Even when he places sources aside, he presents himself as cautious. In the

General Prologue he seems reasonable and unobtrusive in what he does:

Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun

To telle yow al the condicioun

Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,

And whiche they weren, and of what degree. (I.37-40)

And yet this role, when viewed across the larger project, is played, amounts to Chaucer’s

projection of himself. This role, assumed for the time being, effectively changes as his

text falls out of his control. After all, he claims to use his text just to relate how people

are. Hidden in this initial plans are his need to judge, his use of other sources, and the

effect that those factors will have on his readers.

As Chaucer must be aware, engagement with sources as his text outlives him will

affect his work’s meaning. William Rossiter has argued with regard to the Clerk’s Tale

that the “sources” cannot be simply forgotten but affect the meaning we are to see.

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be sure, the humanist (and frustratingly enigmatic and apocalyptic) project of finding

meaning between Chaucer’s text and his “sources” is still developing. For one matter,

Chaucer’s credibility as a writer is at stake in how he translates. This is particularly true

as his frequent borrowing of sources requires such frequent translation. Barry Windeatt

shows an important implication of Chaucer at least pretending to be a fidus interpretes:

“The guise of the slavishly faithful translator is variously exploited by Chaucer as an

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Rossiter here is quoting Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text (160), which he engaged with a few

pages previous. “…Boccaccio’s tale, Petrarch’s translation, and Chaucer’s translation of that translation

(which may have been directly influenced by the Boccaccian original, according to some commentators)

constitute what may be termed the Griseldan intertext, with all of the attendant problems and complexities

concomitant with that ‘vast stereophony’” (169). He highlights Barthes’ operative statement of the

intertextual: “The intertextual in which every text is held, it itself being the text-between of another text, is

not to be confused with some origin of the text” (Barthes 160, qtd. in Rossiter 166).

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enabling device. If translation includes so much, little faith is broken, and pretending to

be translator rather than author can help evade problems of authority in boldly innovative

adaptations” (“Geoffrey Chaucer” 141). As Windeatt’s analysis reminds us, translation

requires much more than linguistic competence. It involves gaining the reader’s trust,

and even maintaining the reader’s trust when the surface meaning is proven not what it

seemed to be. Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales gives us a special kind of text that

transcends the limitations of earlier devotional and formulaic works. In Stephanie

Trigg’s formulation, Chaucer and Gower “invent a new kind of author role in English,

using and adapting the vocabulary of the academic prologues” (Congenial Souls 53).

Therefore, such rich texts as the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio accomplish this

while harnessing the terms of more formulaic literature.

The space that enabled Chaucer (and Gower) to assume his special author role

and to produce this type of text was made in part by the social mobility of this time

period in England. As one important factor, writers in this period assumed a special

social and legal status. As Kellie Robertson has shown, writers’ work in late-medieval

England needed to find a special niche after labor laws that were instituted after the

plague.

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As such, their work became more conspicuous. The late Middle Ages saw

significant changes in how texts were constructed and in what resources were available to

writers. As Chris Given-Wilson suggests, the production of chronicles, largely produced

by monks in the thirteenth century, became more of the domain of secular clerks in the

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Robertson generalizes, “Poets were not (to our knowledge) regularly hauled before local peace

commissions, though the work of travelling pilgrims, preachers, and university students—fellow labourers

in the immaterial vineyards—was regularly surveyed under these increasingly stringent laws” (445). In

spite of this, as she goes on to establish, authors whose work has survived have shown an awareness of the

new designations of work, and records exist of clergy and university students being burdened to prove the

necessity of their work as they moved from place to place.

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fourteenth century (Chronicles 16).

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These factors at least begin to account for how

vernacular and lay writers became increasingly influential in late-medieval England, a

trend of which Chaucer is keenly aware.

Chaucer, as we can see already, is careful to foreground multiple authorial acts for

which he is responsible, even if his labeling of them does not exactly line up with what he

is doing. As David Wallace points out, Chaucer’s role as writer is essential: “Through

the business of finding the felaweshipe, then, Chaucer comes to employ his particular

skills and hence to claim his specific social function” (Chaucerian Polity 82). Also, as

Wallace points out, his role as auctor is in some ways shared with, as well as established

by, the Wife of Bath: “She is herself imbued with knowledge of the techniques of clerkly

exegesis, knowledge that allows her to actively interrogate rather than passively receive

the terms of clerkly and antifeminist critique” (82). She is even bold enough to get into

what Paul “dorste comanden” regarding a chaste life:

Poul dorst nat comanden, atte leeste,

A thyng of which his maister yaf noon heeste. (III.73-74)

[Paul dares not command, at least, a thing about which his master gave no

command.]

Authority effectively rests not only in stating commands but in delineating what is not

commanded. In this period in which the meanings of writers and writing shift, Chaucer

especially shows how individual interpreters put their own mark on the text. Beyond this,

individual interpreters necessarily impose their own assumptions concerning the posterity

of texts. As a practical matter, texts come to be seen as the most reliable means of

apocalyptic dissemination. Even as this has been true throughout the history of Judeo-

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Given-Wilson here cites a “brief revival of monastic writing around 1380” (16).

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Christian apocalyptic thought, this sense of textual continuity intensifies in a period of

ascendant literacy.

Written Apocalypticism at a Time of Textual Proliferation

The more that apocalypticism becomes text-based, the more that seeking truth

becomes a matter of writing. Complex text-oriented cultures may consist of coexisting

overlapping, lingering, and late-arriving texts. As Fiona Somerset has recently observed

with regard to “Lollard pastoralia,” even where texts do not at first glance scream a

political identity, the culture may consist of “creative adaptation, rather than careful

reproduction of an authorial original” (“Textual Transmission” 89). As will become later

in the examples drawn from the Canterbury Tales, textual manipulations (subtle and not-

so-subtle) show that writing is indeed powerful, even as its power is harnessed variously

for different ends. So it isn’t all about the author and the author’s conspicuous work in an

apocalyptic context. Previously existing textual traditions provide much of the

machinery authors may use in an apocalyptic vein. This holds true, for example, as

hagiographic texts—texts that coexist with Chaucer and Gower—have for centuries

managed to encapsulate the works of someone who may have acted virtuously out of a

sense of urgency, and whose exemplary behavior may communicate similar urgency to

the audiences hearing such stories. Hagiography negotiates the past, present, and future.

Through claims to the supernatural (particularly posthumous miracles) it categorically

leverages a saint’s awareness of what happens after one’s life. This period’s multi-

layered engagement with saints proved deeply productive throughout the Middle Ages

and managed to promote vernacular literacy in religious matters into the following

century. This occurred even as a wide variety of vernacular religious texts were

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restricted in England.

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At stake in these texts is the epistemology of supernatural

information, something very much debated in the context of Wycliffism. And yet, even

as rich possibilities existed in the supernatural events of miracle stories, so too were

miracles in some ways challenged as the Middle Ages progressed. As Chris Given-

Wilson points out, the inclusion (or exclusion) of miracles in chronicles in the later

Middle Ages becomes especially conspicuous. As miracles seem to be avoided in some

chronicles,

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they are rhetorically powerful in others, providing what Given-Wilson calls

“Godwitness testimony” (Chronicles 38). This in particular emphasizes divine control

over human activity and over time. And as narratives continue to be collected and

repackaged in the late Middle Ages, newly adapted hagiographic and other religiously-

grounded texts re-establish authority with their definitive image of the past and

implications for the present and future.

The Unforgiving Pardon and the Manipulable Document

Another rich field of meaning for texts is in official and ecclesiastical

pronouncements. The fact that the meaning of official pronouncements is subject to

debate in this period is perhaps most evident in discourse of last things apparent in

indulgences. Chaucer’s Pardoner makes his claims to judge clear in his prologue. And

as he does this, he introduces (and makes himself vulnerable to) debate on one’s

credibility, on merit, and on the force of texts to support a person. To step back a bit, in

allowing us to read the Pardoner’s extended discourse in which his own works, Chaucer

stimulates a robust discussion about the possibilities (for success and for abuse) of

196

As Sanok maintains, “the sweeping reforms of the early fifteenth century that outlawed much vernacular

religious writing in England did not limit the composition or translation of hagiography” (27). See, too,

Watson’s “Censorship and Cultural Change” (833), which Sanok cites.

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Given-Wilson cites in particular The Chronicle of Adam Usk.

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spoken and written communication. The mark of the Pardoner, particularly in the

prologue to his tale, may require more of the reader than that of any of the other pilgrims.

Here in the Pardoner’s Prologue he not only shows the sleight of hand that can be

practiced in communication, but he also invites the reader to engage with the text.

Something is amiss, and the reader has to piece together the problems with the Pardoner’s

presentation of religious teaching. As I argued in my previous chapter, the particularly

confessional character assumed by much spoken communication in the period assumed

an apocalyptic urgency and immediacy. However, while writing by its nature embodies

the ephemeral, in an apocalyptic context writing may be seen as occupying a position that

is somewhat ephemeral, somewhat permanent.

In a time when there already exists much confusion and disagreement about

ecclesiastical authority, Chaucer’s Pardoner makes references to authority even more

confusing for the laity. But through this confusion, Chaucer offers an intensive rhetorical

education. It starts with addressing who this corrupt handler of spoken and written

communication is. The Pardoner, though he is not clergy, assumes a role of disseminator

of religious messages (as opposed to a most lay receivers of religious meaning) and sets

himself far enough above some others in the company. His concern with power and his

seeming carelessness about spiritual matters would seem to disqualify him from

preaching. He runs counter to the broad requirements for motivation given in Robert of

Basevorn’s fourteenth-century preaching manual:

Let the preacher see to it above all that he have a good purpose for his

sermon—such as the praise of God, or His saints, or the edification of his

neighbor, or some such object deserving eternal life. If, secondarily, he

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also includes another purpose—that he be famous, or that he gain

something temporal, or the like—he is an adulterer of the Word of God,

and this is considered a mortal sin. (125)

In the light of this fairly intuitive guidance, the Pardoner would be spiritually in trouble.

The Prologue not only lays his intentions bare but also presents a deeply compromised

message. The Pardoner makes claims to powers that most laypersons do not have access

to, although he is officially defined as lay. And, as Gregory Gross has pointed out, the

Pardoner is keenly aware of the limitations of priests and uses those limitations to his

own advantage (166-67). The grey area he exploits exists not only because of the

logistical necessities caused by the promotion of indulgences but also because he makes

it for himself. Swanson lays out the laxity enjoyed by pardoners as they were supervised

only minimally:

Pardoners existed on the periphery of the church’s structures. They had

no formal place in its hierarchy, no rank in clerical orders. While clerics

appear as questors, and might be actively involved in indulgence

distribution, over time it is probably that the trade became increasingly

laicized. Being so much on the edge, ancillary, pardoners also slipped out

of sight for the church’s legislators: no prescriptive texts fully establish the

pattern of a pardoner’s life. (Indulgences in Late Medieval England 181)

From medieval and modern perspectives, Swanson’s observation means that Pardoners

were “peripheral” because they were not contained by and were not the focus of certain

texts. But their outsider status has a very different effect from that of the apocalyptic seer.

In fact the Pardoner is the false prophet par excellence.

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The Pardoner and his work—both easy to see as apocalyptic evil—are especially

subject to a scrutiny that proves textual.

198

So this Pardoner in the Canterbury Tales

proves to be a major object of study and must be scrutinized as a text himself, if readers

are to resist him. In this midst of the company of pilgrims, Chaucer’s Pardoner is in no

way “out of sight.” Why then is this Pardoner not confronted directly regarding obvious

abuses? And if we follow that the Pardoner is presented believably, how can he be

reasonably effective selling pardons and relics as he gives away so much of his modus

operandi?

“Lordynges,” quod he, “in chirches whan I preche,

I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche,

And rynge it out as rounde as gooth a belle,

For I kan al by rote that I telle.

My theme is alwey oon, and evere was—

Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

First I pronounce whennes that I come,

And thanne my bulles shewe I, alle and some.

Oure lige lordes seel on my patent,

That shewe I first, my body to warente,

That no man be so boold, ne preest ne clerk,

Me to destourbe of Cristes hooly werk. (VI.329-340)

[Lords, said he, in churches when I preach, I pain myself to have a high

speech, and ring it out as decisively as a bell goes, for I know by rote

everything that I tell. My theme is always one, and always has been—

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See Stephen O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse.

176

“The love of the money is the root of evil”—First I pronounce where I

came from, then I show my bulls, all and some, our liege lord’s seal on my

patent, that I show first, in order to protect my body, that no man would be

so bold, neither priest nor clerk, to disturb me from Christ’s holy work.]

The text on which the Pardoner depends provides him a form of protection as well as

legitimizing his work as “hooly.” His texts temper the reaction that many would have to

avoid him at best, harm him at worst. These texts—present on the pilgrimage—

effectively serve as characters themselves. Oddly enough, it is the Pardoner who is most

“read,” and his formulaic texts that are less subjected to interpretation than he is.

The Pardoner’s legibly nefarious practice requires that one ask the question, can a

message be trusted in the hands of the untrained?

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His seeming relegation of Latin to

superficiality and not to specific theological meaning (“And in Latyn I speke a wordes

fewe,” 344) suggests that the necessary Latin is easy enough to perform for a lay

audience. Latin is a mark of superiority but not a font of deep meaning for him. Limited

repetition does not a language make. He is furthermore not homiletically trained. The

very fact that his “theme is alwey oon, and evere was” shows his narrow focus. His work

embodies a very practical theology, a conspicuously non-traditional one, and the

indulgence for its claims and physicality effectively mirrors and rivals services offered

within the sacramental system, as in his scandalous offering of absolution. He uses

superficial speech, preaches against greed while proving himself guilty of it, uses the seal

on the letter patent to intimidate, and imputes on Christ work that is theologically

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This alerts us to the broad concern in the later Middle Ages about what made priests fit or unfit and the

efficacy of their sacraments, a topic too knotted to cover in this study. Again, for the matter as it was

addressed by Wyclif in this period, see Ian Christopher Levy’s “Was John Wyclif’s Theology of the

Eucharist Donatistic?”

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questioned. As he points to the authority bestowed through the bulls (336) by way of a

whole host of contemporary religious authorities

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he connects himself to a very real

contemporary power structure. He points to living persons whose power supersedes that

of anyone else in the company. Furthermore, through repetition he is saying things

seemingly consonant with what people in the Church have been saying. And as his

discourse is committed to a text, this prologue offers a tightly drawn picture of clerical

corruption and its demonstrable evil. The texts he holds prove ambiguous, and he on the

whole is conflicted. Even as texts connect him to some who are in power, the exact terms

of that connection are not even necessarily clear to him as the theology of pardons is

subject to debate. Overall, he suffers from being as disconnected by texts as he is

connected by them.

The Judgment of the Text

His vulnerability to texts is especially apparent when one considers that by textual

means the Pardoner is made easier for any literate person to judge. Readers can see that

he wins at the expense of those to whom he preaches—at monetary expense and at the

expense of reputation.

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Again, it is by Chaucer’s text—by committing the spoken

sermon or pitch to writing—that the Pardoner is undone. By “preaching” he assumes

authority, and by this public speech he becomes someone that many listen to. Preaching

in this period, too, becomes an act over which considerable ink is spilled. As theologians

continue in late scholasticism to use texts to delineate what sermons should be and as

sermons come to be modeled on textual examples, preaching necessarily becomes more

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The text points to popes, cardinals, patriarchs, and bishops (342-43).

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This is not to say that he gets what he wants among the company of pilgrims. Eugene Vance is right to

note the Pardoner is somewhat ignorant of the rhetorical situation: “Because he underestimates the

indignation his discourse causes among his fellow pilgrims, he does not anticipate either the retaliation that

awaits him or the positive example of humble eloquence that will be given by the Nun's Priest” (733).

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deeply affected by texts.

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And the fact that the Pardoner is subject to textual scrutiny

by lay and clergy alike points to the diversity of ways in which textual practices lend

themselves to judgement.

But the fact that the Pardoner also judges must not be lost, as it too speaks to how

permanent this prologue’s presumed forms of judgment are. To accomplish what he

wants, the Pardoner also relies on the very binding—perhaps permanent and likely on

some level textual—consequences of his exposure of behavior. He uses the vulnerability

entailed by religious correction and by social knowledge within a local community.

Religious correction, as I have suggested earlier in this study, should help the individual

soul, but the Pardoner leverages social knowledge against individuals who would oppose

him.

For though I telle noght his proper name,

Men shal wel knowe that it is the same,

By signes, and by other circumstances.

Thus quyte I folk that doon us displesances;

Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe

Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. (VI.417-422)

[For thought I do not tell his proper name, people shall well know that it is

the same, by signs, and by other circumstances. Thus I verbally avenge

folk who do harm to us; Thus I spit my venom under the guise of holiness,

to seem holy and true.]

Such “seeming” is exposed as false the more that this admission is read. Just as anyone

collecting money on the Church’s behalf can be maligned along with the Pardoner, so

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See Mirk’s Festial and Cigman’s Lollard Sermons collection as examples.

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may anyone offering counsel on the Church’s behalf. By admitting to wrongs and by

mirroring wrongs that others too are guilty of, he might presume to put himself above

correction. This move may save him from extended scrutiny and protection. The

Pardoner undoubtedly persists after the pilgrimage and his corruption is assumed to

persist in reality—if fragmented across countless acts of corruption. But so too do textual

responses to this evil persist, Chaucer’s framing work being one of them. Thus

documentary evidence—here Chaucer’s text of the Pardoner’s Prologue, elsewhere

pardons and written records of correction—is essential to the apocalyptic environment of

late-fourteenth century writing. It provides a necessary check against speech that leaves

no physical evidence.

The “Charter of Christ”: Reconfiguring the Familiar

Also noteworthy for its purportedly grounding in documentary reality is the

“Short Charter of Christ,” in which the perspective of Christ is assumed in legal charter

form. As Emily Steiner has noted, “fictive legal documents” such as this “represent the

point at which the stuff of documentary culture (charters, seals, coffers) and its agents

(grantors, notaries, witnesses) were being translated into the rhetoric and ideologies of

popular piety” (Documentary Culture 193). For the “Short Charter,” its complexity as

literature and its rhetorical power owe to its ability to harness different genres and invoke

rhetorical moves in novel ways. Readers are presented with essentially biblically

verifiable information, but they are expected to process these facts through a voice

different from that of a canonical source.

Wytnes the dey that turnyd to nyght

And the sone that withdrew hys lyght.

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Wytnes the erth that than dyde quake

And the stones that all to-brake.

Wytnes the vayle that than dyd ryve,

And dede men that rosse fro deth to lyve.

Wytnes my moder and Seynt John

And other that ther were, many one.

In wytnes of that yche thynge,

Myn awne sele therto I hynge. (Shuffelton ed., lines 21-30)

[Witness the day that turned to night, and the son that withdrew his light.

Witness the earth that then did quake, and the stones that all broke up.

Witness the veil that did split, and dead people who rose from death to life.

Witness my mother and St. John and many others that were there. In

witness of each of these things, I attach my own seal

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The repeated command to “witness” makes the reader accountable for reading the text

and acting on that reading. The “charter” thus immediately brings certain obligations for

the reader, forcing her or him to confront the crucifixion sequence. As Emily Steiner has

pointed out, the extant Charters of Christ in Middle English communicate a fascination

with the culture of legal documents in the period. Moreover, these pretended charters

serve most tellingly as a hybrid of different forms of communication accessible to the

period. Even as the crucifixion sequence seems to be unchanged, it is merely the textual

representation of it that has changed. Readers are supposed to witness those things that

otherwise might be mere words on the page or mere words read aloud. In particular in

lines 23-26 the reader is supposed to witness those expressions of divine power over

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As would be done on a legal document.

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nature that continued to be echoed in apocalyptic rhetoric throughout the Middle Ages:

the quaking earth, breaking stones, broken veil, and rising dead emerge as supernatural

events that we are to entertain seriously, to almost experience. The Charters of Christ

thus reframe the canonical and familiar.

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This apocalyptic textual function turns the

biblical narrative into a vision of sorts. These texts argue for the permanence of the

contained story, a story that attests to divine power, including the divine capacity to judge.

Textual Memory-Making, Belief-Making

Texts may make more permanent other things as well, including the content of

dreams and overwhelming phenomena such as plague. The ability of texts to transfix

readers and to point to impossible-to-capture extratextual realities is quite evident in

Pearl. David Coley has recently argued that Pearl may be understood as text connected

“to the ongoing rupture of the pestilence” (“Pearl and the Narrative of Pestilence”

215).

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Coley maintains that language has been thoroughly affected by the plague and

considers plague’s resonances within Pearl’s language of physicality. Even if we do not

concede the strong associations with the plague in Pearl that Coley maintains, we should

consider the extent to which texts bear some memory of plague.

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This happens not only

through the discourse of physical description but also (and perhaps more importantly)

204

This concern with reframing and reconfiguring other texts is considered in more detail below.

205

Coley establishes many of Pearl’s functions, showing how difficult the work is to define: “Equal parts

elegy, allegory, apocalypse, social commentary, and courtly production, the enigmatic Pearl is unusually

well situated to register an event that resonated broadly across familial, social, and spiritual lines” (217).

Although the issue of pestilence has not been picked up much in studies of Pearl, Coley points to some

exceptions in Pearl scholarship that have addressed pestilence: Freidl and Kirby’s work and also Katherine

Terrell’s article, the latter of which denies any such connection.

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Coley admirably situates this memory in meaning reminiscent of pestilence: “The presence of so many

words in Pearl’s second stanza with so consistent a set of double (or triple) meanings—

spot, clot,moul, bolne, bele—allows the poem to sustain a semantic register that undoubtedly, if indirectly,

alludes to the bodily marks of pestilence. Equally important, however, Pearl’s lexical richness—an

example of the “ornamental verbal ‘density’” so prized in Middle English alliterative poetry and a lingering

textual marker of the poem’s courtly milieu—begins to connect the pestilential semantic register with the

poem’s broader thematic concerns” (222-23).

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through eschatological discourse. Furthermore, this is evident in the very strong impulse

in this period for written texts to serve as cultural memory. Still, this memory is but an

approximation of the larger reality worth seeking. Jessica Brantley has recently argued

the following regarding what the written text accomplishes:

The poem of Pearl, constructed around the physical image of the spotless

jewel, exposes the necessity of joining allegorical speculation with

tangible particulars. Pearl provides a key site for exploring the ways in

which even the most otherworldly medieval text can be embedded in

medieval culture, for it relies on the idea of the artifact not simply for its

impetus, but also for its continuation and aftermath. (192)

Within the poem, the pearl itself is seen to transcend high forms of writing and learning:

“Ne Arystotle nawÞer by hys lettrure / Of carped Þe kynde Þese propertéz” [“…nor did

Aristotle through his learning speak of the nature of these special virtues.”] (751-2; trans.

Andrew and Waldron). The ineffability that Peter Bogdanos has expounded on is central

to Pearl. Bogdanos’ reading of Pearl encapsulates the poet’s pretension to a sort of

biblical textual power:

…[H]e borrows or, rather, daringly appropriates the anagogic telos of the

Bible and makes it the dramatic denouement of his own private experience.

He claims to have seen what John the Apostle saw. He claims to have

actually encountered the sacred prototype of anagoge itself, the New

Jerusalem. Can a poet imitate God’s way of writing more closely than

this? (11)

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Writing thus proves secondary to what it discusses. And here the object—heaven—ties

together the writer’s perception with John’s writing on Patmos (and John’s perception).

Writing serves as a semi-permanent witness to things that speech is entirely incapable of

encapsulating. This is clear early in Pearl, where what the dreamer percieves far exceeds

even the best things he has perceived in daily life:

Ȝet þoȝt me neuer so swete a sange

As style stounde let to me stele. (19-20)

[“Never yet did a song seem to me to have such sweetness as a moment of

peace let steal over me” (Trans. Andrew and Waldron)]

This brief experience proves but a foretaste. It overwhelms him, but it gives him enough

of an impression to commit it to texual form. As a text, at least this foretaste can be

revisited, reconsidered. Another early example from the poem illustrates how the

purportedly inexpressible still manages to become expressed in a very material, textual

way:

More of wele watz in þat wyse

Þen I cowþe telle þaȝ I tom hade,

For vrþely herte myȝt not sufyse .

To þe tenþe dole of þo gladnez glade. (133-36)

[“There was more delight in that scene than I could describe even if I had

time, for an earthly heart could not have sufficient capacity for the tenth

part of those glad joys.” (Trans. Andrew and Waldron)]

The text, which will provide this dream with more permanence than it otherwise would

have, is still limited. The writer’s heart and his capacity simply to write things down

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limit the resultant text. Writing in this way is very clearly tied to temporal human reality,

contained within preapocalyptic time. The text, just as the reader’s brief dream-

experience, has to survive until time is no more. It proves more permanent than the more

important (yet also more fleeting) apocalyptic insight it conveys. And when it cannot

convey, it must at least approximate, offer an impression, and witness to a reality greater

than itself.

Texts Containing Other Texts

Even as writing is secondary to reality, it becomes more complex as it seeks out

that reality. For many medieval writers, seeking out this reality involves seeking out

even more texts. The development of literature in a markedly apocalyptic mode in this

period is certainly coordinate with a strong awareness of the increasing number of texts

available to readers of the period. This is especially evident as writers conspicuously fold

other texts into their own. As I have suggested already, the very work of text-

manipulation (in its various forms, including compiling and translating) affects the

credibility of the apocalyptic writer and often distinguishes her or him from her or his

audience. The very incorporation of multiple sources within a text promotes

apocalypticism. This has been modeled in the long Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition,

marked by new recorded visions, subject to constant updating while staying connected to

a broader written spiritual tradition. The fact that texts reframe the material of previous

texts is itself a key aspect of apocalyptic textuality. Judith Lieu highlights “the important

role played within apocalyptic by the reinterpretation of earlier Scripture—the text

behind apocalyptic.” Lieu elaborates on this level:

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The text behind apocalyptic is an integral part of the production of the

apocalyptic text itself. Indeed, this may be quite precisely so: it has been

convincingly argued that the study of the texts was often the stimulus for

apocalyptic revelation or for heavenly ascent, perhaps through particular

techniques, including meditation. Functionally, this relationship means

that apocalyptic is able to address the problem that arises when ownership

of the authoritative text becomes contested or when different ways of

reading come into conflict. The intrinsic claims of apocalyptic revelation

provide a superior, authoritative reading; on the other hand, they can also

serve to delegitimise alternative readings. (245)

Texts making apocalyptic claims therefore effectively seize power for themselves, seize

the reader’s attention and sympathies in ways that other texts may not. This occurs in

non-devotional texts as well as in more devotional ones. As we have considered

Chaucer’s dynamic translation and compilations already, we can see that what Chaucer

does is not as important as survives him.

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What Chaucer claims becomes an important

part of the message that will survive him.

Texts and Stability

Gower, too, very consciously folds into his work a series of texts that predate his

work. However, Gower seems to envision his own apocalyptic text as more stable than

Chaucer’s, if only because he is willing to advance moral warning clearly and without

207

For an account of how Chaucer’s work and legacy was shaped after his death, see John Bowers’

Chaucer and Langland.

186

Chaucerian indirection. From what is largely a view from the top,

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Gower through texts

approaches the apocalyptic in a way that legitimizes power and finds doom in the actions

of the marginalized. For the privileged, Gower, apocalyptic degeneration thus involves

persons falling short of his conception of human potential. To underscore power in the

face of the apocalypse, Gower’s perspective, his judgment, his exclusive claims to

information are all in the foreground. In a gesture toward the stability and the grand

vantage point assumed of texts, the Prologue of Gower’s Confessio Amantis calls special

attention to what has appeared in texts previously, what survives from an earlier time.

Of hem that writen ous tofore

The bokes duelle, and we therfore

Ben tawht of that was write tho:

Forthi good is that we also

In oure tyme among ous hiere

Do wryte of newe som matiere,

Essampled of these olde wyse,

So that it myhte in such a wyse,

Whan we ben dede and elleswhere,

Beleve to

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the worldes eere

In tyme comende after this.

[Of them that wrote for us already, the books dwell, and we therefore are

taught of what was written then; Therefore it is good that we also in our

208

On Gower’s favoring of the already privileged, see Arner, as well as Peck’s “John Gower and the Book

of Daniel.” See too, David Coley’s The Wheel of Language, where he points out Gower’s conception of

books as being necessary to celebrate the virtuous and privileged (186).

209

Peck’s gloss of beleve to from his edition: “be left behind for.” Peck suggests (and rightly so) that this is

the verb bileven for which the MED gives a range including “be left for,” “to let remain,” and “to remain.”

Clearly, this verb, used in this context, highlights the persistence of the text well into the future.

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time among us here do write some material afresh, drawn from these old

ways, so that it might in such a way, when we are dead and elsewhere, be

left behind for the world’s ear in time coming after this.]

Stories, as Gower suggests, need to be retold. Texts need to be reshaped, and new texts

need to be added. Old material is freshened (in the most favorable construction), and it

may also be substantially altered or even misrepresented. This sense of newness is

especially important as the presumed age of the world (or the late stage of time) are

highlighted. As James Dean argues, “By internalizing the idea of the world grown old,

the writers of the later Middle Ages made it new” (The World Grown Old 324). In the

case of ambitious constructions such as Gower’s Confessio Amantis or Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales, literature that is aware of the apocalypse produces more literature

aware of the apocalypse, each manifestation arguing for its own supremacy and urgency.

Again, the prospect that a writer’s message is useful beyond her or his death is

key. Gower makes an urgent appeal for stability, a stability that he might not necessarily

live to see. Consistent with Lieu’s terms of apocalyptic textuality, Gower’s elaborate text

is constructed with an awareness of those who might read the text beyond the writer or

author-compiler’s life. Gower shows his awareness of the importance of producing his

text “[i]n oure tyme among ous hiere.” An apocalyptic sense of time, as I have suggested

already, depends not necessarily on an end that will be seen during one’s lifetime, but it

acknowledges the definiteness of an end. Furthermore, as A. J. Minnis notes, “Chaucer

treats his fictional characters with the respect that the Latin compilers had reserved for

their authors” (Medieval Theory of Authorship 203).

210

Chaucer shows us very clearly

210

Norman Hinton’s general definition of compilation is useful: “a work which arranges auctoritates in

such a way as to produce materials for a discussion of moral or ethical issues” (28). Arthur Barr’s recent

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what texts can do, how authority is constructed. This even applies to texts considered

formulaic, texts often passed over today and taken for granted as predictable, functional

in their time.

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Philosophical considerations of time as created and endable and of

impending judgment contribute to the understanding of texts’ function and duration in

this period.

As one key example of this vividly conceived sense of history, Gower’s

engagement with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the Confessio’s prologue highlights

apocalyptic time. As Lynn Arner has noted, this passage has profound implications for

Gower’s apocalyptic awareness of past and future (74). Gower’s setup of this section is

instructive:

Bot in this wise a man mai lere

Hou that the world is gon aboute,

The which wel nyh is wered oute,

After the forme of that figure

Which Daniel in his scripture

Expondeth, as tofore is told. (868-73)

[But in this way a person may read how that the world has gone about,

which well night is worn out, according to the form of that figure, which

Daniel in his book of Scripture expounds, as is told before.]

In presenting this text, Gower importantly claims the story as his own. As Russell Peck

has noted, here “Gower has shifted the voice of the prayer from Daniel to himself, but the

definition, however, more challengingly centers on the reader’s perspective (10-11). See, too, Minnis’

“Late-Medieval Discussions of Compilatio.”

211

See Michael Van Dussen’s recent argument about the impact of networks of communication during the

ecclesiastical-political shakeup of the papal schism, even evident in compilationes (191).

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point of underscoring “hou that this world schal torne and wende” is the same (“John

Gower and the Book of Daniel” 173-4). In fact, Gower’s shifting to himself underscores

his status as seer-like, with an exclusive vantage-point of apocalyptic developments.

Furthermore, Lynn Arner notes the progression:

According to the dream’s logic (reflected in the shift from a golden age to

a silver age, to a bronze era, to an epoch of iron mixed with clay), the

passing of time represents a movement into an increasingly less glorious,

less desirable state of existence. (78)

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Reading Gower and reading the statue-body of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream thus must set

the readers at some kind of an advantage. And yet, as James Dean argues with regard to

this statue-form, “is an emblem of mankind’s original and continuing culpability for the

world’s ‘health’ and for the mutations of empire” (The World Grown Old 261). The

fragility of humanity is argued throughout Gower’s work—especially evident in the Vox

clamantis and the Confessio amantis, so any small check against human weakness can

forestall judgment or strengthen the few who are apocalyptically aware.

Given the inevitability of divine Judgment in medieval Christian apocalypticism,

this advantage is limited, given that knowledge of one’s place in history points to the end

of history. Furthermore, this awareness of time’s finitude acknowledges the necessity of

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In analyzing the Prologue, Lynn Arner explains the apocalyptic implications of the moment in this way:

The placement of Gower’s England at the end of history creates several

effects. First, this placement works to generate a sense of crisis, a sense that readers are

living in a desperate time and that society is on the verge of collapse. This message is

underscored by the image of the stone descending the hill, landing on the statue’s toes,

and grinding the figure into powder. This is the fate that threatens Gower’s England.

The apocalyptic tone accompanying this image and the subsequent use of imminent

destruction position late medieval England at the end of a long line of history, tottering

on the edge of abyss. By locating society in such an undesirable predicament, the text

prompts readers to support conservative groups in society, namely, groups who attempt to

conserve or maintain social relations and the distribution of wealth and power, as

opposed to those who might attempt to change the social power. (78)

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preserving information for future generations. Preserving information for the future is

invoked powerfully in the opening of Thomas Favent’s often-cited account of the 1386

Parliament, “History or Narration Concerning the Manner and Form of the Merciless

Parliament”:

Since, by custom, ancient and long durations fatally seep away from

human beings’ fleeting present memories, urgent reason has admonished

me that, in however childishly inept a way, I should undertake to compose

for posterity an account in formal written proceedings of certain

extraordinary events that not long ago transpired in England. Let it not be

disgusting to bring to mind and commit to memory such things which, if

every diligent reader would heed, he would have a mirror, in part, for

more easily avoiding adversities, scandals, and the dangers and burning

torments of death. I will not therefore allow it to remain delighting in the

secret den of silence, how a monstrous sin of this sort, starting from

certain people who were smothered in the embers of avarice and burdened

by the weight of crimes, thereafter raced through England. (Trans.

Galloway 231).

The account dwells on moments that seem to typify irreparable damage, even doom. And

it makes very clear the obligation of readers in posterity to heed warnings and to take

note of important lessons. It allows for the extension of time before the world ends, and

it acts on the chance that it may reach a reader who may effect change. As such, it

provides—as a sort of textual-communicative crap shoot—a strong warning of temporal

consequences of wrongdoing, as it hits to a broader panoptic moral judgment. It

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envisions communication in this conflicted moment as best done formally, directly,

publicly. And even more to Favent’s point, this account allows for the possibility that

future readers—even those of some distant generation—may be more receptive and

aware than those of the present generation. It shows the value of historical documents to

connect with those in the future whom the recorder will never meet.

Path to the Foreseeable Future: “Going” and Writing the Middle Way

Still, forcefulness and directness are only effective under certain conditions and

may very well limit or alienate readers. What Gower and Chaucer undertake in their

respective grand narrative-interpretive projects requires a more sophisticated rhetorical

engagement in order to reach readers well into the future. In order to make sure that

readers stay interested enough to continue the chain of information into the future, Gower

must balance rhetorical strategies. Gower characterizes his work as negotiating a

“middel weie”:

Bot for men sein, and soth it is,

That who that al of wisdom writ

It dulleth ofte a mannes wit.

To him that schal it aldai rede,

For thilke cause, if that ye rede,

I wolde go the middel weie

And wryte a bok betwen the tweie,

Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore,

That of the lasse or of the more

Som man mai lyke of that I wryte. (Prol. 12-21)

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[For people say, and it is true, that even one who writes all from wisdom,

it often dulls a person’s wit. To whoever should read it all day, for the

same cause, if that you read, I would go the middle way and write a book

between the two, somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore, that more or less

some person may like what I write.]

Gower is profoundly concerned with continuity and with permanence. After all, he

concedes that any text is subject to the intermittent attention of the readers. He is

creating a text that can sustain future readers’ intentions and sharpen “a mannes wit.” He

is here promising to reward the individual reader as he subtly nudges the reader to get her

or his attention. Then, too insofar as the potential loss of readers is analogous to apostasy,

a potentially apocalyptic falling-off, this text marks engaged readers as special. As Isabel

Davis explains, “in opening up strange indeterminate, intermediate and unmapped textual

spaces, he constructs within the poem the autobiographical motive: the social

indeterminacy of his bureaucratic milieu” (95). "The “middel weie,” while it may sound

conventional or easy, is in fact a complicated negotiation that ultimately highlights

Gower’s work as an author. Regarding the broader concern with “lust” and “lore,” as

Sian Echard and others have observed, Gower shows an awareness of the oft-invoked

formula prodesse et delectare drawing from Horace’s Ars Poetica and the long medieval

engagement with ancient rhetoric.

213

This also reflects the suavitas of Augustine’s De

doctrina christiana.

214

Sweetness, for Augustine, has a function in learning.

215

213

Introduction, A Companion to Gower, 4. This is also highlighted by Olsson (31). On the changing role

of Horace’s Ars poetica in the late Middle Ages, see Copeland, “Horace’s Ars Poetica,” esp. 15-16, 26-29.

214

As Olsson puts it, “This suavitas is, according to some medieval witnesses, the distinctive feature of

poetic utterance, and it is, according to others, the source of its great rhetorical power” (31). See, too, Mary

Carruthers’ “Sweetness” on medieval notions of suavitas and dulcedo.

215

See De doctrina christiana 4.23: “Sicut autem saepe sumenda sunt et amara salubria, ita semper vitanda

est perniciosa dulcedo; sed salubri suavitate vel suavi salubritate quid melius? Quanto enim magis illic

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The fact that this requires a balanced and carefully constructed statement cannot

be emphasized enough. One can, after all, favor readers to the detriment of a necessary

apocalyptic message. Gower in the prologue to the Confessio has to anticipate and

account for the wishes of others as he hopes that “Som man mai lyke of that I wryte.” As

Peck is careful to note in his introduction, Gower’s middel weie has not only rhetorical

but also ethical components (13-15). Some sense of pleasure or satisfaction must precede

learning in order for anything to be learned. Chaucer’s indulgence in “myrthe and solaas”

in the Tale of Sir Thopas poses another problem entirely (VII.714). Yet pleasure in the

extreme may be seen to be dangerous. Robert de Gretham in the mid-thirteenth century

was one of many in the Christian West who maintained that popular entertainments often

proved inherently dangerous. This is clear in the Middle English rendering of his

Miroir.

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Many men hyt ben þat han inwylle to heren rede romaunces & gestes. þat

is more than ydelschyp, & þat I wol wel that alle men hit wyte. Ffor þey

ben controued þorw mannes wytte þat setten her hertes to folyes & trofles.

As þe lyer doþ, he makeþ his speche queyntlyche þat hit may ben

delysious to mannes heryng for þat hit scholde be the better listened. Ffor

Salamon seyþ he had enquired & sowȝt all þingus undur sunne, & þen he

fond in al nothing by uanyte but þat þing þat falles to Goddes worschyp

and to note of mannes sowle. (Blumreich 1)

appetitur suavitas tanto facilius salubritas prodest.” [“We often have to take bitter medicines, and we must

always avoid sweet things that are dangerous: but what better than sweet things that give health, or

medicines that are sweet? The more we are attracted by sweetness, the easier it is for medicine to do its

healing work.”] (ed. and trans. Green 204-5).

216

Composed 1250-60 in Anglo-Norman and rendered into Middle English in the late fourteenth or early

fifteenth century (Blumreich xiii).

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[There are many men that have great desire to hear romances and gests

read. That is more [i.e., worse] than idleness, and that I deeply wish that

all men know it. For they are “composed through the wit of men that set

their hearts to follies”

217

As the liar does, he makes his speech cleverly

that it may be appealing to man’s hearing so that it should be better

understood (lit., “listened”). For Solomon says that he had inquired and

sought all things under the sun, and then he found all nothing by vanity

except that thing which falls to God’s worship and to take note of the

human soul.]

Gretham is deeply concerned with how dangerous stories can be and how certain texts

and stories can detract from virtue and wisdom. If certain texts persist, says Gretham,

they will persist as temptations, stumbling-blocks. And yet these texts require more texts

by way of response. Writing under the influence of apocalypticism, one must assume

that warning and corrective writings are more permanent, less ephemeral, than those

promoting evil. As the number of texts and the numbers of the literate increase in late-

medieval England, textual competition and exclusion may be seen as necessary.

This is different from another equally apocalyptic approach—attempting to

present an integral apocalyptically aware text that contains and reframes previously

disseminated challenging or insufficient writings. Gower’s larger project in the

Confessio systematizes and fixes a wealth of source material for a conflicted generation.

Gower’s balancing of lust and lore, considered above, is part of the process of

redesigning content in contemporary terms yet with an eye on the future. The crafting of

217

The clear phrasing and clarification of syntax quoted here is owed to the notes of Collette and Garrett-

Goodyear.

195

texts proves edifying for its readers and keeps its readers engaged, aware.

Apocalypticism in any form carries with it some moral impulse. Moral teaching—even

in a purportedly moral, didactic, even theological work—proves largely dependent on the

structure of narrative. In setting up the long Confessio, Gower emphasizes his own work,

and also the possibility that only a few readers out of many might respond favorably.

Only a minority of readers will likely stick with his work.

Of course these different tendencies may be blended just as well, and some

balance slightly different from Gower’s or Chaucer’s may be seen as the ideal. Meaning

is fragile in an apocalyptic environment, and individual apocalypse-aware writers must

find their own strategies to solidify and perpetuate their messages. A Gowerian but also

more condemning ethic of communication is invoked in the opening lines of Thomas

Usk’s Testament of Love:

Many men there ben that with eeres openly sprad so moche swalowen the

delyciousnesse of jestes and of ryme by queynt knyttyng coloures, that of

the goodnesse or of the badnesses of the sentence take they lytel hede or

els none. Sothely, dul wytte and a thoughtful soule so sore have myned

and graffed in my spyrites that such craft of endytyng wol not ben of myn

acqueyntaunce. And for rude wordes and boystous percen the herte of the

herer to the inrest poynte and planten there the sentence of thynges so that

with lytel helpe it is able to spring, this boke, that nothing hath of the great

floode of wyt ne of semelych colours, is dolven with rude wordes and

boystous, and so drawe togyder to maken the catchers therof ben the more

redy to hent sentence. (I.Prol.1-11).

196

[There are many men who, with ears spread open, so much swallow the

deliciousness of jests and of rhyme, by quaint knitting colors,

218

that of the

goodness or of the badness of the meaning

219

take they little heed, or else

none. Truthfully, dull wit and a thoughtful soul so sore have mined and

planted/grafted in my spirits that such craft of writing will not be of my

acquaintance. And, for rude and crude words pierce the heart to the

inmost point, and plant there the sentence of things, so that with little help

it is able to spring, which has nothing of the great flood of wit nor of

pleasing colors is dug/buried with rude and crude words, and so drawn

together to make the catchers thereof all the more ready to grasp the

meaning.]

For Usk and for Gower, the very mention of readers being attentive to varying degrees

signals that some readers achieve a higher status than others. Apocalypticism demands

that readers be vigilant and discerning. Literacy (and the various perceived levels

thereof) is the understated but equally important first step toward vigilance and

discernment. Gower’s text and Usk’s have some role in judging the reader. Usk, like

Gower, is quite willing to highlight the rude and the unpolished. As he does this, he also

places some responsibility on the reader for seeing good and bad values in literature.

Prologues and the “Lewed”

With this climate of apocalyptic concern with texts established, some

consideration of its longer development is in order. That several of these key concerns

218

Wogan-Browne et al. note this to mean “elaborate figures of rhetoric binding the work together” (Idea of

the Vernacular 32n2).

219

Sentence, given its wide semantic range, is translated broadly here, although it should be noted that it

often connotes serious, morally affirming meaning, particularly as Chaucer uses it with solaas. On the

range Chaucer’s usage attests to, see Koff (76-79).

197

have been long in developing before Gower and Usk does not make them any less fitting

in the late fourteenth-century apocalyptic environment. Texts of the late Middle Ages are

quite often framed by prologues telling readers how to read, what to make of the text.

Gower’s Prologue is but one of many from this period that show a profound concern for

what the text is and what it should accomplish. This wide concern with the ends of

reading holds true, even as Gower and Chaucer demand more sophisticated work on the

point of their readers. Some brief examples from earlier and more devotional texts are

worth considering for comparison. Around 1340, Dan Michel in presenting his

translation, the Ayenbite of Inwit, presents a text for “lewed men”:

Nou Ich wille þat ye ywyte hou hit is ywent,

Þet þis boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.

Þis boc is ymad vor lewede men,

Vor vader and vor moder and for oþer ken,

Ham vor to berȝe vram alle manyere sen,

Þet inne hare inwytte ne bleve no voul wen.

220

[Now I wish that you know how it has gone, that this book is written in

Kentish English. This book is made for common people, for father and

mother and other kin, to deliver them from all manner of sin, that in their

conscience they believe no foul thought.]

What happens in one’s text is very real because what happens in one’s conscience

(“inwyt”) is very real. Here, as in some later examples presented above, the text is a

response to sin. Where there is sin, there must be texts. Furthermore, where sin increases,

220

Lines 8-13 from Morris ed. (262), modernized punctuation and glosses from Treharne’s Old and Middle

English (615).

198

so must texts increase. Most importantly, this text is presented as safe and pure.

Microcosmically, texts can be centers of evil, but they can also be sanctuaries. Beyond

this passage, the cradle-to-grave value of the book is true as Michel wishes that God

“ondervonge his saule huanne þet he is dyad” [seize his soul when he [the human] is

dead] (18). For this to happen, the text must last longer than this individual human.

As several other earlier late-medieval vernacular examples in Idea of the

Vernacular collection illustrate, a rich field of theory of the implications of writing

develops in the late Middle Ages in England (Wogan-Browne et al.). Beyond the

necessary continuity required in reading, so too is efficiency important as one is aware of

the end of the age. The prologue to the Pore Caitif certainly bears this out:

This tretyse compiled of a pore caityf and nedy of gostly help of al

cristen peple, by the gret mercy and help of God shal teche simple

men and wymmen of gode wille the right way to heven, yf thei

wille besye hem to have it in mynde and to worche therafter,

withouten multiplicacion of many bokes. (Wogan-Browne et al.

240)

[This treatise compiled by a poor captive and needy of spiritual

help of all Christian people, by the great mercy and help of God

shall teach simple men and women of good will the right way to

heaven, if they will busy themselves to have it in mind and to work

for it, without multiplication of many books.]

The goal of spiritual teaching—not at all uncommon in medieval literature—is here

enhanced by its urgency to educate those without access to many books. It fills a need in

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a period of growing literacy. As writers encourage continuous engagement, they are

improving on what has been done before, updating previous texts and adapting them to

the immediate setting. Importantly, too, it suggests that other texts may be seen as less

necessary. And it can be read just as well as embodying an apocalyptic urgency and an

impetus to strengthen individuals in faith as a challenging period threatens to distract

them from religious practice. The Pore Caitif, aware that texts are proliferating, argues

that persons should not be concerned with books for books’ sake.

Such devotional texts, too, aware of other texts, seek to improve on other texts

and to reframe matters for present audiences. This is certainly true as certain vernacular

religious texts may undermine the work of previous authorities, even as they argue that

previous authorities are important by frequent reference. This work, too, must be read in

the context of the repeated attempts at lay spiritual education in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. In the class shifts and growing literacy of the fourteenth century

(and beyond), a wide program of education, increasingly must consider the possibility of

literate spiritual instruction for persons to whom it previously was inaccessible. English

programs of lay education, in particular traceable to Pecham’s 1281 Syllabus, brought

attention to the needs of marginalized and lower-class Christians. The urgency to address

certain classes and people of certain regions also emerges predictably enough in English

vernacular literature.

Various vernacular religious-education texts express a clear concern with meeting

spiritual needs all across society and all across the lifespan. This concern likewise

200

appears in Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s early-fourteenth-century Handlyng Synne.

Mannyng’s concerns, too, echo those of Gretham from over a century earlier.

221

Of þys clerkys wyle y nouȝt seye;

To greue hem y haue grete eye,

For þey wote þat ys to wetyn

And se hyt weyl before hem wretyn.

Þat may be weyl on englyssh told,

To telle ȝow þat y may be bold.

For lewed men y vndyrtoke

On englyssh tonge to make þys boke,

For many beyn of swyche manere

Þat talys and rymys wyle bleþly here

Yn gamys, yn festys, & at þe ale,

Loue men to lestene trotouale,

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Þat may falle ofte to velanye

To dedly syne or outher folye. (37-50)

[Of these clerks will I say nothing; To grieve them I have great eye, for

they knew what it is to weep and see it written before them well, that may

be well told in English, to tell you that I may be bold, for unlearned people

I undertook to make this book in English, for there are many of such

manner who will gladly hear tales and rhymes here, in games, at festivals,

221

Fiona Somerset in Feeling Like Saints points to a common strain seen in Gretham and Mannyng typified

by “complaints about laypeople spending their time on the wrong sorts of reading” (143).

222

The MED gives these definitions: “(a) Vain talk, idle tale-telling; also, a trifle; a piece of foolishness; (b)

a deceit, trick, delusion.”

201

and at the alehouse, men love to listen to trifles, who may often lapse to

villainy, to deadly sin, or other folly.]

Mannyng’s translation here emphasizes to the English vernacular audience particular

dangers related to textual culture. There are many very specific evils that emerge, even

within what is understood as a Christian society. Literacy, or even oral sharing of literate

knowledge, provides some hope against instability visible within society. Texts are seen

to have a transformative effect on all of society, starting with those who read but also for

anyone who comes into contact with those who read. If the oral culture is permeated by

questionable art forms, more devout communicative practice can counteract them.

Ancient Stories through the Prism of Late-Medieval Literacy

Even if the textual awareness of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century nods

toward the apocalyptic, the awareness becomes more pronounced with the social changes

and concomitant growth in literacy witnessed in the late fourteenth century. This time of

apocalyptic instability coincides with a wider lay population reading and writing,

participating in discourse that move beyond the merely commercial or functional

(including those intimating the apocalyptic).

223

Texts may in this way be seen as

consistently connected to oral culture, if the various values of oral and written

communication are in flux. Again, this mirrors a broader tendency toward increased lay

involvement in religious activities in the later Middle Ages. Emphases upon literate

learning develop in the late Middle Ages. The emphasis on high learning appears in

Mirk’s sermon on St. Katherine of Alexandria, where humility and learning are

juxtaposed:

223

On the long story of this extension of various literate acts deriving from functional literacy, see

Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record.

202

But thogh scheo were common of so hygh blode, for Goddys sake scheo

sette noghte be the pompe of the worlde, but sette hur herte alle in oure

Lorde Jhesu Criste. Wherefore whan scheo hadde ben at scole, and was

lerud at the fulle and cowed spyton wyth any clerke that come to scole,…

(Reames, Middle English Lives 211)

[But though she had come of such high blood, for God’s sake she set

[herself] not according to the pomp of the world, but she set her heart on

our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore when she had been at school and was

educated completely and could debate with any clerk who would come to

school,….]

This passage, leading up to her rebuke of the emperor, elevates her as simultaneously

learned, bold, and devout. And in this short description we are made to imagine the

immense possibilities of learning, even if her being high-born gave her a distinct

advantage. Learning here precedes effective action. And if in the England of Mirk’s

time a high sense of rhetorical power is harder to obtain than Mirk suggests it is, this goal

nevertheless provides an encouragement for people to read. This is often done equally as

powerfully with texts offering ancient reference points.

The apocalyptic sense prevalent in the period proves to be connected to literacy

itself. Invocations of literacy appear throughout a wide variety of texts engaging with

Christian-historical and biblical material. As scholarship on the hagiography of this

period has suggested, the popularity of ancient saints far outweighs that of more recent

saints. Saint-culture in this sense may be seen as necessarily conservative, emphasizing

the near-canonical and favoring those saints who bear interest across a wide geographic

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area. The apocalyptic needs to make sense of all of history, needs to make connections

across vast spans of time and across geographic and linguistic barriers. As Russell Peck

suggests, the emphasis on learning in the Pistel of Swete Susan

224

may be seen to promote

personal advancement through reading. The story of Susanna from the book of Daniel

makes literacy a sign of power:

Thei lerned hire lettrure of that langage:

The maundement of Moises they marked to that may

225

(18-19)

[“They taught her letters in that language. The commandments of Moses

they taught to that maiden.”

226

]

Ancient stories thus provide some examples of reading, impelling contemporaries to seek

strength in reading. In this specific case it contributes to her moral foundation, and it

gives her a moral compass prior to the extreme temptation she will face. This passage and

most of the Pistel themselves prove to be expansions of the text of the traditional book of

Daniel.

227

A special form of literacy proves even more powerful in the story of

Belshazzar’s feast in Clannesse.

228

The failure of even the Chaldean scholars to read the

writing on the wall leads to the elevation of Daniel. Daniel’s translation also brings with

it a solution for problems to Belshazzar’s power, should Belshazzar subject himself to

divine guidance.

224

Peck in his TEAMS edition Heroic Women from the Old Testament in Middle English Verse dates the

work to the late fourteenth century (73).

225

“They taught her letters in that language. The commandments of Moses they taught to that maiden.”

226

Translation effectively supplied by Peck’s edition, with second sentence given verbatim in 82n2.

227

This thirteenth chapter is cut out by Protestants and others. On the central question of the Pistel’s

relation to the chapter from Daniel, see Morey, who finds only three passages (37, 43, and 58, accounted

for in about 10 of the poem’s 364 lines) reflected directly in the poem (199).

228

A less inventive use of biblical narrative than the Pistel. Morey notes, “Approximately four-fifths of the

lines are biblically based” (200).

204

Derfly þenne Danyel deles þyse wordes:

“Ryche kyng of þis rengne, rede þe oure Lorde!

Hit is surely soth þe Souerayn of heuen

Fylsened euer þy fader and vpon folde cheryched,

Gart hym grattest to be of gouernores alle,

And alle þe worlde in his sylle welde as hym liked.

Whoso wolde wel do, wel hym bityde,

And quos deth so he dezyre, he dreped als fast;

Whoso hym liked to lyft, on lofte watz he sone,

And quoso hym liked to lay watz loȝed bylyue. (1641-50)

[Daniel then boldly uttered these words: ‘Great king of this

realm, may our Lord guide you! It is certainly true the Sovereign of

heaven always aided your father and took care of him on earth, caused

him to be the greatest of all rulers, and to control all the world at his

wish as it pleased him. Whoever he wished to do good to, good came

to him, and whoever’s death he desired, he put to death immediately;

whoever it pleased him raise, he was soon on high, and whoever it pleased

him to lay low was immediately humbled….” (Trans. Andrew and

Waldron)]

In this example, as in the ones cited directly above, the shift in power in the story centers

on literate knowledge—its limitations, its abuses, its objectives. The Pearl-Poet here

shows Daniel, as an outsider in the story of Belshazzar’s feast, emerging as the only one

capable of understanding. In this case, understanding transcends mere textual knowledge,

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as the Chaldean scholars fail to decipher the writing on the wall. The revealed text within

the text, however, proves true only insofar as it bears theological truth. Revelation here is

key: Not all reading leads to correct understanding. And words have importance at a time

of conflict: a correct understanding based on understanding of written language leads to

other desired outcomes.

Chaucer’s Prologues: Plenty of Directions, Plenty of Indirection

At the same time these changes related to literacy happen, Chaucer gives his

readers some insight into complicated textual cultures, equipping them to understand (if

not participate in) parts of religious culture that were previously inaccessible to them.

Chaucer’s prologues are important to this new-found accessibility. Chaucer’s prologues

lay out texts with elaborate but also mutually contradictory (or individually, self-

contradictory) aims. The multivocal Canterbury Tales invite readers to a wealth of

possibilities of reading, even though Chaucer is not in complete control of every form

that others’ reading may take. Rosemarie McGer’s position on the function of the text

intriguingly shows a text’s limitations:

“Reading lessons”…continue as we progress through the Canterbury

Tales. Through the accumulated points of view afforded by the collective

or retrospective structure of the poem, we gain the perspective needed to

understand that our bet attempts to discover the truth about an issue must

remain on the level of appreciating ambiguity until we escape temporality

and gain the perspective of eternity. (153)

229

McGer further suggests that “…no human creation (the Canterbury Tales included) is truly closed

because it exists between Creation and Judgment or, more specifically, after the Fall but before the final

Revelation of the Logos” (153).

206

Prologues prove rich sources of possibilities for textual functions, as Davenport observes

in the prologues of the individual Tales. Some of this can be traced to what Davenport

characterizes as “part of the machinery of commentary” (35).

230

Chaucer is providing

features reminiscent of sophisticated religious textual communities

231

but with new

applications. He thus constructs texts that foster awareness of themselves and, perhaps

more importantly, that show the possibilities of textual communication in this period.

And, as Davenport notes, the prologues emphasize the individual—often very markedly

apocalyptic—perspective. They embody the conflict of narrative as do the tales that they

precede. They put tales at odds with each other in truth claims. And they all underscore

the fallible human perspective that must be aware of the apocaylyptic but that can ony

grasp it imperfectly. This is consistent with a quality of apocalyptic textuality laid out by

Lieu and cited above. A series of narrators, each to some degree unreliable (but all

unreliable for different reasons), de-centers the work. And this de-centering is enhanced

by the roles of narrator and pilgrim that Chaucer ties to himself.

232

A number of scholars have fruitfully explored the implications of these roles. As

Lisa Kiser discusses “the narrator’s stance as an artless transcriber,” she highlights the

230

Davenport elaborates:

The prologues are part of the machinery of commentary which turns the work as a whole

into a multi-layered narrative. We do not read merely a sequence of short stories but are

invited to consider what each story is trying to be and how it is received. The prologues,

as a result, vary a good deal in length, content, function and complexity. If we start from

The Man of Law’s Prologue, which has a mixture of elements relevant to the immediate

context and others which are inexplicable or which seem unnecessary, then one type of

prologue we can recognise is in more than one part or style… (35-36)

231

Here, too, see Stock, Listening for the Text.

232

On various ways that the problem of Chaucer’s voice has been approached recently, see Zieman.

207

gulf between the narrator Chaucer and the actual Chaucer (Truth and Textuality 117).

Chaucer thus is allowing for possibilities for his text that contemporary readers would

otherwise not acknowledge of texts. As Jim Rhodes posits with regard to the self-

deprecatingly stories Chaucer assigns himself in the Tales, “Based on the Thopas and the

Melibee, it would seem that the whole thrust of the Canterbury Tales is to free poetry

from such delimiting categories as romance escapism and moral didacticism” (172).

Arguing for a markedly Chaucerian “poetics of disguise,” Esther Casier Quinn maintains

the following:

Seemingly self-effacing, he establishes his authorial presence in his

repeated use of the pronoun “I,” his references to “Geffrey,” to “Chaucer,”

and to his own “bok” and “bokes.”

Furthermore, the narrator Chaucer in introducing the pilgrims in the General Prologue,

makes readers think of textual space and the conditions of writing: he will speak of the

“condicioun” of each pilgrim “whil I have tyme and space, / Er that I ferther in this tale

pace… [while I have time and space, before I proceed further in this tale] (I.35-36). John

Ganim notes a key technical development in this period: key narratives in the late

fourteenth century claim more space for original content, managing to live in the moment,

to transcend preset structures and formulae.

233

This flexibility is enjoyed to a high degree

by Chaucer. Lisa Kiser, commenting on the conspicuously arbitrary selection of details

in the General Prologue, shows rightly the result, that “[n]o human recorders of truth are

233

Ganim in particular singles out Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet as exhibiting marked differences from

various thirteenth-century authors. See pages 48 and 76-77 for the proliferation of detail typified in

Gawain’s style: “It requires an act of almost devotional intensity on the reader’s part to distinguish between

significant and gratuitous detail, between the shimmer of jewelry and the aura of sanctity” (Style and

Consciousness 77).

208

to be trusted at their word” (Truth and Textuality 121). Chaucer proves elusive in

intention, and more importantly his text does.

Texts Converting Readers: Readers Approaching Writerly Status

Chaucer promotes an apocalypse-tinged textual awareness by adopting a wide

variety of possibilities of writing and reading. Texts may seek to accomplish various

goals, and readers have at their disposal a number of strategies in order to engage with

texts. One example of this is in the Miller’s Prologue. Here, those offended might

“[t]urne over the leef and chese another tale”:

M’athynketh that I shal reherce it heere.

And therefore every gentil wight I preye,

For Goddes love, demeth nat that I seye

Of yvel entente, but for I moot reherce

Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse,

Or elles falsen som of my mateere.

And therefore, whoso list it nat yheere,

Turne over the leef and chese another tale;

For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale,

Of storial thing that toucheth gentillesse,

And eek moralitee and hoolynesse.

Blameth nat me if that ye chese amys. (I.3170-3181).

[It occurs to me to recount it here, and therefore every noble person I pray,

for God’s love, judges not that I speak of evil intent, but that I might

recount all their tales, be they better or worse, or else misrepresent some

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of my material. And therefore, whoever does not want to hear it, turn over

the page and choose another tale, for he shall find enough, greatand small,

of historical thing that deals with nobility, and also morality and holiness.

Do not blame me if you choose amiss.]

This section qualifies certain readers with “every gentil wight,” later calling special

attention to the quality of “gentilesse.” This prologue also allows for a variety of tales,

“be they better or werse.” More importantly, rather than control what appears on the

page, Chaucer seems to push aside responsibility for the dicey matter of what might

offend a reader. Nevertheless, this possibility of offense opens the door to the reader’s

empowerment. As the reader is given the option to “[t]urne over the leef and chese

another tale,” that reader is given a power akin to that of the writer or compiler. Here

most tellingly, the reader thus has the capacity to negotiate the text, to take control of it.

Chaucer furthermore gives readers access to a variety of genres and styles, thus

destabilizing the texts he presents. Readers thus must not be passive receivers of

information but rather must engage with texts critically. Comparisons between texts are

suggested, if the differences are hard to see on the surface of tales themselves.

Divergences from moral poetry are by design. Chaucer anticipates objections

already in the General Prologue.

In discussing lines I.725-42, Megan Murton states the

following:

The narrator here presents himself as reluctantly fulfilling a difficult

obligation: according to the teachings of Plato and Christ, he must report

every tale honestly, even if this means being party to ‘vileynye’ and rude

speech. As in Jean [de Meun]’s apology, the narrator’s elaborate

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seriousness in justifying bad language is funny, but there is again an

important question behind the humour: in this case, the question of the

author’s moral accountability. While Jean’s narrator claims to have a

historian’s intent, Chaucer’s narrator explains his situation in moral terms:

he takes accurate reporting to be a matter of integrity and faithfulness. It

might therefore seem that this narrator is prepared to accept, with much

anxiety and comical earnestness, the moral responsibilities of the medieval

author. (51)

This sense of fidelity is balanced, of course, with other concerns at stake in the writer’s

credibility. In the Clerk’s Prologue we hear of the high style one would use when

communicating with a king. This is done as Petrarch’s death and powerlessness is

highlighted: the immense efforts necessary for the text are mentioned even as a writer,

dead, no longer matters in a sense. Having relegated Petrarch to the dead and seemingly

irrelevant, the Clerk identifies him:

“Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete,

Highte this clerk, whos rethorike sweete

Enlumyned al Ytaille of poetrie,

As Lynyan dide of philosophie,

Or lawe, or oother art particuler;

But Deeth, that wol nat suffre us dwellen heer,

But as it were a twynklyng of an ye,

Hem bothe han slayn, and alle shul we dye.

“But forth to tellen of this worthy man

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That taughte me this tale, as I bigan,

I seye that first with heigh stile he enditeth,

Er he the body of his tale writeth,

A prohemye, in the which discryveth he

Pemond and of Saluces the contree,…” (IV.31-44)

[Frances Petrarch, the laureate poet was the name of this poet, whose

sweet rhetoric illumined all Italy with poetry as Legnano did with

philosophy, or law, or other specialized skill; but Death, that wil not allow

us to dwell here, as if it were but a twinkling of an eye, has slain them

both, and we shall all die. But to tell more of this worthy man who taught

me his tale, as I began, I say hat first wih he style he employs, before he

writes the body of his tale, a proem, in which he describes Piedmon and

the region of Saluces.]

In this crucial case, the text is shown to have surpassed the writer. Thus conscious of

texts, this prologue foregrounds for the reader a number of issues, but it also gives the

reader encouragement to challenge the superficial message vis-à-vis those issues. The

sense of authority apparent in the attribution to Petrarch lays bare how authority is

constructed. And the prologue here calls attention to another prologue: texts tell us how

to read them, but we have to assess individually how reliable those instructions are. In

the light of the Miller’s Prologue’s challenges to credibility, the Clerk’s Prologue can be

questioned as well. One suspect text may make readers suspicious of others. If one can

take control of one tale, one might just as well do the same with others. In both of these

examples, the reader is encouraged to stand outside the text and to isolate its component

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parts. As Laura Ashe has argued with regard to the closing of the Clerk’s Tale:

“Implicitly, he is saying, a tale may not stand alone. A tale is opaque and incomplete

without its being actively deciphered; that is to say, it must be given meaning by the

participation of its interpreter” (936). Once again, in presenting texts that are hard to

encapsulate, he achieves for them longevity.

Chaucer and Gower: Substance, Length, Longevity

Even if Gower does not promote this stance that seemingly defers core meaning

to the reader, he does encourage a strong (and I would argue, apocalyptic) engagement

with his text. In so doing, he manages to encourage his readers to set themselves apart

(parallel to how the apocalyptic writer must distinguish her/himself). Gower’s singular

prologue to the long Confessio, more straightforward than any of the prologues Chaucer

gives us, nevertheless shows us that, even in a text’s instructions (what the editors of the

Idea of the Vernacular collection fruitfully fit under the heading “literary theory”) a text

admits tremendous limitations. We do not know how the text will be received, and part

of that owes to conditions of a doomed world.

And for that fewe men endite

In oure Englissh, I thenke make

A bok for Engelondes sake,

The yer sextenthe of Kyng Richard.

What schal befalle hierafterward

God wot, for now upon this tyde

Men se the world on every syde

In sondry wyse so diversed,

213

That it wel nyh stant al reversed,

As for to speke of tyme ago. (Prol. 22-31)

Gower foregrounds three concepts here: change, uncertainty, and divine will. Only God

knows what is to become of a word divided. This division is elsewhere in the prologue

attributed to the Antichristian and appears a function of apocalyptic dualism. What time

will bring is unclear, but Gower sees fit to write in the moment. And Gower’s prologue

on the whole, calling attention to the shaping and experimentation of the text, necessarily

affects how we must see that text. Even if Gower’s invocations to divine authority are

more straightforward than Chaucer’s, and even if his sense of the apocalyptic may seem

more unified than the conflicted and contradictory views emerging from the Canterbury

Tales, the apocalyptic still makes writing simultaneously necessary and yet of uncertain

effect and accuracy. Writing, for Gower, is something done out of a sense of duty,

something that is done quite purposefully, yet something that requires experimentation,

trying-out. Any Christian apocalypticism (particularly as it must be defined by a

certainty in an end of daily life and aware that “time shall be no more”) embodies this

contradiction.

Gower’s middle way adapting to the needs of readers in order to save the message,

still allows for some increasingly subjective reading practices, though not to the radical

extent that Chaucer’s prologues do. We see not only sentence and solaas, lust and lore,

but are opened up to a variety of other categories. We are not mere receivers of

information but are capable of organizing and processing texts for ourselves. Chaucer

executes a number of complicated textual acts within the tales, including problematically

putting immoral words in others’ mouths and attributing compelling rhetoric to the

214

superficially unlearned. All this he does as he claims less-than-satisfying tales for

himself and engages in consistent self-deprecation. He reduces himself to nothing in his

texts, and he is nothing without his texts.

Closing, No End in Sight

So what happens when Chaucer purportedly wraps up his texts? Chaucer, who

seems to concede some power to the reader, does make some radical gestures in claiming

power for himself as he brings his work to a close. Finally, textual functions, effects, and

truth values are argued in closing as well as they are argued in prologues. This is

especially true as Chaucer must provide some sense of closure in his own work. A well-

known example is Chaucer’s ending of Troilus and Criseyde. The ending of the Troilus

situates the work in relation to contemporaries but also appealing to the Christian God:

O moral Gower, this book I directe

To the and to the, philosophical Strode,

To vouchen sauf, ther need is, to correcte,

Of youre benignites and zeles goode.

And to that sothfast Crist, that starf on rode,

With al myn herte of mercy evere I preye,

And to the Lord right thus I speke and seye:… (V.1856-62)

[O moral Gower, this book I direct to you and to you, philosophical Strode,

to vouchsafe, and if need be, to correct of your good deeds and your noble

passions. And to that truthful Christ, who died on the cross, with all my

mercy of heart I pray, and to the Lord right thus I speak and say:…]

215

The appeals to good, to mercy against judgment, and to protection from evil all situate

the text in a time of uncertainty. And the ending, which is assumed to define the

preceding work, challenges his audience with characterizations of Gower and Strode,

characterizations that appear tongue in cheek. The certainty and closure a reader may

seek in conclusion are thus compromised. If a text, as we saw through various prologues,

calls attention to itself at its beginning, it must also be equally self-aware at its other end.

But as closure seems insincere in the Troilus, so too it is problematized in

Chaucer’s Retraction, which compactly yet enigmatic makes us question the truth value

of his entire body of work. Chaucer’s profound engagement with God and world as he

offers closure of course is not only seen in the Tales. The Retraction to the Canterbury

Tales provides such a sweeping claim to completeness that it is suspect. It is cast in a

penitential vein seeming to echo the long and conspicuously textual. In Judith Ferster’s

construction, “Chaucer submits himself and his poem to the only authoritative

interpretation, God’s judgment” (156). Postponed judgment is certainly called for in the

Tales. And this is especially important as judgment has proven so problematic

throughout the Tales. The incomplete work and the various problematic narrators cannot

be resolved even by the Host.

234

His retracciouns suggest contrition, but this happens

through a remarkable act of textual compression:

Wherfore I biseke yow mekely, for the mercy of God, that ye preye for me

that Crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes; and namely of my

translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees, the whiche I revoke in my

retracciouns:…. (X.1083-84)

234

Thomas Reed suggests, “At least as it was originally conceived, the work is headed toward the

‘authoritative’ judgment of Harry Bailly….Debates like the one between the Monk and the Nun’s Priest are,

even as the poem stands, tentatively resolved by Harry’s judgments-in-passing.” (387).

216

Through writing Chaucer seeks out forgiveness that violates the late-medieval impulse to

confess in specific terms and to take responsibility for specific sins.

As Rosemarie McGerr has argued, Chaucer’s tendency to retract suggests strong

ties to Augustine’s. Augustine’s Retractationes embody his concerns for his own

mortality, his capacity for error, and his anxiety over the completeness of his work. For

Augustine, there is a more than a nod toward confession, correctness, and completeness.

When I reviewed these writings of mine, I found that I had composed

ninety-three works in two hundred thirty-two books. I did not know up to

that time whether I was going to write others and, on the insistence of my

brethren, I published this review of them in two books before beginning to

reexamine my letters and my sermons to the people, the former dictated,

the latter spoken. (trans. Bogan 271)

235

Though Augustine shows a supreme awareness of his own texts, Chaucer does not seem

as intent on cataloguing his work. He makes a gesture toward responsibility but does not

approach specific confessions, perhaps as the truth-value of so much of what he has

written is debatable in the first place. Robert Boenig maintains that in Chaucer’s

Retraction “the closure is that of the loss of control leading to fragmentation and silence.

The author, the archcontroller, who has, godlike, called The Canterbury Tales into being,

can no longer write” (170).

236

But equally importantly, he makes no specific confessions

235

Bogan note p271: The translation of the last lines is based on the reading established by Knöll in his

edition of the Retractationes in CSEL on the evidence of a critical examination of the manuscript tradition,

namely, antequam epistulas et sermons in populum, alias dictatas alios a me dictos, retractare

coepissem…” (271n3).

236

He continues: “Words fail him. He speaks of ‘the defaute of myn unkonnynge’ (X, 1082), quoting, of

course the term invented by Pseudo-Dyonisius and Englished by the Cloud-author as ‘unknowing.’ He

wishes he could have ‘seyd better’ (X, 1082). He forgets a large portion of his oeuvre when he wishes to

retract individual works—‘and many another book, if they were in my remembrance’ (X, 1087)” (170-71).

Regarding the Cloud, Boenig maintains that “[The Cloud], as is Chaucer’s Retraction, a sad picture of an

217

that would seriously undermine what he has already written. Textually and publicly at

least, his work is left intact. The Retraction works because it is incomplete.

On Texts and Ends

Huppé expounded on the importance of a retraction or confession as one

considers “last things.” He maintains the following regarding Chaucer’s Retraction:

His intention has never been other than to reveal the truth, but art is of the

world, and he wishes not to carry worldly baggage with him on his eternal

pilgrimage—or the burden of a reader’s misconceptions which may

‘sownen into synne.’ His Retractions serves his own purpose or

renunciation, and once more as a reminder to his readers of the necessity

to read the Tales for its sentence. (237)

Chaucer, like Gower, acknowledges the risk inherent in writing something that will

succeed him. More importantly, he acknowledges that his text will find and may

influence readers that he would never otherwise encounter. His brief retraction, however,

suggests a resolution that parallels too-easy penance. It shows the power that a text can

have in succinctly solving a problem through rhetoric. And yet, unlike Augustine,

Chaucer ignores or sidesteps the details of the text. The text is capable of organizing a

wealth of details—details that would be lost in oral communication. Succinctness in

confession in this way allows a complicated and apocalyptically-tinged oeuvre to exist in

perpetuity, without correction. In some sense, the short Retraction communicates less of

a need for forgiveness. Chaucer, it would seem, has through texts avoided a tremendous

amount of offense and sin. In Huppé’s terms, the “baggage” Chaucer takes with him is

inert writer who can no longer control his words. But in the world of the mystics, of course, failure is

paradoxically success, particularly failure of language” (172).

218

minimal. In fact, Chaucer’s Retractions, if overdone, can thoroughly clash with his role

as observer and recorder of the pilgrimage.

But it can also clash with other texts, or at least fall short of acknowledging their

complexity, their shades of meaning. If, as I have suggested already, Chaucer and Gower

are the prime examples from this period of creators of persistent and dominant

apocalyptic texts, we should not be surprised that Chaucer’s work remains incapable of

being confessed, corrected, and encapsulated, even by himself.

The climate of apocalyptic textual engagement sketched in this chapter at least

begins to account for the staying power of the period’s strongest narrative works. Seer-

like exclusivity has special implications for that purported seer’s text, and that writer’s

work is hard to replicate once the unique apocalypticism of the period is surpassed by

something else. And a particularly ominous sense of the future seems to have emerged as

texts and readers grew at such a rate that even many of the most literate could not account

for the shifts in what reading, writing, and the vernacular meant. But to underscore an

emphasis of this final chapter, through the role of the purportedly visionary but

necessarily textually represented and engaged seer perspective apocalypticism is most

clearly shaped to the cultural circumstances of late-medieval England. Linked to time as a

terminable concept but transcending the time of writing, the texts from this period are

perhaps at their most apocalyptic as they change meaning outside of their authors’ control.

And they are also apocalyptic at their most tentative, preparing themselves to be

permanent but knowing that they are not.

219

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