Jottings on Beowulf and fragmentation of the body/nation

As I've not posted anything in a while, here's a note-form version of something I'm working on at the moment. This is the seminar paper I delivered a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently working on expanding into a full-length paper (c. 20-22 pages, if I can keep it down to that length!). I'm keeping it in note form, because I am, sadly, beginning to get a little chary of copyright on the internet.

Not that I expect to publish this. I am not going to make my first major analytical publication on Beowulf.

A - General outline: Fragmentation or unity of the body as reflective of (and a site for exploring anxieties about) that of the nation.

- Lerer calls beowulf ‘a poem of the body’ (723). [1] Poem’s focus on the physical deeds and prowess of the warrior body often excludes the use of ornamentation, weaponry or armour. Every conflict with a monstrous opponent results in not merely the death of one party but in the fragmentation or destruction of their body: Grendel rends and eats his victims, Beowulf relies on muscle rather than weapon and tears off Grendel’s arm, Grendel’s mother tears off Aeschere’s head and discards it far from civilisation, Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother and cuts off Grendel’s head then displays head and arm as tokens of his victory. He cleaves the dragon in two; the sea monsters try to make a feast of him, but he scatters their bodies on the shore. All of the most dramatic moments of conflict with an outside force, Lerer concludes, draw attention to the maintenance of the intact body of the victor over the broken body of the defeated.

B - ‘Nation’ (for this purpose) as defined not by maps or land but as the people and culture.

- Spatial imaginaire, but not the physical boundaries on which Michelet[2] focusses. Not particularly useful for Beowulf (partly for reasons Hiatt points out, but also simply because the rest of the land is not very interesting, with the partial exception of its coast-boundaries).

- Instead, nation is centred on / symbolised by the vivid image of the hall and the bodies within - as Michelet does point out, it is the hall in each instance (whether human or monstrous) that is under the threat of invasion. The invasions into the hall (by Grendel or the dragon) lead to a breakdown in unified social function (Michelet 79).

- Within the hall, imagery is centred on the body and the cultural actions of the body, esp. re. gift-giving (and the throne, the centred position of the leader, is a particular point of threat from both Grendel and dragon). Proximity to the central figure as crucial element in ordered and functioning social space - cf movements of queen within hall bearing cup to guests, etc. (May not be spatial centre if one were to draw a floor plan, but is imagined/conceptual centre.) The absent leader provides space for his replacement with Grendel (Hroðgar leaves the hall in the night, Michelet 92). (note that the den of dragon and Grendel provide a negative image of this)

- Image of nation therefore as the body (esp. that of the leader) within the communal space.

- But centre and boundaries are defined against each other: centre implies boundaries, boundaries necessitate centre (Michelet 10, then 24). Anxiety about definition and establishment of secure boundaries, the point where in becomes out, us becomes them, at which they touch by necessity, the point farthest from centre. How do we define the boundaries? ... monsters!

C - Jeffrey Cohen’s work on the idea of the giant in Anglo-Saxon literature/mythology[3] as a starting point from which to examine the nature of the threat presented by Grendel and his mother. [Firstly: giant tears and eats, is a threat to the body, but also, in its violent exaggerated human form, a threat to unified society] Especially:

- The giant as inhabiter / transgressor of boundaries, of both society and human bodies. Cohen 1-2 re. giant as psychological and cultural delineator of boundaries - extend this to spatially, to the temporal boundaries of beginnings and endings, and also culturally taboo-boundaries like cannibalism: in each instance the physical body and its physical effects are important.

- The giant as originary or causative, particularly in their body, inhabiting some distant past on which the present is built. The broken body of the giant provides origins (cf Gog/Magog, who are thrown into the sea as the dragon is) (p. 9 for Ymir). The giants’ violent acts and boundary-breaking, the damage they visit on bodies and landscape (17), form the origin both of cultures (imaged in the body) and cultural space.

D - Fragmentation of that body

- By consumption or mutilation.

- Maintenance of the intact body = success, vs. consequences of defeat = dismembered body (Grendel, Aescere’s head, etc) - see Seth Lerer. What is at stake in the conflicts, then, is unity vs fragmentation, as conceived in terms of the body.

- He does not point out, however, that each conflict (even Beowulf vs. sea monsters) has one party transgressing the boundaries of the other’s space - one enters to the other and the result is a dismembered body within a violated space. The space itself often shows signs of this violence - the blood bubbling to the surface of the mere is an irrefutable sign of the violence within, and is read as such, although Hrodhgar’s men misread the results of that violence. Crossing the boundary is a defining moment that, like the passage of the Rubicon, commits the intruder to a battle for control of the integrity of the space and the body. Attention is thus drawn to the boundaries and the moment of breaking them.

- Therefore the body (society or the body of its leader) defined / celebrated by challenge to it.

E. Grendel and his mother inhabit and transgress the boundaries of body and nation and thus help to delineate them (Michelet 94-5). The image of the broken body of the giant + intact body of hero (alive or celebrated in his tomb) provides origin, projected back into the past?

- Cohen: fragments of Grendel’s body are elevated as symbols of “a public validation of the control and acceptance of structured society whose antitheses Grendel represents” (24). So the fragments are not only a result of victory, but a sign of it, signalling triumph over the other and a society (and heroic body) whose unity has been affirmed.

- Michelet points out that “The demon’s footsteps provide the spatial transition between the two places” (Heorot and the mere) (80) & treading the grounds defines the limited (107-08). He does not point out that Grendel’s footprints are not merely impressions in the dirt, but marked in blood, signs of the damage to his body and his consequent defeat. Cannot break the boundaries of his space until his body is broken - and once he does, Beowulf breaks his body again.

- Walkers in the wasteland: with their feet, especially the bloody footprints, they mark out and define the boundaries of civilisation.

In expanding this to a proper paper, I'd like to explore further the idea of temporal boundaries - the beginning and ending of nations / things / memory / knowledge. Beowulf and Wiglaf are the last of their people, Beowulf says, and this is signalled by the breakdown of society after Beowulf dies, as if his death and the sundering of social ties shown by the earls’ failure to help him signal the actual end of the Geats as a whole. Beowulf’s body, however, remains: he says that his cairn is to be a signal to later generations, or later ages, far into the future. But there is very little human history, only a few generations back, as if the past can only be accessed by the monsters.

Drawing again on Cohen: the hilt of the sword that Beowulf takes from the mere depicts the giants before the flood, which is where they’re usually found, in some legendary but foundational long-ago. They build, yes, and old stone ruins are often referred to semi-metaphorically in Anglo-Saxon poetry as ‘the work of giants’ (Cohen 11), but other landscape features are also attributed to them. They and their brute strength are used to explain the presence of mountains, lakes, ancient cities, broken rocks, changes wrought long ago before the human nation arrived. In Germanic cosmogonies they predate the material universe, which is fashioned from the corpse of one of them (7).

So giants are originary or causative, particularly in their body, inhabiting some distant past on which the present is built. The broken body of the giant provides origins - Gogmagog is dashed into a thousand pieces and thrown into the sea so that Brutus can found Britain. The dragon, incidentally, meets the same fate - but I don't think we can equate the dragon and the Grendelkin so easily. He seems to me to be a very different creature, especially in terms of how he relates to the beginnings and endings of human civilisations.

Grendel’s fragments possibly provide, for the poem’s audience, a similar imaginative origin in the defeat of the previous inhabitants of the land. The giants’ violent acts and boundary-breaking, the damage they visit on bodies and landscape (Cohen 17), form the origin both of cultures (imaged in the body) and cultural space, but they also demarcate a boundary in time that cannot be crossed by human knowledge: once again, they demarcate the unknowable.



[1] Seth Lerer, ‘Grendel’s Glove’, English Literary History 61 (1994): 721-751. (The glove Grendel wears – ie, the monster as symbolised by his hand and his mouth, Beowulf’s removal of these; Norse traditions of giants’ gloves; Beowulf is ‘a poem of the body’, and victory results in destruction of the body of the defeated.)
[2] Fabienne Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. (Anglo-Saxon conceptions of space; Grendel’s mere and the dragon’s den compared and contrasted to Heorot, Beowulf’s hall, Beowulf’s cairn; demarcations of land boundaries in Beowulf.)
[3] Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Old English Literature and the Work of Giants’, Comitatus 24 (1993): 1-32. (Figure of the giant in Old English literature; debts to Germanic and Latin/Old Testament traditions; psychological function of the monster; figure of Grendel within this tradition.)

Ramblings on Christina of Markyate’s mouth

So I accidentally bought a book the other day (the bookshop was just there, flashing its volumes enticingly at me): The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth-Century Recluse. It’s published in 2005 by Toronto U. P., but is actually a re-issue of a 1959 edition+translation by C. H. Talbot, who managed with great effort to transcribe those parts of the single manuscript that were not destroyed or obscured by the Cotton fire of 1731 (honestly, why would you move a collection of priceless manuscripts to a place called Ashburnham House for temporary storage? Someone was just asking for trouble).  My excuse for the flagrant self-indulgence (it cost all of $9!) is that it is tangentially related to my thesis, as it’s a product of St Albans, and I’ll be using existing studies on the historical-writing culture of St Albans as a touchstone for more original work that I intend to do on other places.  And, although she lived during the first half of the 12th century, and the vita seems to have been writing during her vita, the surviving manuscript was written (apparently with some intentional alteration from the lost original) in the mid 14th, so it’s within my time period too[1].

I’ve only just started reading it, but I was immediately struck by the style of narration, in which speech is very prominent.  It frequently uses direct speech, marked by the use of the first person (note the punctuation of the transcription):

Dixitque. Dimitte me. ut eam hostium obserare. Quia licet minime Deum metuimus. saltem homines opere tali ne superveniant vereri debemus.
And she said to him: ‘Allow me to bolt the door: for even if we have no fear of God, at least we should take precautions that no man should catch us in this act.’ (42-43) 

Direct speech is both frequent and usually marks the emotional and moral crux of each scene. Not only that, but it emphasises speech and its style and effect to such a degree that it would not be an exaggeration to call the whole vita (well, so far as I’ve read) a narrative of speech events.

• Almost every scene centres around a particular potent occasion of speech. 
• Christina’s devotion to Christ is learned and expressed through speech, as is the battle for her mind and chastity. 
• The proof of her holiness is in her speech: eg, when young she speaks aloud to Christ in her room at night, in a loud clear voice, believing that no mortal could hear her while she was addressing God.
• Her spiritual education by Sueno is told in terms of his speech and the “colloquium” he had with her. And the elided “cum” in “cum”+“loquor” is appropriate: we are told that he is learning from her speech as much as the other way around.
• Similarly, when trying to force her into marriage, her parents’ primary method of coercion is to keep all religious, god-fearing men from having “colloquium” with her, as if blocking access to the words can keep God away. Instead, she is surrounded examples of bad speech, by “people given to jesting, boasting, worldly amusement, and those whose evil communications [mala colloquia] corrupt good manners [mores bonos]” (47).
• In addition, they set one of her best friends on her, who uses flattery and persuasion and sheer persistence for a whole year to try to persuade her to consent – to that one verbal act that constitutes a contract of betrothal or marriage (depending on verb tense).
• Vows, prayers and moments of verbal consent are the turning points that provide the dramatic structure of the narrative.
• In trying to seduce her, the evil bishop Ralph of Durham uses not force, or even simply words, but explicitly “that mouth which he used to consecrate the sacred species”, neatly demonstrating the moral difference between his speech and hers.

In the example I quoted above, the use of direct speech provides the dramatic and moral crux of the scene. Ralph is  trying to seduce/rape the young Christina in his bedroom, and she is employing a ruse to allow her nearer the door so that she can escape, while pretending to acquiesce. The direct speech thus dramatises the ploy, heightening its effect, and doubles it by having her feign what we as readers know is a completely insincere disregard for God and God’s omnipresence. At the same time, that jarring note serves as a harsh reminder of exactly what the bishop’s priorities should be, highlighting his hypocrisy and thus suggesting that Christina’s apparent dishonesty is excusable, in the service of a higher truth.

The bishop demands her oath that she would not ‘fail’ but that she indeed lock the door; she swears to it, darts out of the room and locks him in. These happen in reported speech, rather than direct, playing out the suggestions inherent in the direct speech.

Incidentally, the word I’ve rendered above as ‘fail’ is my own translation of ‘falleret’.  Talbot, who prefers throughout to read this text as a literal account of her life[2], misses the double meaning here and translates it as ‘deceive him’ – certainly the primary meaning in context, and the only meaning Ralph intends, but I would have preferred to have the ominous hint preserved.  To fall truly in this instance, to fail in her vows of virginity, would be to stay in the room with him.

This emphasises the difference maintained throughout the scene between her reading of words (which is largely allegorical) and his (determinedly centred on the physically present).  She observes that the door is closed but not bolted (“clausum… sed non obseratum”). Similarly, her chastity is so far defended, but not inviolable.  Bolting the door erects a physical barrier between her and her would-be violator, just as there is already a spiritual barrier between them.  She has kept her promise she made to him: she has locked the door both physically and spiritually, in a manner far more significant than he intended. She is not forsworn: she adheres to a truth he cannot comprehend.


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[1] Copying a text, especially with substantial editing, definitely counts as historical writing for my purposes.  Oddly, Talbot seems to make little distinction between the original author and the amending copyist – so far as I can tell, as he uses the word ‘biographer’ for both, he seems to assume they’re both from St Albans on the grounds of the same textual evidence (use of “nostrum” etc when referring to the saint or monastery).


[2] He emphasises the biographer’s close relationship to her and the fact that it was written in her lifetime, as well as the paucity of fantastical tales that mark most hagiography of the period, to conclude that it was a genuine attempt at a “history” of the real woman rather than a collection of “stock elements”.  I… disagree, mostly with that distinction.

Lego librum – who is the reader?

John of Salisbury was on the brink of distinguishing three meanings for the verb legere, but then leaves it at two.  He says that the word ‘to read’ is equivocal, indicating either the activity of a teacher reading out and a listening learner (‘docentis et discentis’) or that of studying what is written for oneself (‘per se scrutantis scripturam’). John therefore refers to three different persons (teacher, learner, individual reader), but lumps the first two together by seeing them under prelectio, the communication between teacher and pupil, as distinct from lectio, individual reading. By thus squeezing out the learner-listener (discens) from the usage of legere, John has confined himself to a double function of this verb.  He therefore remains content with the suggested distinction between prelegere (to read aloud to others) and legere (to read for oneself).[1]

 

That distinction that John of Salibury doesn't quite commit to is actually quite an interesting one if it's fully articulated. And if it isn't, that is in itself interesting. When we analyse mediaeval reading patterns, do we consider locutor and audens to be one single unit, the lector? When we read a mediaeval reference to a specific act of reading, does the author of the reference consider them as a single unit, and if not, where is his/her focus? To whom is the verb legere given - where does the credit lie?

If we consider (or our hypothetical author considers) the speaker to be the reader, we foreground the skill of reading - in other words, we buy into (or examine) the cultural stratification around that ability that was for so long the closely guarded property and defining characteristic of clerics. If we consider the hearer to be the reader[2], we foreground instead the act of comprehension - involvement in a specific moment rather than intellectual accomplishment, internal analytical processes rather than external processing - and open possibilities for the meaning of 'legere' approaching, for example, spiritual contemplation.  This might also tie in, depending on period and author, with the opposition of mouth and ear, and the concerns over positive and negative functions of speech.

I don't suggest that either is more correct - I simply think it's a distinction that is valuable to bear in mind when reading mediaeval accounts of such moments, to see which figure/idea is foregrounded by the author, or to reserve our own ability to analyse the scene from both angles.

 

 

[1] D. H. Green, Women Readers in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007, 5-6.  Internal quotes are John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I 24 (qtd in Green, Medieval listening and reading: The primary reception of German literature 800-1300, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994, 337 n. 155).

[2] The speaker may also be a hearer, and thus a reader under this definition, but not invariably.

Herte and mesure in BL Add. 37049 20r: in response to Caroline Walker Bynum

I was reading through an article by Caroline Walker Bynum a few days ago (see below for citation), and found a few points with regards to one manuscript image she discussed that I wanted to expand.

The article focuses on the violence and gore in many high to late mediaeval theological images, its possible implications and the differing emphases laid on images of the perforated or violated body. The manuscript is BL Additional 37049, a Carthusian miscellany which has plenty of other creatively gruesome images. I particularly like this take on the usual memento mori: you may look pretty and rich and noble even in death, but you are still worm-food, frail mortals! Specifically, Bynum examines 20r:

British Library Additional 37049 fol. 20r. Click for full size.

Bynum cites this image to support her argument that the wounds of Christ “evoked love”. Specifically, she notes that Christ “displays his own heart … [which] bears within it all five wounds of Christ’s body, and the accompanying dialogue… ends with the hope that we will soon come to joy” (Bynum 18). She also adds that the image “returns us to the theme of fragmentation”.

However, although she quotes the exchange between Christ and the kneeling man, she doesn’t, to my mind, adequately examine the literal centrality of the heart on the page and in the poetic exchange:

Querela diuina: O man unkynde / hafe i[n] mynde / my paynes smert[.] / Beholde + see / Þat is for þe / percyd my hert [...]

Responsio humana: O lord right dere / þi wordes I here / with herte ful sore[.] / Þ[ere]fore fro synne / I hope to wynne / And greue no more [...]

The heart is the centre and focus of the page; but also, it seems to me, of their exchange. The pain in Christ’s heart is matched by the pain in the heart of man, caused by the same sin. The mutual wound suggests a shared heart – as indeed the page represents, presenting the heart as the means of communication, the addressee of the gaze and words of each. The word “heart” is exchanged between them as is the wound, something shared and mutually comprehensible. In this way, I’d question (or at least complicate) Bynum’s interpretation of the heart as Christ’s: it seems to me the heart shared between God and man. On the other hand, by that very token, it becomes a form of mediation between the human and the divine, the common halfway point: Christ himself, as the word made flesh, the mediator for humanity before God.

Aptly, the heart literalises the concept of “word made flesh”: it appears to speak. The central wound seems almost a mouth, and the words around it may be seen as issuing from it. Interestingly, though the image of Christ is made to speak, and the heart appears to, the man remains silent, except for the voice in the poem. Silent before Christ, or only capable of speaking through the emissary of the heart – whether that be addressing God through Christ, or one’s own internal voice of prayer, rather than the potentially destructive external voice?

Central throughout Bynum’s article is the idea of metonymy, “undergirded by… the doctrine of concomitance (the idea that the whole Christ is present in every particle of the eucharist)” (22):

From folk assumptions that a measure or particle (fingernails or hair) can be the person to abstruse theological debates over the mode of presence of an immaterial God, medieval culture gloried in the paradox of parts that not so much represented as were the whole. (23)

Bynum then draws the connection between this and the mediaeval obsession with numerology, particularly the ability of the right numbers to convey truth: effectively, to stand in as a metonymical “part” that might stand for / be the whole. I’d draw the comparison, for example’s sake, with the pentangle on Gawain’s shield and its ability to simultaneously represent Gawain (or the idealised version of him) and the perfection of Christ or the Trinity[1]. She applies this to the motto inscribed around the “mouth” of the heart:

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þ[a]t our Ih[esu]s Christ sufferd for oure rede[m]ptiou[n].

Bynum points out the emphasis on the precise length of the wound contained in “mesure”, pointing out a long mediaeval tradition in which “length is a metonym for person” (20). The correct dimensions of the wound carry with them the nature of the person represented by it, and therefore, if it adheres to those dimensions, “an image of the wound was Christ” (20). However, I’d venture to add to her conclusion. It seems to me that the evidence she cites to the effect that precise numerical detailing of an object can reproduce it in its precise identity means that perhaps in this case the numerical “mesure” need not be the central concern. If “mesure” has become abstracted to the extent she describes, we might as well read “this is the nature”, or “this is exactly that wound Christ suffered and how it was given him”. In this way the heart that is the focus of the gaze of Christ, of the kneeling man and of the reader (given the layout of the page) becomes a demonstration and revelation of the words they exchange through it: the manner of the wound, the piercing sin that harms both (or all three) in the doing, a visual representation of the exact truth – the “mesure” – of the Passion.

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Arthur, Ross G. Medieval sign theory in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Toronto: Toronto UP, 1987.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Violent imagery and Late Medieval Piety”, German Historical Institute Bulletin 30 (2002), 3-36. Available online on the GHI Bulletin website.

Mors et vita in manibus lingue

Another interesting quote which reflects on the conflicting mediaeval ideas of the power and proper function of speech, and indeed the fascination with that ambiguity:

Mors et vita in manibus lingue. Mors: quia lingua que mentitur occidit animam. Vita: quia ore conuersio sit ad salutem. [1]

Roughly:

"Death and life lie in the power [lit. 'the hand', which is a diverting image] of the tongue. Death, because the lying tongue slays the soul. Life, because the mouth brings conversion to salvation."

Dante's Virgil would have so much to say on the subject!


[1] Raoul Ardent, Speculum universale distinctionem de virtutibus et vitiis eisdem oppositis, c. 1195, Bibliotheque Nationale MS. la. 3240, ff. 1r-203v: 161r. Cited in Craun, Lies, slander, and obscenity in medieval English literature: pastoral rhetoric and the deviant speaker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 72.

The Seventh Deadly Sin: Þe Synne of Mouþ

And so we come (somewhat tardily) to the last sin - the fragile vestige of an excuse for me doing this sequence, as it is tangentially relevant to an essay I'm working on. It is not called gluttony, but "the sin of the mouth". Proper and improper uses of the mouth were an ongoing topic of discussion at this time. It was the point of exchange between the body and the outside world, and so constantly ambivalent. Food and drink entered by it, nourishing the body but presenting the temptation of gluttony and instigating the fleshly processes of digestion[1]. At death the human soul left the body via the mouth; devils could enter by it to possess the body; and of course the spirit of God entered physically in the form of the host at communion[2]. AThe mouth also had the duty of speech, which could range from blasphemy, damaging slander or lies, to strategy, peace-speaking, theological learning, teaching others or singing the praises of God[3].

With this in mind, it isn't so surprising if Lorens felt the need to address all the categories of sin that belong to the mouth, and should elide them under the seventh that we call gluttony now. He explains (in translation), "The seventh head of the beast is the sin of mouth. And because the mouth has two offices, whereof one serves for the swallowing of meat and drink, and the other to speech, therefore it is principally divided in two; that is to say, in the sin of gluttony, that is in food and drink, and in the sin of wicked tongue, that is to speak folly." (46)

I will quote more than usual today, with the excuse of essay relevance, and because he has so many beautifully sarcastic analogies:

First will we speak of the sin of gluttony, for that is a default and an evil that pleases the devil wonderous much and much displeases God, for through that sin hath the devil great power in man and woman, as clerks read in the gospel that God gave leave to the devils to go into swine, and when they were within the swine, they made them all run into the sea headlong and drown themselves. [This was] a token that gluttons that lead their life in gluttony as swine, the devil hath power to enter within them and drench them in the sea, that is to say in hell, and to make them to eat so much that they burst, and to drink so much that they drown....

This is the fisher of hell that fishes and takes the fish by the mouth and by the throat[3]. This vice displeases much God, for a glutton does great shame to God when he makes his god of a sackful of dung, that is to fill his belly, that he loves more than God and doubts, and therefore he serves it all of its asking.

God bids him fast; his belly bids him fast not, 'but eat thy food all in ease, and sit to your meal long enough, and thou shalt eat better and more'.

God bids him rise early; his belly bids him lie still, for he is too full to rise so early. 'I may sleep, for church is [at] noon hour; it will wait for me'.

And when he does rise, he begins his prayers and says "Ah, lord God, what shall we eat today? Where shall we find anything that is enough?"

And after these matins, then come the laudes: "Ah, lord God, we drank good wine yester-eve and ate good food."

Then shall he begin to weep for his sins, and say, "Alas, I am almost dead: the wine was too strong yester-eve; my head acheth."

This man has an evil god. This god and this vice brings a man to shame, for first he begins to be a tavern-goer and an ale-goer, and next he is a dice-player, and next he sells his heritage and all that he hath, and after that he becometh a harlot and a thief, and so cometh he to be hanged. (46-48)

There are five branches of gluttony:

Eating early or late. Eating early is a sin, for "it is a foul þing for a man of good age þat may not abide tyme of day to ete" (48). Late hours are just as bad, for it is associated with going to bed late and rising late and wasting the whole day: "þei wasteþ tyme and turneþ vp-so-doun, for of þe nyght þei makeþ day" (49). Teenagers beware.

Eating and drinking too much.

Eating too hastily.

Eating too richly.

Being a gourmet. That is, "to delyte in queynte and deynteuous metes [foods]" (52). I'm afraid our family is damned.

Following this comes a denunciation of the tavern, which is the schoolhouse of the devil. In this, the inverse of the holy church, the devil reverses the miracles of God:

In holy church is God wont to do miracles and show his virtues: [he makes] the blind to see, the crippled to walk right, madmen to come into their right wits, dumb men to speak, deaf men to hear. But the devil doth the contrary of all this in the tavern. For when a glutton goes to the tavern he walks right enough, and when he comes out then all this is lost, for he has no wit nor reason nor understanding. These are the miracles that the devil doth (53-54).

Next come sins of the tongue, which may be divided into ten branches: "ydel, auauntyng [boasting], losengerie [flattery], bakbityng, lesynges [lying], forswerynges, stryuynges, grucchynges, rebellynges, blasphemye" (55).

Idle words cause the speaker to lose their time by spending it in folly, the good that they ought to be doing instead, and the treasure of their heart. Idle words are not, in fact, idle, but dear and full of harm. There are five kinds of idle words:
- Gabbling like a water mill.
- Bearing worrying news (Gandalf Stormcrow, anyone?).
- Exaggeration "wher-yn is moche vayn glorie" (56) (it was THIS BIG).
- Dirty jokes.
- Sarcasm. Methinks Lorens is occasionally guilty of this one himself. Though, reading closer, sarcasm is only bad if it is made "vpon goode men". Presumably one can be as sarcastic about sinners as necessary.

Avaunting, which comes in five kinds:
- Boasting about past deeds.
- Boasting of what one owns.
- "Surquidrye", which of course appeared under pride as well. Here it is defined as the sin of he "þat bosteþ and seiþ, 'I wole do so and so, and I wole venge wronges; I wole ... do meruailes [wonders]'" (57).
- Disparagement.
- False humility. Here falls Gawain.

Losyngerie, or flattery, which again divides into five:
- Indiscriminate praise (Chaucer the Pilgrim in the General Prologue?).
- Praise of children.
- Untruthful praise.
- Servile complaisance.
- Glossing over the faults of others.

Backbiting. Interestingly, to take a brief diversion into the realm of the monstrous, flatterers are likened to mermaids ("There is a thing that shows itself in the sea or other waters that men call meremaidens, that have the body of a woman and tail of a fish, and they sing so pleasingly that they have power to bring men who hear them into sleep, such as shipmen... and when they have brought a man to sleep, they slay him and devour him" (58-59)), and backbiters are compared to sirens ("There is a kind of adder that is called siren and that runs faster than any horse[5]... and she is so venomous that nothing may save a man that she envenoms").
- Lying to lay blame on others.
- Exaggerating the misdeeds of others.
- Devaluing the good deeds of others.
- Detraction. These sinners "ben like þe scorpioun þat makeþ good semblaunt as wiþ his visage [shows a fair face], and enuenymeþ wiþ his tail" (60). I think Lorens had never seen a scorpion's face. They're about as attractive as spiders'.
- Depicting the entire person in a bad light.

Lying.
- White lies, to help other people, which are the least culpable branch.
- Lies to please other people - this includes minstrels and story-tellers.
- Harmful lies.

Forswearing.
- Swearing "wiþ grete hete" (61)
- Swearing "lightly, þat is for nought and wiþ-out resoun" (61).
- Swearing by habit.
- Swearing foolishly.
- Breaking an oath.

Strife.
- Striving against others.
- Chiding.
- Despising.
- Speaking evil of others.
- Reproving.
- Threatening.
- Stirring discord.

Grudging, the recourse of "he þat dar not chide" (64).
- Grudging against man.
- Grudging against God.

Rebellion, "þat is to be rebel", as Lorens helpfull explains (66).
- Rebellion against advice.
- Against God's commandments.
- Against reproof.
- Against teaching.

Blasphemy, which is "as seynt Austeyn [Augustine] seiþ, whan a man bileueþ or seiþ of God þing þat a man scholde not bileue ne holde ne seye, or whan a man ne bileueþ nought þat he scholde holde" (67 - yes, the double negative is permissible in Middle English grammar). It comes in many kinds, such as when people blaspheme without thinking and use God's name in vain, or when witches and necromancers use it for their spells, or a man blasphemes from wrath and spite. Blasphemy is seldom forgiven.

Here endeth the seven deadly sins and all their branches, and whoever will study well in this book, it will profit him, and he may learn to reckon all manner of sins and to shrive himself well, for there is no man who may shrive himself well nor keep himself from sin if he knows them not. Now shall he that readeth attentively in this book look to see if he be guilty of any of these sins, and if he be guilty, repent him and shrive him and keep him to the best of his power from any other that he is not yet guilty of, and beseach meekly of Jesus Christ that he keep him from all those and any others; and so may he keep us all, amen. (68)

And may we remember never to praise our children, or speculate on the stock market, especially in its current state, or to engage in carnal acts with a common woman.


[1] Many saints, particularly female ones, were supposed to have done without food for days, months or years at a time, being nourished entirely by either the Eucharist or the Holy Spirit. Or occasionally her own miraculous milk, in the case of Christina the Astonishing, but she's hardly representative. Just... well... astonishing. This equation of holiness or purity with abstaining from food was mirrored, of course, in the more usual routine of fasting on certain days or at certain times. People in holy orders - halfway between saints and ordinary humans, you might say - had more restricted diets (many orders of monks were largely vegetarian) and were required to fast more often.

[2] Caciola, Nancy. “Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2. 42 (2000): 262-306. I would cite the pages specifically, but I don't have it by me. The whole article is worth a read, though. Sadly does not contain any reproductions of mediaeval pictures of the moment of death, with the soul in the form of a little bird, human, or wafty flame-shaped thing leaving the mouth of the newly deceased - I shall try to find an example tomorrow and cite that here.

[3] It's possible to trace a very forceful debate about the proper use of the mouth throughout Dante's Commedia, particularly the Inferno. For a discussion of the symbolism of the boar's mouth in mediaeval literature as it pertains to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, see Thiébaux, Marcelle, “The Mouth of the Boar as Symbol”, Romance Philology, 22 (1969): 281-99. She examines how the boar's mouth is a symbol of damage and destruction (or even just thoughtless, spiteful talk like Kay's), and is particularly often used as a metaphor for the slanderer who gives away the secret of a pair of lovers and thus brings about destruction and calamity.

[4] What does this say about contemporary fishing techniques? Or is it simply a baited hook in the mouth, then a stick through the gills (throat) once the fish is caught?

[5] Incidentally, the fastest land snake is the African Black Mamba, but it only reaches the speed of a running human. Unfortunately, it combines this with being the only land snake who'd prefer to attack and chase you rather than escape, given the chance, so running is both a good idea and largely futile. And people think Australia's fauna is scary...

Unless otherwise specified, all quotes are from The book of vices and virtues: a fourteenth century English translation of the Somme le roi of Lorens d'Orleans. Ed. W. Nelson Francis. Early English Text Society OS 217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942.

The Second Deadly Sin: Enuye

Incipit Enuye.

The second head of the "wikked be[a]st of helle is enuye, "þat is þe addre þat al enuenimeþ [envenoms]"(22). No, not ennui - envy. Ennui probably falls under sloth.

According to Lorens, Envy is the mother of death, "for bi enuye of þe deuel come deeþ in-to þis world". It is "þe synne þat makeþ a man or a womman most like to þe deuel". That is, I suppose, logicaly - Envy (or possibly Pride) was the sin that caused Satan to try to overreach his bounds and become like God, so it is perhaps his greatest characteristic.

Lorens breaks Envy down into three branches, each neatly tripartite. For this sin "first enuenemeþ the herte & after þe mouþ and after þe dedes" (22):

Envy in heart: An envious heart sins in three ways.
- False judgement.
- Shrewed gladness.
- Evil sorrow.

He doesn't expand on these, but proceeds straight to the second branch, for "suche licour as is in þe tunne mote nedes come out at the faucetes hoole" ("that liquor which is in the tun must necessarily come out of the faucet's hole)":

Envy in words:
- Cursedness, speaking harm of another man's good and undoing him as he can.
- Bitterness, furthering and wishing for another man's harm as far as he may.
- Treason, turning everything good that he perceives "vp-so-doun" (23) and turning it to evil.

Envy in deeds (This is a little unclear but as far as I can make out it breaks down to):
- Destruction of potential (as the grass that will grow).
- Destruction of flourishing and profiting (the air that blows about and profits).
- Destruction of what does good to the world (as ripened fruit that nourishes).

"For þe more good þat þer is, þe more sorwe haþ" the envious man.

Lady Despenser is right - I'm afraid Hugh would have to confess to this as well. Though proud Piers in his pearl-powdered purple would probably give the Despensers a run for their money!

Unless otherwise specified, all quotes are from The book of vices and virtues: a fourteenth century English translation of the Somme le roi of Lorens d'Orleans. Ed. W. Nelson Francis. Early English Text Society OS 217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942.