Anti Fraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature Speculum

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The Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English LiteratureAuthor(s): Penn R. SzittyaSource: Speculum, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 287-313Published by: Medieval Academy of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2850514 .Accessed: 24/03/2011 18:20

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THE ANTIFRATERNAL TRADITION IN MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE*

BY PENN R. SZITTYA

IN the last fifty years, among Middle English scholars as well as historians, there has been a rekindling of interest in the thirteenth-century controversies between the secular clergy and the fraternal orders at the University of Paris. These ecclesiastical squabbles have long been recognized for their

impact on the subsequent history of the friars, the universities, and even the church, since Gallicanism and several related ecclesiological disputes grew out of them.' But only since 1950, thanks to the work of a number of literary scholars - especially Arnold Williams - have these controversies begun to be recognized for their importance to literature.2 They are the wellspring of a long tradition of attacks on the friars which finds its culmination in the burst of antifraternal literature written in England by some of the most prominent poets and ecclesiastics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Dunbar, Henryson, Richard Fitzralph, Wyclif, and the somewhat less immortal author of Jack Upland.3

* A shorter version of this paper was read at the Conference on Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies sponsored by the Augustinian Historical Institute at Villanova University, 18 September 1976.

1 For historical accounts of the Parisian controversy see especially M. M. Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polemique universitaire parisienne, 1250-1259 (Paris, 1972); P. Glorieux, "Le conflit de 1252-1257 a la lumiere du Memoire de Guillaume de Saint-Amour," Recherches de

theologie ancienne et medievale 24 (1957), 364-72; Yves M.-J. Congar, "Aspects ecclesiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et seculiers dans la seconde moitie du XIIIe siecle et le debut du XIVe," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age, Annee 36 (1961), Tome 28, 35-151; Decima L. Douie, The Conflict Between the Seculars and the Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century, Aquinas Paper No. 23 (London, 1954); Maurice Perrod, Maitre Guillaume de Saint-Amour, l'Universite de Paris et les ordres mendiants au XIIIe siecle (Paris, 1895); Kurt Schleyer, Anfdnge des Gallikanismus im 13. Jahrhundert, Historische Studien, Heft 314 (Berlin, 1937; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965); Christine Thouzellier, "La place du 'De Periculis' de Guillaume de Saint-Amour dans les polemiques universitaires du XIIIe siecle," Revue Historique 156 (1927), 69-83; Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1968).

2 Williams, "Chaucer and the Friars," SPECULUM 28 (1953), 499-513, "The 'Limitour' of Chaucer's Time and His 'Limitacioun,'" Studies in Philology 57 (1960), 463-78, "Relations Between the Mendicant Friars and the Seculiar Clergy in England in the Later Fourteenth

Century," Annuale Medievale 1 (1960), 22-95; John Fleming, "The Antifraternalism of the Summoner's Tale,"JEGP 65 (1966), 688-700; and "The Summoner's Prologue: An Iconographic Adjustment," Chaucer Review 2 (1967/1968), 95-107; D. W. Robertson and B. F. Huppe, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton, 1951); P. L. Heyworth, ed.,Jack Upland, Friar Daw's

Reply, and Upland's Rejoinder (Oxford, 1968); A. G. Rigg, "Two Latin Poems Against the Friars," Mediaeval Studies 30 (1968), 106-18 and "William Dunbar: The 'Fenyeit Freir'," Review of English Studies, n.s. 14 (1963), 269-73; Charles Dahlberg, "Chaucer's Cock and Fox,"JEGP 53 (1954), 277-90; John B. Friedman, "Henryson, the Friars, and the Confessio Reynardi," JEGP 66 (1967), 550-61; Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge, Eng., 1973), Chap. 2.

3 Works and editions of major antifraternal authors are indicated in subsequent notes. In

287

288 Antifrateral Tradition in Middle English Literature

The influence of the Parisian polemicists, particularly of their leader, William of St. Amour, has been duly noted for Chaucer and Langland individually, but the tradition as a whole has not yet received much attention. Partly this neglect derives from the abysmal quality of much antifraternal verse, whose greatest literary virtue is perhaps its anonymity; but more importantly, as this paper hopes to establish, the nature of the tradition itself, particularly its symbolic dimension, has not been fully understood. Antifraternalism is not,a straightforward tradition of political criticism as is usually thought, but a tradition of political theology, a tradition whose conventions are governed as much by eschatology, Salvation History, and the Bible as by political conditions in the real world of the friars.

Because of misconceptions about the tradition, several puzzling things about English antifraternalism have never been satisfactorily explained: how and why it came to be conventional; why its conventions show such con-

tinuity with the Parisian controversies, which, after all, flared up in another country, in another century, around issues that were largely local; and

finally, why some of its most prominent conventions (charges against the friars) are demonstrably false. How does such a tradition come into existence, a tradition which implicitly claims to consist of realistic political or social criticism, but in fact consists in good measure of conventions, anach- ronisms, and lies?

These curious aspects of antifraternalism can partly be explained by still a

greater curiosity. One of the most famous documents from the Parisian controversies is the violently antifraternal De periculis novissimorum temporum (1256) by William of St. Amour, a Master in the Faculty of Theology and the acknowledged leader of the secular party. This work is not only notorious (thanks to its condemnation by Pope Alexander IV) for the virulence of its attacks upon the friars, but it is rightly hailed by modern scholars as the single most important source of the antifraternal tradition.4 But here is the

addition, see "On the Minorites," "The Layman's Complaint" (together with the "Friar's An- swer"), "Friars, Ministri Malorum," and "The Orders of Cain," all in Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York, 1959); "On the Council of London" in Thomas Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs, Rolls Series, No. 14 (London, 1859-61), 1:253- 63; "Ffrere gastkyn, wo ye be," Anglia 12 (1889), 268-9; "The Order of Fair-Ease" in The Political Songs of England, ed. Thomas Wright, Camden Society, No. 6 (London, 1839), pp. 137-48; Sir Israel Gollancz, ed., Select Early English Poems, Vol. 3: A Good Short Debate Between Winner and Waster (London, 1920); "Lyarde" in Thomas Wright and J. 0. Halliwell, eds., Reliquiae Antiquae, 2 (London, 1845), 280-2; R. H. Bowers, "A Middle English Anti-Mendicant Squib," ELN 1 (1963/1964), 163-4; Robert R. Raymo, "Quod the Devill to the Frier," ELN 4 (1966/1967), 180; "Mum and the Sothsegger," ed. Mabel Day and R. Steele, EETS O.S. 199 (London, 1936); "De supersticione phariseorum" and "De astantibus crucifixo," ed. A. G. Rigg in Mediaeval Studies 30 (1968), 106-18.

4 The De periculis was condemned by Alexander IV in October of 1256. See Heinrich Denifle and Emile Chatelain, Chartularium universitatis parisiensis (Paris, 1889-97), 1, No. 288. The treatise is printed in Opera omnia (Constance [for Paris], 1632); also in Ortwin Gratius, Fas- ciculum rerum expetendarum, ed. Edward Brown (London, 1690), 2:18-41, which is the text I cite

throughout.

Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English Literature 289

curiosity: the De periculis contains no mention of the friars whatsoever. When summoned before a synod of bishops in 1256 to answer charges of willful calumny against the friars, William defended himself on precisely those grounds: the De periculis is not about the friars at all.5 It is, he said, a treatise about the "perils of the last times" predicted in Scripture, about pseudoapostoli, pseudopraedicatores, penetrantes domos, and other figures "ex Scripturis sumptis," as the long form of the title specifies. It is no accident of course, that some fairly precise correspondence with the friars can be found in these biblical figures, but - so William would have us believe - the De periculis is not a political treatise but first and foremost an exegetical treatise on the last times.

Indeed, the most salient feature of all William's antifraternal writings is their exegetical character: almost without exception their argument consists of the collection and comparison of scriptural texts and their glosses. His Collectiones are, as the title puts it, "collectiones catholice et canonice Scrip- ture ad instructionem et preparationem simplicium fidelium Christi contra pericula imminencia ecclesie generali per ypocritas pseudopraedicatores et penetrantes domos et ociosos et curiosos et gerovagos."6 In the preface to the De periculis William protests that the warnings he is giving about the dangers to the church are those "quae non ex inventione nostra sed ex veritate Sacrae Scripturae collegimus."7 He again warns of dangers in a sermon preached on May 1, 1256, and again stresses that "nihil addam de meo, sed per Scripturas ostendam."8 By Scripturas, it should be said, William seems to mean not only Sacred Scripture, but its interpretation as set forth in the Glossa (Ordinaria, as it later came to be called), which had itself reached almost canonical status among the schoolmen at Paris.9

The exegetical nature of William's polemics has been largely ignored by modern scholars, and for good historiographical reasons. The real interest of William's writings has been in what they reveal about the political causes, issues, and consequences of the secular-mendicant controversy. And for that purpose his biblical exegesis was simply an impediment; more important were the fraternal offenses to which his explanations of Scripture clearly alluded. Consequently, most scholars when speaking of William's writings have tended to translate his exegetical language about antichristi and thefinis

5See Denifle, Chartularium, 1, No. 287; also Caesar Egassius Bulaeus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis . . . a Carolo M. ad nostra tempora (Paris, 1665-73), 3:309.

6 The title is of medieval origin, here quoted from Bodl. MS 151 (S.C. 1929). The treatise is edited in Opera omnia, pp. 111-490.

7Fasciculum rerum, 2:19; Opera omnia, p. 20. 8 In die Philippi et Jacobi in Fasciculum rerum, 2:48; Opera omnia, p. 492. 9 William seems to use primarily the interlinear and not the marginal section of the Glossa, at

least in his citations. For the status of the Glossa at Paris during William's time, see Beryl Smalley. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1952), p. 56 ff. The printed text I have consulted is the Folger Library's Biblia Sacra cum glossa ordinaria & Nicolai Lyrani expositionibus literali ac morali, 6 vols. (Lugdunus, 1545).

290 Antifrateral Tradition in Middle English Literature

mundi into the - for us - more meaningful language of ecclesiastical politics. But such translation obscures the aspect of antifraternalism that can best account for its power and persistence: its theological dimension. The friars were not just perceived politically in the Middle Ages; they were perceived theologically. They were not viewed simply as competitors for university posts and ecclesiastical privileges but as fulfillments of scriptural prophecies and analogues of biblical types predicted for the last days. Modern notions of history, which underlie most previous studies of William of St. Amour, assume that history is a linear, continuous process, which is best understood in terms of the causes and consequences of proximate events. In William's historiography, however, history is discontinuous; the significance of a historical event lies not in its causes or effects but in the extent to which it participates in, recreates, or foreshadows the spiritually significant events of Salvation History. William understands the friars of his own day - as we, I think, should understand them in subsequent literature - not just by reference to clerical privileges, papal bulls, episcopal license, Gallicanism, lim- itations, and the like, but by analogy with the Apostles of Christ and the pseudoprophetae of the end of time.

This paper is ultimately directed at redefining the nature of antifraternalism. It has long since been established that this is a conventional tradition. But where it has been thought that its conventions are realistic and political, I hope to establish the existence of conventions that are rather symbolic, that is, biblical and theological, deriving from a system of biblical exegesis which conceived of the friars as analogues of a range of scriptural types. Specifi- cally, the paper is concerned with four clusters of antifraternal charges that group themselves around biblical types for the friars, or, as in the last instance, a biblical verse: the Pharisees; the pseudoapostoli; the antichristi (who are often identified with the pseudoapostoli); and those who violate the divine ordinance of "measure, number, and weight" of Wisdom 11.21. With each of these clusters of charges, my focus is limited to two areas: first, the biblical exegesis of the founder of this exegetical system, William of St. Amour, who exercises a more profound influence on English antifraternalism than he has been given credit for; and second, the manifestations of antifraternal exegesis in England 100 or more years later. This is not a source study. I am not concerned with the direct influence of William of St. Amour on English writers,'1 but only with their mutual perception of the friars in terms de-

10 William's direct influence can be documented more often than might be expected in light of the official condemnation of his works by Pope Alexander IV. See Wyclifs De ordinatione

fratrum in his Polemical Works in Latin, ed. Rudolf Buddensieg (London, 1883), 1:91-2. The 14th

chapter of the De periculis appears in toto, though without attribution in a moral encyclopedia, BM MS Royal 6 E VI, fols. 119r-122v. A number of MSS of English provenance contain various works by William: Oxford, Bodleian MS 52 (S.C. 1969); Bodl. MS 158 (S.C. 1997); Bodl. MS 151 (S.C. 1929) (a MS owned by Adam Easton, a prominent English monk, later cardinal); Bodl. MS Digby 98; Bodl. MS Digby 113; Oxford, Baliol MS 149; C.C.C.C. MS 103; BM MS Cot. Vit. C. xiv; Hereford, Cathedral MS 0.1.13.


rived from biblical exegesis, and with the implications of that theological mode of perception. A study of antifraternal exegesis will help to explain how many of the charges brought against the friars came to be conventional, why they continued even when they were false, and why they persisted long after the political situation that brought them into being had disappeared. It will in fact show that biblical associations not only crystallized and preserved, but in some instances actually generated charges against the friars.

II

The exegetical method of William of St. Amour is a direct corollary of his attitude toward history, which is, it should be stressed, symbolic, not empirical. His frame of reference for understanding the friars is not recent history but Salvation History, and it is therefore natural that he should turn to

Scripture to explain events around him which were unsettling, even terrify- ing, because symbolic of the End. When he does interpret the friars through the Bible, the result is a process of transmutation of what we would call

history into symbolism - a process that occurs throughout his writings. Most of the time, William alludes too vaguely to real historical events for this

process to be visible: he appears to be speaking only of the Bible. However, there is one event that William treats that illustrates this process clearly: the famous affair of the Eternal Evangel, which is useful to show just how much William departs from the script of history to incorporate events into a

scriptural framework. In 1255 in Paris, a zealous but slightly mad Franciscan named Gerard da

Borgo San Donnino published an outrageous Introductorius ad Evangelium Aeternum, a hodge-podge of the doctrines of Joachim of Fiore which sug- gested, among other things, that the authority of the Old and New Testa- ments was about to pass to a third Testament, which, he said, was the

Evangelium Aeternum of the Holy Ghost, contained in the works of Joachim; that two new orders of "spiritual men" (the friars, said Gerard modestly) had arrived to conquer Antichrist; and that the secular clergy would lose its

purpose in the new era, giving way to the contemplative life of the new orders. 11

11 See the account of Gerard in Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle

Ages: A Study inJoachism (Oxford, 1969), pp. 59-70. Gerard's "Gospel," which was long thought to have been lost, probably consisted of his own Liber Introductorius prefaced to the three major works of Joachim, Liber Concordia, Expositio in Apocalypsim, and the Psalterium Decem Chordarum. A few years ago a manuscript was found which may contain portions of the lost Liber Introductorius: see B. T6pfer, "Eine Handschrift des Evangelium Aeternum des Gerardino von Borgo San Donnino," Zeitschriftfiir Geschichtswissenschaft 8(1960), 156-163. For the minutes of the ecclesiastical commission investigating the affair of the Eternal Evangel, see Heinrich Denifle, "Das

Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni," Archiv fur Litteratur- und Kirchenge- schichte des Mittelalters 1(1885), 49-142. Otherwise the Liber Introductorius is known to us only from the refutation of its doctrines by the faculty at the University at Paris: see the Chartularium, 1, No. 243, pp. 272-6.

292 Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English Literature

As the spokesman for the secular clergy, who already hated the friars for different reasons and who were incensed at Gerard's temerity, William of St. Amour was not to be outdone. He replies, eye for eye, apocalypse for apocalypse, in his major eschatological work, the De periculis.l2 For our purposes, the form his response takes is of greater interest than its importance in the course of the pamphlet war. He does not attack Gerard's thesis of the exalted place of the mendicant orders; he does not defend the present or future role of the secular clergy; he does not attack Gerard as a friar; in fact, he shows no awareness at all of any ecclesiological or social or political implications in Gerard's work. He approaches his historical subject by way of a biblical analogue and within the context of an urgent eschatological vision. Copied from Daniel 5, the vision is of Babylon and Belshazzar's feast, except that the new Babylon is the church, that the now-terrified revelers are the princes of the church seated at the table of Scripture, and that William himself now stands in the place of the old prophet Daniel, interpreting for the princes of Babylon the mysterious handwriting - "Mane, Thecel, Phares" - on the wall. That handwriting, says William, is the cursed book itself, the Evangelium Aeternum, which has appeared to the church like the handwriting in Babylon, as a token or signum of the wrath to come. The book bears a prophetic meaning similar to that given "Mane, Thecel, Phares" in Daniel 5.26-28. Mane is interpreted, "Numeravit Deus regnum tuum, et complevit illud," and similarly the Evangelium Aeternum asserts that the reign of the Church according to the Gospel of Christ is numbered, to be replaced 1260 years from the Incarnation by a new gospel and a new law, the lex Spiritus Sancti. Thecel signifies "Appensus es in statera et inventus es minus habens," and correspondingly, in the odious book, the Gospel of Christ is compared to the Eternal Gospel, and found to have less perfection and dignity than the Evangelium Aeternum, which will be "spirituale," written by spiritual men, in contrast to the "Christi evangelium, litterale et infirmum," written by men partly "spirituales" but partly "animales."'3 Phares is to be interpreted, "Divisum est regnum tuum, et datum est Medis et Persis"; similarly in Gerard's work it is found written that after the predicted time the regnum ecclesiae will be divided from those who hold to the Evangelium Christi and given to those who receive the new Testament, the Evangelium Aeternum.

The most striking aspect of William's treatment of the affair of the Eternal Evangel is the absence of almost all reference to time, place, and context. He

12 Chap. viii, in Fasciculum rerum, 2: 27-8, and Opera omnia, pp. 38-9. See a virtually identical

treatment of the Eternal Evangel in the De antichristo thought to be by William's disciple Nicholas of Lisieux, in Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum . . . amplissima collectio, ed. Edmond Martene and U. Durand (Paris, 1724-33), Vol. 9, col. 1323 ff. On the authorship of the De antichristo, see M. M. Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour, pp. 330-1.

13 See the De antichristo, col. 1323, where the allusion is to the distinction made by Joachim between men "animales" in the present and the contemplative "spirituales" who in the third age would receive the Eternal Gospel. See also Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp. 135-44.


strips the event of all its contemporaneity, and increases its symbolic value by forcing it into a preconceived eschatological framework. It seems to take

place not in 1254 but in the novissimis temporibus; not in Paris but within Ecclesia; at the hands not of Friar Gerard, but of an unnamed minister of Antichrist; with implications not for the secular-mendicant controversy but for the end of the world. It is clear that his strategy is to identify the friars not as illegitimate competitors with the secular clergy for privileges, but as the precursors of Antichrist, whom much of Europe expected to appear in 1260- ironically, because of the Joachistic prophets like Gerard himself. Such a strategy takes polemics out of the world of the everyday and into the realm of apocalypse. It focuses attention not on the history of William's own time but on the Bible, and helps to create a reasonably coherent system of biblical exegesis that will be turned against the friars for years to come.

III

The exegesis of William of St. Amour focuses on three biblical analogues for the friars, which, not coincidentally, become those most frequently en- countered in the antifraternal tradition: the Pharisees, the pseudoapostoli of St. Paul's time, and the eschatological antichristi predicted for the Last Days. These three biblical types are for William virtually identical except that they occur in three different phases of Salvation History, the times of the Old Law, New Law, and Apocalypse.14 And William links them further by show-

ing that they are theologically antithetical to an all-embracing antitype, that of the Apostles, an antitype brilliantly suited to the friars since from their

founding they claimed to be imitators of the original Apostles. The genesis and evolution of this exegetical system can be documented

with more precision than is usual with most conventions. As we have seen, from the point of view of William and his fellow seculars, the threat posed by the friars is not simply a political and economic one. It is theological and

eschatological and its significance can only be shown by a careful exegesis of what Scripture has to say (or prophesy) about friar-like figures in Salvation

History. How are these figures to be identified? William's criteria are fairly loose. When a biblical figure resembles the friars in only a few details, those details nevertheless suffice to establish that it is a fraternal type, and hence to establish the general applicability to the friars of all biblical comment about it. Thus, the evolution of William's types seems to involve two things: crystallization, around a few topically relevant biblical verses or details; and generalization, an expansion of focus beyond the topical details to other biblical details about the type which may or may not have any precise topical bearing on the friars. One of the most interesting results of this process of generalization is that William foists upon the friars characteristics and vices of the biblical type rather than the other way around. What begins by being de-

14 These three types ana times often seem interchangeable for William; see Fasciculum rerum, 2:37, 45, 52; Opera omnia, pp. -12-13, 62, 400, 504. Cf. De antichristo, cols. 1294, 1352-3, 1364.


fined by the friars comes to be a criterion by which the friars themselves are defined. This phenomenon is characteristic not only of William's own exegesis, but of the antifraternal tradition as a whole. Charges which have their basis in thirteenth-century politics continue to appear centuries later, in spite of changed political environments, primarily because they have become associated with unchanging (by now conventional) biblical types for the friars.

The most prominent of William's antifraternal types are the Pharisees, to whom he devoted a widely published sermon, De pharisaeo et publicano, delivered in August of 1256.15 The sermon is strictly exegetical, but at the outset, William is anxious to make clear by allusion that he is also speaking of the friars. He does so in a general way by describing the Pharisees as a

religious order "sicut apud nos sunt regulares" and by stating more baldly the typological thesis that "per praedictum Pharisaeum . . . signantur hypocritae nostri temporis."l6 But more specifically, William provides a narrow but firm topical foundation for the rest of his discussion by linking the Pharisees to one of the most violently controversial of the friars' claims at the Univer- sity of Paris. The allusion rests upon a single biblical text, Matthew 23, where Christ warns his disciples of the eightfold Vae to descend upon the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees, who, he says,

amant ... vocari ad hominibus rabbi. Vos autem nolite vocari rabbi: unus enim est magister vester; omnes autem vos fratres estis .... Nec vocemini magistri. (Matt. 23.7-10)

Passing over the obvious "fratres," the key to William's sense of these verses' importance is the word "Rabbi," which means "magister" (as indicated in John 1.38, "Rabbi, quod dicitur interpretatum, magister"). Magister also happens to be the academic title conferred on those scholars at the Univer- sity of Paris who were admitted by the regent masters and by license of the chancellor to teach as a member of one of the four faculties (Arts, Theology, Medicine, Canon Law).l7 The Dominicans with two and the Franciscans with one had held professorial chairs (cathedrae magisteriales) in the faculty of

15 Printed in Fasciculum rerum, 2:43-7 and Opera omnia, pp. 7-16. Traces of its influence appear in Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois (Paris, 1914-1924), vol. 3, lines 11605-36 and Rutebeuf's "Du Pharisien ou C'est d'Hypocrisie" and "Dit des regles" in Edmond Faral and Julia Bastin, Oeuvres completes de Rutebeuf (Paris, 1959-60); see also Ari6 Serper, "L'influence de Guillaume de Saint-Amour sur Rutebeuf," Romance Philology 17 (1963/1964), 391-402. For the fraternal orders in Old French vernacular generally, see Tiberius Denkinger, "Die Bettelorden in der franzosischen didaktischen Literatur des 13. Jahrhunderts, besonders bei Rutebeuf und im Roman de la Rose," Franziskanische Studien 2 (1915), 63-109, 286-313; "Die Bettelorden im sogenannten Testament und Codicille de Jehan de Meun," Franziskanische Studien 3 (1916), 339-53; "Die Bettelorden in Dit und Fabel," Franziskanische Studien 6 (1919), 273-94.

16Fasciculum rerum, 2:44, and Opera omnia, p. 9. 17 On the magisterial chair and other academic ranks at the University of Paris, see Hastings

Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, rev. edn. by F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1936), 269-490 passim. See also Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Univer- sities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1968).

Antifrateral Tradition in Middle English Literature 295

Theology since about 1230 and without much friction. But in 1250, when the friars seemed, with the help of Innocent IV, to be trying to increase the number of fraternal chairs, a bitter dispute broke out with the secular Masters (led by William of St. Amour). The seculars not only felt threatened by the friars' superior teaching (from men like Alexander of Hales, Albertus

Magnus, Aquinas, Bonaventura) but now faced the prospect of having the friars control the consortium magistrorum, which was for all intents and purposes the governing body of the University. For six years the dispute raged with drastic measures taken by both sides, including the seculars' attempts to

deprive the fraternal orders of one magisterial chair in 1251-1252 and their expulsion of the friars in 1253 from the consortium magistrorum. Papal inter- vention and royal favor eventually decided the matter in favor of the mendicants, but the wounds by 1256 were deep.18

It is clearly to this dispute that William of St. Amour alludes when he

emphasizes the Pharisees' disobedience of the evangelical precept "ne vocemini magistri." It is also quite clear that everyone took the biblical analogy seriously. The University masters, in an official declaration of 1254, cite the same biblical verse (Matt. 23.9) against the friars.19 Thomas of York, a Franciscan, took the trouble to reply to it in his Manus quae contra Omnipoten- tem tenditur,20 and we find William returning to refute Thomas in the Collec- tiones catholicae et canonicae Scripturae. Labeling his opponent "Cathedrae

Magistralis Amator," William declares that Christ himself prohibited the desire for magisterium, especially among viri regulares like the Pharisees.21

In the De pharisaeo the magisterium charge is almost the only one with a clear foundation in University politics. Most of the other evils which William sees in the Pharisees are so general as to bear only the most vague applica- tion to the friars, and they seem to enter into the discussion largely because of their close proximity to the magisterium charge in biblical verses. The key text which demonstrates this associational tendency is Matthew 23.6-7, whose four clauses immediately precede the rabbi/magister passage discussed above:

Amant (Pharisaei) autem primos recubitus in coenis, et primas cathedras in synagogis, et salutationes in foro, et vocari ab hominibus Rabbi.

These four clauses our expositor takes to be the four chief signa infallibilia by which the hypocritical Pharisees (friars) may be recognized in spite of their simulated piety.22 The fourth ("amant vocari ab hominibus Rabbi") we rec-

ognize as the familiar charge that the friars desired to become Masters (Rabbi

18 On this dispute see further Rashdall, Universities, 1:370-98; Douie, The Conflict Between the Seculars and the Mendicants; Leff, Paris and Oxford, pp. 34-47; and especially Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour (see n. 1 above).

19 Denifle, Chartularium Univ. Par., 1, No. 230. 20 Edited by M. Bierbaum, Bettelorden und Weltgeistlichkeit an der Universitat Paris. Texte und

Untersuchungen, Franziskanische Studien, Beiheft 2 (Munster-in-W., 1920), 36-168. 21 Opera omnia, p. 400. 22 Fully half of the De pharisaeo is devoted to their explication; Fasciculum rerum, 2:44-6, and

Opera omnia, pp. 9-13.


meaning magister), but the other three clauses seem of dubious relevance to the friars at Paris. "They love the first places at dinners," says William of the first sign, inasmuch as the "Pharisees" are always running to the dinners of

kings and princes and prelates, and sitting at the head of the table so that

they might be honored and delicately fed - especially since they live not by their own labor but off the goods of others. The second sign for recognizing the hypocrites is that they love "primas cathedras in synagogis," that is, the

pulpit (cathedram praedicantis) and they illegitimately force their way into

preaching to people over whom they have no authority. If William's in-

terpretation of primas cathedras seems to strain, it is partly because he has abandoned the Glossa ordinaria to stretch the text a bit, as he does with the third signum infallibilium, that the Pharisees "amant salutationes in foro." The usual interpretation offorum is marketplace, but William abandons that for a more topically useful reading: "Forum, ut dicit Isidorus, est exercendarum litium locus." William's Pharisees are found not in the marketplace, but in

theforum of the law court, and more specifically in the consistory courts of the thirteenth century, to which they go "ut eis litigantes reverentiam judicialem exhibeant, et salutent eos capite inclinato." In all of these three signa there seems to be nothing compelling in the analogy of Pharisees to friars, at least to the extent that there is in the fourth, with its allusion to the desire to be called Rabbi (magister). The fourth sign has a clear foundation in

reality, but the others border on fiction. Their reason for being is not primarily the friars' activities but the purely accidental fact that a biblical verse describing the Pharisees' desire to be called magistri also contains three other clauses. If they are not fictional altogether, at least they are formulated with an eye primarily to biblical reality, not the political realities of thirteenth- century Paris.

If generalization through association is typical of William's biblically derived charges against the friars, it is a law of evolution in the subsequent antifraternal tradition. The association of the Pharisees with the friars becomes one of the most conventional of antifraternal conventions, especially in England. And the proof of William's influence lies in the almost universal restriction of that association - out of all the possible references to the Pharisees - to Matthew 23, Christ's powerful speech on the eightfold woes to descend on the "Scribae, Pharisaei, hypocritaei" and the text to which fully half of William's De pharisaeo is devoted. It is solely with the exegesis of this text that Wyclif deals in his antifraternal treatise called Vae Octuplex, whose title alludes to the eightfold Vae that Christ warns of.23 The long condemnation of the friars by Piers in Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is also based on Matthew 23,24 as is the following passage from Chaucer's translation of the Romaunt of the Rose, from a speech by Fals-Semblant concerning the friars:

23 Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1869-71), 2:379. 24 Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS O.S. 30 (London, 1867), 11. 487-502,

546-84.


"'Uppon the chaire of Moyses . . . Sitte Scribes and Pharisen;' That is to seyn, the cursid men Whiche that we ypocritis calle. 'Doth that they preche, I rede you alle, But doth not as they don a del; That ben not wery to seye wel, But to do wel no will have they. And they wolde bynde on folk alwey, That ben to be begiled able, Burdons that ben importable; On folkes shuldris thinges they couchen, That they nyl with her fyngris touchen... Her bordurs larger maken they, And make her hemmes wide alwey, And loven setes at the table, The firste and most honourable; And for to han the first chaieris In synagogis, to hem full deere is; And willen that folk hem loute and grete, Whanne that they passen thurgh the strete, And wolen be cleped "maister" also. But they ne shulde not willen so; The gospel is ther-ageyns, I gesse, That shewith wel her wikkidnesse."25

Fals-Semblant's speech sounds like a catalogue of typical realistic charges against the friars: religious hypocrisy; fullness of speech but lack of action; the imposition of undue burdens on those who support them; excesses of

clothing; gluttony; pride in their position in the church; desire to be saluted

by the laity; excessive learning; disobeying evangelical precepts. But in fact, Fals-Semblant's diatribe is little more than a loose translation of Matthew 23.2-7. It is not hard to see how the more general charges, especially the unverifiable ones, like gluttony, would be sustained and supported at least

partly on the strength of the corresponding charge ("loven setes at the table, / The first and most honourable") against their biblical counterparts.

In Fals-Semblant's speech appears again William of St. Amour's charge that the friars inordinately desired the academic title of Master. Another echo of it, with a clear allusion to Matthew 23.7, appears in Chaucer's Summoner's Tale, when Friar John objects to being called "maister":

"No maister, sire," quod he, "but servitour, Thogh I have had in scole that honour. God liketh nat that 'Raby' men us calle, Neither in market ne in youre large halle."26

The political context of William's charge has here entirely disappeared; what

25 Romaunt of the Rose, 11. 6889-922, in F. N. Robinson, ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957).

26 Summoner's Tale, III (D) 2185-8, in Robinson, ed. Works.


remains is not its political but its biblical basis. In the absence of a university dispute in England that compares with the Parisian quarrel of the 1250s, the conclusion suggests itself strongly that the charge has survived in large part because it became associated with a potent biblical image. It is a striking fact that almost every occurrence of the magisterium charge in England is accom-

panied by an allusion to the Pharisees and Matthew 23, not only in polemical works like Fitzralph's Defensio Curatorum or Wyclif's Tractatus de pseudo-freris, but also in poetic works like Gower's Mirour de l'omme and his Vox Clamantis, in Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, in Jack Upland, in Friar Daw's Reply, and in

Upland's Rejoinder, which may serve as example for all:

pou approuest 3our capped maisters with a glasen glose, Which galpen after grace, bi symonye 3our sister, And after sitten on hie dece & glosen lordes & ladies . . . For of ~es & suche it ben pat Crist spekiP in his gospel. Amant enim primos recubitus in cenis, et primas Cathedras in synagogis, et vocari ab hominibus Rabbi.27

Another traditional charge which crystallized around verses from Matthew 23 involves the Pharisees' phylacteries. William of St. Amour cites Matthew 23.5 as evidence that the Pharisees "in habitu" feigned sanctity: "Omnia vero opera sua faciunt ut videantur ab hominibus; dilatant enim phylacteria sua, et magnificant fimbrias." Phylacteria, William explains, are small scrolls or pieces of parchment (membranulas) on which the Decalogue was written, and which Pharisees wore on their foreheads, as if always meditating on the Law, and on their wrists, as if always working the Law.28 William is not explicit here, but evidently we are to compare only generally this external show of piety to the friars' "in habitu." Next, fimbriae are the tassels (symbolic of holiness) which hang from the corners of the Pharisees' four-cornered cloak (quadrata pallia). With those they try to feign austerity of life, because on the tassels they tie sharp thorns, with which, whether they walk or sit, they are pierced as if to be reminded forcibly of and drawn back to the service of

27 Upland's Rejoinder, 11. 357-63, in P. L. Heyworth, ed., Jack Upland, Friar Daw's Reply, and

Upland's Rejoinder (Oxford, 1968); Fitzralph, in John Trevisa, tr., Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, Richard Fitzralph's Sermon: 'Defensio Curatorum,' and Methodius: 'The Bygynning of the World and the Ende of Worldes', ed. A. J. Perry, EETS O.S. 167 (London, 1925), p. 63; John Wyclif, Tractatus de pseudo-freris in F. D. Matthew, ed., The Englsh Works Hitherto Unprinted, EETS O.S. 74 (London, 1880), p. 306; John Gower, Mirour de l'omme in Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1899-1902), 1, lines 21493-8; Gower, Vox clamantis, ed. in Macaulay, vol. 4, c. 18, 11. 813-16 and tr. by Eric Stockton, The Major Latin Works of John Gower (Seattle, 1962), p. 185; Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 11. 574-81; Jack Upland, 11. 295-7 and Friar Daw's Reply, 11. 754-63, both ed. by Heyworth, Jack Upland.

28 William's explanation of the phylacteries is based on Deut. 6.4-8: "The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words.... Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead." See also Exod. 13.9, 16; Deut. 11.18. The Jews later understood this figurative command literally and tied this "first and greatest commandment" (Matt. 22.37) to their wrists and foreheads.


God. "Ex quo apparet," says William, departing from his gloss, "quod am- bulabant discalceati: aliter enim ambulando, non pungerentur a spinis."29 This unnecessary and elsewhere unattested conclusion, that the Pharisees went barefoot, seems to be introduced for the sole purpose of identifying them with the friars, at least the Franciscans, whose custom it was to go unshod.

William's image of Pharisaic phylacteries and fimbriae remains with the antifraternal tradition for 200 years, but often without a real understanding of their true nature and function. In Chaucer's translation of the Romaunt of the Rose, phylacteries become borders or hems, in the passage which renders Matthew 23.5: "Her bordurs larger maken they / And make her hemmes wide alwey" (6911-12). Such a mistranslation, or the antifraternal convention growing out of it, may indeed be behind the expanded borders and wide hems of Friar Huberd's cloak in Chaucer's General Prologue: "Of double worstede was his semycope, / That rounded as a belle out of the presse" (262-3). The mistranslation in another form comes up in Pierce the

Ploughman's Crede:

Loke nowe, leue man . beP nou3t pise [the friars] i-lyke Fully to pe Farisens . in fele of pise poyntes? . .. And in worchipe of le werlde . her wynnynge lei holden; pei schapen her chapolories . & strecchep hem brode, And launcep hei3e her hemmes . wil babelyng in stretes.

(546-51)

An awareness of the biblical origin of these passages ought to make us more cautious in accepting as historically true the more general antifraternal charges of excesses in clothing. In the following passage from Wyclif's Tractatus de pseudo-freris, the clear biblical influence would be indiscernable but for one relative caluse: "& bus seyen summe bat these freris habitis to which freris ben pus oblishid, bat ben pus large & variaunt as weren habitis of pharisees, serven pe fend to putte in lesyngus & to destrie pore mennus

goodis."30 Here the traditional charge of large habits is maintained but traces of its origin in Matthew 23.5 have all but disappeared except for the casual mention of the Pharisees. This is not to say that all similar charges concern-

ing clothing are biblically derived nor that they have no basis in historical

reality, but a judicious skepticism does seem in order. Another antifraternal charge of particular notoriety in fourteenth-century

England was that the friars "stole" children, that is, persuaded them or coerced them to enter the order and take vows at an early age.31 Richard

29 De pharisaeo in Fasciculum rerum, 2:43, and Opera omnia, p. 8. 30 Tractatus, pp. 301-2. For a comparison of the knots in the friars' girdles to the Pharisees'

phylacteries, see Wyclif's Opera minora, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1913), pp. 320-1. Boccaccio mentions the friars' Pharisaic "fimbrie" (which he takes to be wide hems in their garments), II Decameron ed. C. S. Singleton, vol. I (Bari, 1955), Seventh Story, Third Day, p. 230, 1. 12.

31 There is some evidence that appears to support the charge, in two statutes passed to


Fitzralph waxes particularly wroth at this alleged practice in the Defensio Curatorum, especially because, once professed, the young boys were not allowed to leave the orders except under penalty of imprisonment.32 Like the other charges we have been examining, the charge of child-stealing is conventional and associated with a verse from Matthew 23, here verse 15, the third of the eight Vae announced to the Pharisees: "Vae vobis scribae et Pharisaei hypocritae, quia circuitis mare et aridam, ut faciatis unum pro- selytum, et cum fuerit factus, facitis eum filium gehennae duplo quam vos!" It should be no surprise that this charge too, along with its biblical text,

originates with William of St. Amour:

Adeo autem seducunt corda simplicium, qui faciunt eos ingredi sectam suam, quam religionem appellant: et qui pejus in simplicitate vivebant, post suum ingres- sum fiunt astuti, hypocritae et pseudo, penetrantes domos una cum aliis, et quan- doque fiunt illis pejores. Unde Matt. 22 [sic for 23.15], "Vae vobis scribae et pharisaei, hypocritae, qui circuitis, etc."33

Wyclif puts it this way in the Vae octuplex:

le lridde tyme seip Crist unto pes fals folk, Woo worpe 30u, scribis and Fariseis, ypocritis, p]at gone aboute bole watir and londe to make a child of your ordre, and whanne he is maad, 3e maken him a child of helle double more pan 30u. 1es wordis tellen opinly of making of freris, hou ei comen peefly, bope bi water and bi lond, to robben men of her children pat ben betere pan oxen.... And it falliP ofte tymes, as Crist seiP here, pat summe children pus maad freris ben worse pan her bewperis.34

Matthew 23.15 is also cited in Upland's Rejoinder in support of the charge of

child-stealing.35 All of the twenty-first chapter of the fourth book of Gower's Vox Clamantis is devoted to the friars' attempts to deceive youth and entice them into the orders, thus breeding generations of deception. He concludes: "God Himself said, 'Woe unto you who compass land and sea to make one

proselyte for yourself.' That was said to the Pharisees, and I now can say those words to the friars with new justice."36

Many other antifraternal charges become linked with passages from Matthew 23, including the abuse of burial privileges (Matt. 23.29, 31)37 and

prevent the practice, one at Oxford in 1358 and the other by Parliament in 1402. The first alleges in its preamble that people fear to send their sons to the University lest they should be coerced into entering one of the fraternal orders. The other establishes that no youth could take orders until after his fourteenth year, without the consent of his parents or guardians. See the Annales of Richard II and Henry IV in H. T. Riley, ed., Chronica et annales, Rolls Series, No. 28, vol. 3 (London, 1866), 349; Henry Anstey, ed., Munimenta academica: or Documents Illustrative of Academical Life and Studies at Oxford, Rolls Series, No. 50, vol. 1 (London, 1868), 204-5.

32Defensio curatorum, tr. Trevisa, pp. 56-8. 33 De periculis, chap. XIV in Fasciculum rerum, 2:35, and Opera omnia, p. 57. 34 Vae octuplex, pp. 380-1. 35 Upland's Rejoinder, 11. 257-65. 36 Vox clamantis, Bk. 4, c. 21, tr. Stockton, p. 189; Macaulay's edn., 11. 1011-14. 37 See Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 11. 493-502.


seduction of widows (Matt. 23.14).38 It can hardly be an accident that so

many prominent charges are connected not just with the biblical Pharisees, but with a single biblical chapter concerning the Pharisees. If my theory is correct, the connections have less to do with fourteenth-century English friars than with the political environment of the 1250s, and most likely originate with a verbal coincidence that proved symbolically significant: that the word magister, which delineated an academic post at Paris also happened to be the word the Vulgate used to translate "Rabbi" in Matthew 23.

IV

The second and third great biblical types for the friars can be treated

together since both are identified by William of St. Amour as pseudoapostoli. By pseudoapostoli he means two distinct groups of biblical figures, who often seem to be fused (or confused) in the minds of antifraternal writers: first, the shadowy figures pretending to be Apostles at the time of the Apostles themselves; and second the eschatological figures (sometimes called pseudoprophetae, pseudochristi, or antichristi) who will appear at the end of time. William links these two temporally distinct groups because, under a cloak of

hypocrisy, they both pretend to be true Apostles, or (what is the same thing) inheritors of apostolic functions. The pseudoapostoli, like the Pharisees, have their origin as antifraternal types in political controversy. But while the Pharisaic analogy is grounded in a fairly narrow political dispute - the

quarrel over the fraternal magistri - the analogy with the pseudoapostoli grows out of the friars' controversial claim to be reviving the way of life of the original apostles.

The Franciscans in particular associated themselves with the biblical Apos- tles. Early biographers report that the order was founded when St. Francis, during a "missam de Apostolis" at the church of the Portiuncula, heard read a passage from Christ's instructions to the Apostles before sending them out to preach the Gospel (primarily Luke 10.1-12; cf. Matt. 10.5-15; Mark 6.7-13).39 St. Francis made these verses into guiding principles for the

young order, eventually incorporating many of them into the Rule. He sent the brethren forth two by two, as Christ had sent the Apostles (Luke 10.1); they were to take nothing with them on their journey, neither gold nor silver nor money in their belts, neither bag nor wallet, nor bread, nor sandals, nor

38 See Gower, Mirour de l'omme, 11. 21373-84; Wyclif, Vae octuplex, p. 380. For other major instances of the connection between friars and Pharisees, see Wyclif's treatise, "Of the Leaven of the Pharisees" in F. D. Matthew, ed., The English Works, EETS O.S. No. 74, pp. 1-27; "De

supersticione phariseorum," ed. A. G. Rigg, "Two Latin Poems Against the Friars," Mediaeval Studies 30 (1968), 109--18.

39 Bonaventura, Legendae duae de vita S. Francisci Seraphici (Quaracchi, 1923), pp. 21-2 (cap. 3, par. 1-2). See also Legernda S. Francisci Ass. tribus ipsius sociis hucusque adscripta, ed. P. G. Abate, Miscellanea Francescana 39 (1939), 398-400 (cap. 8, pars. 26-9); also Thomas of Celano, Vita Prima, ed. M. Bihl in Analecta Franciscana 10 (1941), cap. 9, par. 22.


two tunics, nor staff (Luke 10.4; cf. Matt. 10.9-10, Luke 9.3); and so forth.40 Likewise the Dominicans, the Ordo Praedicatorum, conceived of themselves as evangelical preachers, following in the footsteps of the Apostles.41

The friars' apostolic pretensions, though originally theological in nature, had far-reaching political consequences which St. Francis no doubt had never conceived of, because the ecclesiastical functions of the priesthood -

including preaching, hearing of confessions, and burial (which were the most lucrative and hence most controversial functions) - were thought to be apostolically derived. The secular clergy, on the basis of the same biblical passage that inspired St. Francis (Luke 10 with its Gloss) asserted that the apostolic functions were theirs alone since they and no others were the successors of the seventy-two Apostles appointed by Christ in Luke 10 and their bishops the successors of the Twelve. Thus William of St. Amour argues in the De periculis:

Ab Ecclesia vero eliguntur Episcopi, qui Apostolis successerunt: et parochiales, qui discipulis septuaginta duobus successerunt: et eorum loca tenent Septuagintaduo discipuli in novo Testamento. Unde Lucae 10. in principio dicit Gloss. Sicut in duodecim Apostolis est forma Episcoporum: sic in Septuaginta duobus discipulis forma est Presbyterorum secundi ordinis, nec plures sunt in Ecclesia gradus ad regendum Ecclesiam constituti.42

The last clause is significant, for it represents the belief of the traditional hierarchy of the church and the parish clergy as well, that there could be no other successors to the Twelve and the Seventy-Two. The regular orders, monastic, canonical, or mendicant, were believed to be inferior orders, for on them as orders should not devolve the apostolic functions of preaching, confession, the administration of sacraments, and the salvation of souls (although such functions were allowed to any individual member of such orders who happened to become a priest). The root argument from which almost every antifraternal tract stems in the thirteenth century is that the friars neither imitate nor inherit the functions of the first Apostles. This is the central issue of the Parisian debate, with William, Gerard of Abbeville,

40 For Luke 10 in the First Rule see Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, 3rd ed. (Quarac- chi, 1949), p. 29 (cap. 3), p. 42 (cap. 14). For other prominent associations of the Franciscans with the Apostles, see Regulae I and II passim; Thomas of Celano, Vita Prima, 2.1.88-9; Thomas of Celano, Tractatus de miraculis, ed. M. Bihl in Analecta Franciscana 10 (1941), cap. 1; P. Benevenuto Bughetti, I Fioretti di San Francesco (Florence, 1926), cap. 13; Legenda . . . tribus sociis, cap. 17, par. 68 and cap. 12, par. 46 in Miscellanea Francescana 39 (1939), 430 and 413. St. Francis's apostolic verses from Luke 10 become a standard text in the antifraternal tradition; see

Fitzralph, Defensio curatorum, pp. 62, 86, 90; William of St. Amour, Fasciculum rerum, 2:39 and

Opera omnia, p. 66; Wyclif, Tractatus de pseudofreris, p. 317, De diablo et membris eius in Rudolf

Buddensieg, ed., Polemical Works in Latin (London, 1883), 1:369-71, and "Sermon cciii" in Thomas Arnold, ed., Select English Works (Oxford, 1869-71), 2:165-6.

41 See Marie Humbert Vicaire, O.P., The Apostolic Life, tr. W. E. DeNaple (Chicago, 1966), pp. 88-121.

42 Fasciculum rerum, 2:21 and Opera omnia, p. 24.


and Nicholas of Lisieux the chief advocates against the fraternal apostolate,43 and with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Thomas of York, and John Pecham at various times arguing for the friars.44 A century later, across the channel in England, a new phase of the debate had been entered, with new

participants - Fitzralph, Kilwyngton, Uhtred de Boldon, Wyclif45 - but the theoretical issue remained the same: did the friars have a valid claim to the vita apostolica? This is the unifying thread in practically all the fraternal controversies of the fourteenth century.

It is not a large step from the criticism of the friars as inaccurate imitators of the first Apostles to the identification of them with the pseudoapostoli of the New Testament, especially if biblical exegesis is one's chief polemical weapon. The connection in fact involves the same process of generalization that manifests itself in the Pharisaic type, the expansion of the analogy from a particular, political base to a general, biblical one. And again biblical

reality - in this case the activities of the pseudoapostoli - contributes to, or even controls, the charges brought to bear on the friars.

43 Gerard of Abbeville, Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae, ed. Sophronius Clasen, O.F.M., in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 31 (1938), 276-329, and 32 (1939), 89-200; Nicholas of Lisieux, Contra Peckham et Thomam and Liber de ordine praeceptorum ad consilia, both in Bierbaum, ed. Bettelorden (see n. 20), and De antichristo in Veterum scriptorum, ed. Martene and Durand (see n. 12).

44 Thomas Aquinas, Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem in Opera omnia (Paris, 1871-80), ed. S. E. Frette, 29:1-116; Bonaventura, Quaestio de evangelica paupertate and Apologia pauperum, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi, 1882-1902), 5:124-65, and 8:233-330; Thomas of York, Manus quae contra omnipotentem tenditur in Bierbaum, ed., Bettelorden, pp. 36-16,8; John Pecham, Tractatus tres de paupertate, ed. C. L. Kingsford, A. G. Little, F. Tocco, British Society of Franciscan Studies 2 (Aberdeen, 1910).

45 In addition to Fitzralph's Defensio Curatorum, see also his De pauperie Salvatoris, ed. in part by R. L. Poole in John Wyclif, De Dominio Divino (London, 1890). His 4 London sermons, printed only in Summa Domini Armacani in quaestionibus Armenorum . . . cum aliquibus sermonibus (Paris, 1512), are also extant in BM MS Landsdowne 393 and Bodl. MS 144. Uhtred de Boldon, Contra querelas fratrum, ed. Mildred E. Marcett, Uhtred de Boldon, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman (New York: privately published, 1938); Contrafratrum mendicitatem, Paris, BN MS Lat. 3183, fol. 160 ff.; and finally, De substantialibus regulae monachalis and De perfectione vivendi in religione, both in C.C.C.C. MS 103, fols. 291-331. For Thomas Wylton, see his De validis mendicantibus, Bodl. MS 52, fols. 140-6, Bodl. MS 158, fols. 147-53. Richard Kilwyngton, deacon of St. Paul's and friend of Fitzralph, is reputed to have played an active part in the English controversies. John Pits, Relationum historicarum de rebus anglicis (Paris, 1619), p. 490, reports that he authored several antifraternal tracts, all now lost: Pro Armachano contra fratres; Contra Rogerum Conwaium; Contra mendicitatem otiosam. The first and last of these are also attributed to Kilwyngton by Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (London, 1748), p. 461. For English defenses of the friars see G. Meersseman, ed. "La Defense des ordres mendiants contre Richard Fitz Ralph, par Barthelemy de Bolsenheim, O.P. (1357)," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 5 (1935), 124-73; Arnold Williams, ed., "Protectorium pauperis, a Defense of the Begging Friars by Richard of Maidstone, O. Carm. (d. 1396)," Carmelus 5 (1958), 132-80; Roger Conway, Defensio Religionis Mendicantium, in Melchior Goldast, Monarchiae S. Romani Imperii (Hanover, 1611-13), 2:1410- 1344 (sic: 1333 follows 1428); Katherine Walsh, The De Vita Evangelica of Geoffrey Hardeby, O.E.S.A. (1320-c. 1385): A Study in the Mendicant Controversies of the Fourteenth Century, Bibliotheca

Augustiniana, Nova Series, Sectio Historica, 4 (Rome, 1972); for other treatises see the bibliog- raphy in the article by Congar cited in n. 1 above.


One of the canonical texts of the pseudoapostoli convention is the lengthy fourteenth chapter of William's De periculis, devoted in its entirety to identifying the friars as pseudoapostoli by forty scriptural. "signs" which the Bible says will appear in the last days:

seductores praedicti dicturi sunt se esse Apostolos, sive a Deo missos ad praedican- dum et absolvendum animas per ministerium suum: juxta illud Apostoli, 2 Cor. 11:13, "nam hujusmodi Apostoli sunt operarii subdoli, sunt transfigurantes se in apostolos Christi:" ideo ostendemus quaedam signa infallibilia, quaedam vero probabilia, per quae discerni possunt apostoli pseudo, a veris apostolis Christi.46

Not only the pseudoapostolic analogy, but William's forty signs themselves were known in England--often quite well. One writer of the 1350s was

sufficiently impressed to adopt them in their entirety as his own. The work is an unpublished, manuscript in the British Museum's Royal Collection, a massive moral encyclopedia called unpretentiously "Omnebonum," written by a monk identified only as Jacobus, who includes (verbatim and without credit) in his article on "Apostoli" William's forty signa infallibilia for identifying the pseudoapostoli.47

William's signs are based solely upon biblical texts, many of which become part of the standard repertory of antifraternal exegesis. The first sign, "quod veri Apostoli non penetrant domos, nec captivas ducunt mulierculas, peccatis oneratas," is based on 2 Timothy 3.6, from Paul's warning about the false teachers who will come "in novissimis diebus" ushering in the "tempora periculosa." It is from this passage that the De periculis novissimorum temporum takes its title. The fifteenth, nineteenth, twenty-fourth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-eighth signs all charge false Apostles with abuses of different sections of the famous passage which inspired St. Francis to found his order, Luke 10 (also Matt. 10), where Christ instructed the Apostles before sending them out to preach the Gospel. The thirty-third sign suggests that false apostles can not patiently endure having their probity tested, but will persecute those who question their veracity, just like "quidam pseudo in primitiva Ecclesia," i.e. those tested by the bishop of Ephesus in Apocalypse 2.2, "qui se dicunt apostolos esse, et non sunt." The ninth, twenty-seventh, and thirty-first signs all derive from 2 Thessalonians 3.6-12, and warn against false apostles who wish to live illegitimately from the Gospel - in the friars' case from begging and wandering about, eating at other mens' tables. Paul states clearly that the Apostles lived by manual labor while at Thessalonica, and the passage natur-

46 Fasciculim rerum, 2:35, and Opera omnia, p. 57. Note William's characteristic conflation of the pseudoapostoli described by Paul and those that will appear at the end of time.

47BM Royal MS 6 E VI, fols. 117r-122v, s.v. "Apostoli." A related series of 50 signs for identifying the friars as pseudoapostoli or pseudopraedicatores is given at the end of William's Collectiones catholicae et canonicae Scripturae . . ., in Opera omnia, pp. 487-90. These 50 signs also appear in MS Bodl. 151 (S.C. 1929), fol. 192v, a 14th-century English MS of the Collectiones which belonged to a prominent monk, later cardinal, Adam Easton of Norwich.


ally becomes a proof text against the friars' unconventional practice of evangelical mendicancy.

Of all these signs the most famous is the first. The penetrantes domos of 2 Timothy 3.6 are widely identified with the friars in fourteenth-century England.48 And the antifraternal charges the verse is associated with remain virtually unchanged from the time of William of St. Amour. This is one of the few biblical conventions recognized as such by modern scholars, but it has never been seen in its proper context, as part of a consistent pattern of analogy with the pseudoapostoli. These penetrantes domos William understands to be false apostles, precursors of Antichrist, who in the last days will come in great multitudes, and whose chief evil will lie in their abuse of the apostolic functions of the priesthood.49 They force entry (penetrant) to explore and probe not just the literal houses of men but the domus conscientiae. This spiritual house they will break and enter illegitimately by hearing confession, becoming spiritual counselors to the weak, probing souls for secrets, and seeking care of souls over whom they have no authority but that of Anti- christ. They will preach and interpret Scripture, even without apostolic authority, and confess without authority. They enter the domus conscientiae not by the door, for "ostium conscientiae est ille qui habet cura animarum," and in forcing entry they break the house itself. Their goal is to lead astray the "mulierculas oneratas peccatis, quae ducuntur variis desideriis" of 2 Tim. 3.6, that is, to spiritually seduce women and through them their men, as the devil seduced Eve and through her Adam. Ultimately their goal is to lead men into their power ("ad se ducent") and away from those having duly consti- tuted spiritual authority over them, the bishops and the parish clergy. Here is the topical base of William's fondness for the penetrantes domos passage - the old conflict between the friars and the secular clergy over apostolic rights and privileges. The friars forced entry into the realm of the clergy by papal favors and special privileges without being put under strict control of the bishops, and were therefore clearly false apostles, penetrantes domos.

Two other figures from 2 Timothy 3 become conventional images in later antifraternal literature: Iamnes and Mambres, "qui restiterunt Moysi" (verse 8). These two characters, elsewhere unnamed in the Bible were usually taken to be the magicians with whom Moses battled in prodigies at the palace of

48 See Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. W. W. Skeat (Oxford, 1886), 1, B, Passus 20, 1. 338; Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 11. 50-2; "The Layman's Complaint" in Robbins, ed., Historical Poems (see n. 3); Uhtred de Boldon, Contra querelas fratrum in Marcett, Uhtred de Boldon, p. 27; Wyclif, Sermones, ed. J. Loserth (London, 1887), 1:289-90, and Defundatione sectarum, in Polemical Works in Latin, ed. R. Buddensieg, 1 (London, 1883), 38-46; Richard Fitzralph's London sermon

against the friars, on the text, "Nemo vos seducat inanibus verbis" (Eph. 5), BM MS Lands- downe 393, fols. 125v-126r; Jacobus, Omne bonum, BM MS Royal 6 E VI, fol. 119r.

49 For exegesis of 2 Tim. 3, see De periculis, in Fasciculum rerum, 2:19-26, and Opera omnia, pp. 20-37; Sermo in die Philippi et Jacobi, in Fasciculum rerum, 2:48, 51, and Opera omnia, pp. 493, 499-500; for further discussion of the penetrantes domos see the De antichristo thought to be by Nicholas of Lisieux (see n. 12), cols. 1295-7, 1317, 1342, 1351.


Pharaoh before the plagues (Exod. 7.11-13). These sorcerers, says William, by their feigned wisdom and false miracles, kept Pharaoh and his people from assenting to Moses. Similarly in the last days, the penetrantes domos, for whom Iamnes and Mambres are an adumbration, will,seduce the princes and people of the Church and avert them from the counsels of the secular clergy, who, like Moses, are the true envoys of God.50

Many of William's forty signs for identifying false apostles (numbers 6, 11, 12, 13, 21, 34, 35, 37) charge them with abuses of one of the most controversial of the friars' privileges - the apostolic privilege of preaching. That the pope should grant to the friars the right to preach was galling to the secular clergy for many reasons: their preaching was often better because of their better training; they drew away from parish priests not only parishioners but also the moneys derived from legacies, offerings, and bequests; since their

charge came from the pope, they were outside the normal hierarchy which exercised control over preachers through the bishops; and theologically, they were not true inheritors of apostolic authority and hence ineligible for pastoral work.51 The outrage of the secular clergy explains why William points so consistently to the New Testament pseudoapostoli, who are danger- ous, says St. Paul, for a strikingly similar reason: their illegitimately au- thorized and doctrinally false preaching.

One of the chief charges against the friars' preaching was that they preach the gospel for gain. While there may indeed have been avaricious friars, the charge originates and persists because of its biblical connections with the pseudoapostoli. In 2 Cor. 11.7-15, Paul warns especially against false apostles who preach for gain, not gratis, and himself refuses any recompense for his ministry lest he give the pseudoapostoli the opportunity to say they follow his example. This passage from 2 Corinthians was one of William's favorites, and it is in fact the lead text for the pseudoapostoli chapter in the De Periculis.52 The charge was taken up by his disciples and expanded. The author of the De antichristo (probably Nicholas of Lisieux) brings to bear three other biblical passages that later become antifraternal conventions.

Erunt cupidi [2 Tim. 3.2], G1. pecuniae, unde praedicatores erunt quaestuarii, existimantes, ut idem Apostolus dicit 1 Tim. 6.5, quaestum esse pietatem. G1. quia ideo opus pietatis faciunt, id est, praedicant, ut lucrum temporale ab auditoribus ac- cipiant ...

Hinc princeps apostolorum secundae Petri 2.1 dicit de illis mendacibus magistris: quia in fine temporum exsurgent de vobis, sectas introducentes perditionis, quia in avaritiafictis verbis de vobis negotiabuntur. Glos. non causa religionis, sed avaritiae....

Hinc Judas apostolus describens ait Uude 16 and 18]: Quia in novissimis temporibus. Gl. tempore antichristi, venient illusores mirantes et honorantes personas divitum, non

50 See William's De periculis, in Fasciculum rerum, 2:23-4 and Opera omnia, pp. 30-1; Upland's Rejoinder, 11. 211-12, 370-4; Uhtred de Boldon, Contra querelasfratrum, ed. Marcett, p. 27.

51 See Williams, "Chaucer and the Friars," pp. 499-513, and Douie, The Conflict Between the Seculars and the Mendicants for cogent brief accounts of the relations between the seculars and the mendicants.

52 Quoted above at n. 46.


causa dilectionis, sed quaestus causa, quamvis salutem se fingant quaerere animarum.53

The charge of preaching for gain is a common one in the English phase of antifraternalism, and usually connected with the biblical pseudoapostoli. The author of Pierce the Ploughman's Crede finds the friars' speech to be the antithesis of the apostles':

Wip glosinge of godspells . pei gods worde turnel, And pasen all pe pryuylege . pat Petur after vsed. pe power of pe Apostells . pei pasen in speche, For to sellen pe synnes . for siluer oper mede.

(709-12)

In his Mirour de l'omme Gower asserts that Paul has himself defined the friars in defining the false apostles, as those who "vont au poeple sermonant / Pour lucre et noun pour discipline" (21596-7). Often the biblical basis of the friars' false speech is not readily evident, but present only by allusion. Wyclif says of the friars in his Leaven of the Pharisees, "lei techen opynly fablys, cronyklis, and lesyngis and leuen cristis gospel and be maundementis of god, and 3it don bei bis principaly for worldly wynnynge..."54 A similar phrase in the same context, referring to the "cronyclis, fablis, and leesingis" of the friars occurs in the Fifty Heresies, and in the Vae Octuplex, it occurs in this form: "Sum prechen fablis, and sum veyn storys; sum docken holy writt, and summe feynen lesyngis."55 These fables, chronicles, lyings, and vain stories can only be thefabulae, genealogiae interminatae, and vaniloquium of 1 Timothy 1.4 and 6 or similar passages in the Epistles, like Titus 1.10-11, which associates the vain speech of false praedicatores with the lust for base gain: "vaniloqui, et seductores ... qui universas domos subvertunt, docentes quae non oportet, turpis lucri gratia."

Like the antifraternal charges associated with the Pharisees, the charges associated with the pseudoapostoli establish a clear analogy between the world of the friars and a symbolic world beyond them. Whether symbolism or realism is the controlling mode of an antifraternal work is not always easy to determine, especially when we are confronted with charges like the abuse of preaching, about which unimpeachable historical evidence is difficult to come by. But a comment by one of the most noted students of English antifraternalism may give us pause. Arnold Williams, in a lengthy study of

English episcopal registers, concludes that in England after 1300 (the date of the bull Super Cathedram), despite the secular clergy's strong assertion, both in Paris and later in England that the friars had usurped the privilege of preaching, the usurpation may have been the other way around:

53 De antichristo, cols. 1352-3; see also William of St. Amour, Fasciculum rerum, 2:37, 52, and Opera omnia, pp. 62, 504.

54 The English Works, ed. F. D. Matthew, EETS O.S. 74 (London, 1880), 16. 55Fifty Heresies, in Select English Works, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3:376; Vae Octuplex, in Arnold,

2:379.


Super Cathedram has no provision for episcopal control over preaching. It merely says that the friars may not preach in competition with bishops or superior prelates or in parish churches against the will of the priest. Nevertheless, the bishops early established, by custom if not by law, their right to issue preaching licenses. I have found no record of mendicant resistance to this apparent, usurpation.56

Williams suggests that in other areas too, traditional charges against the friars may be contrary to fact, especially with regard to burial privileges.57 The sort of primary historical evidence that Williams has uncovered is badly needed to correct the widely accepted notion that antifraternal charges are

generally true. And Williams's evidence complements precisely the argument of this paper, that many antifraternal charges have their origin as much in the symbolic world of the Bible as in the real world.

V

The final antifraternal charge to be considered is one of the most common in England: that the friars' numbers were increasing without limit. Like the

charges examined up to this point, it is intimately tied to a biblical verse whose relevance was first perceived by William of St. Amour. But it is unusual in that it can be proved beyond reasonable doubt to be false at the time of its greatest popularity in England, when writers like Fitzralph, Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Wyclif were proclaiming it across the land. This clear lack of historicity seems to confirm in this particular case what

may be true for many of the traditional charges, that the foundation of antifraternalism is not simply social, political, or historical, but theological as well. Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh, puts the charge this way:

. . pe worst pat is in kynde is passyng resoun of gretenesse and of encresinge. panne it folewiD pat pei [the friars] holdiD nou3te De lawe of kynde but forsakiD hit, for 1ei wexil grete and encresiD wiD-oute eny ende. Also Holy Writ techiD vs, Sapience XI c°, pat God made and ordeyned al in mesure, noumbre, and wi3t. But sich multiplicacioun y-founded vppon beggyng and beggerye, as freres tellep, may nou5t ordeyne a certeyn noumbre of persones pat pei schulde fynde, noDer Dei mowe of certein oon person fynde. And beggers haueD no wi3t, pat is a stidefast

place.... Also siche mowe nou3t ordeyne mesure in persones, and Goddes seruise most be certeyn noumbre of persons.58

Strong evidence against the charge appears in the Medieval Religious Houses of Dom David Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, who show that the number of friars in England reached its peak just before the Black Death of 1350 (5,016

56 "Relations Between the Mendicant Friars and the Regular Clergy in England in the later Fourteenth Century," Annuale Mediaevale 1 (1960), 40.

57 Williams, "Relations," pp. 91-2. For a refutation of the traditional charge that the friars had costly houses, see Dom David Knowles, "The Monastic Buildings of England," The Historian and Character (Cambridge, 1963), p. 209. See also Arnold Williams, "The Mendicant Friars: A Medieval Experience with a Modern Meaning," Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 24 (1971-1972), 28-32.

58 Defensio Curatorum, tr. Trevisa, p. 59-60.


in all). "The Black Death reduced them by more than half (to 2,075); by 1422 they had made a modest recovery (to 2,564), and by 1500 they stood at 3,050. The Black Death reduced the number of houses from 200 to 185; in 1500 there were still 185."59 In other words, in 1357, when Richard Fitz-

ralph first renews William's ancient charge of fraternal proliferation in

England the friars' numbers had just been cut in half to a level which remained relatively stable for the next seventy years. These facts make

Fitzralph's charge in the Defensio Curatorum, and its continuance in poems like Jack Upland, puzzling:

Frere, what charite is it to charge pe puple wiP so many freris, silen persouns, vikers, & prestis were jnow3 to serue pe puple of preestis office wit bischopis - 5he, monkis, chanouns wiP out mo. & pus for to encrese with so many freris is greet cumbraunce to pe puple & a3ens Goddis wille at made al Pingis in mesoure, noumbre, & wei3t; & Crist ordeyned twelue apostlis wil few olere prestis to do seruyce to alle le world, & panne was it best don. (Jack Upland, 11. 354-61)

The attentive reader will discern that Upland's charge shares with Fitzralph's the citation of Wisdom 11.21, "sed omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti." We seem to have the same thing in Piers Plowman, Passus 20, where Conscience says to the friars:

"And if 5e coueyteth cure . Kynde will 3ow teche, That in mesure god made . alle manere thynges, And sette hem at a certeyne . and at a syker noumbre, And nempned names newe . and noumbred the sterres;

Qui numerat multitudinem stellarum, et omnibus eis nomina [vocat], etc. Kynges and knyghtes . that kepen and defenden, Han officers vnder hem . and vch of hem certeyne; And if thei wage men to werre . thei write hem in noumbre, Or wil no tresorere hem paye . trauaille thei neure so sore. Alle other in bataille . ben yholde bribours, Pilours and pykehernois . in eche a place ycursed. Monkes and monyals . and alle men of religioun Her ordre and her reule wil . to han a certeyne noumbre. Of lewed and of lered . the lawe wol and axeth A certeyn for a certeyne . saue onelich of freres! Forthi," quod Conscience, "by Cryst . kynde witte me telleth, It is wikked to wage 3ow . 5e wexeth out of noumbre! Heuene hath euene noumbre . and helle is with-out noumbre; For-thi I wolde witterly . that 3e were in the registre, And 5owre noumbre vndre notaries sygne . and noyther mo ne lasse!"60

59Jack Upland, p. 135, P. L. Heyworth's note to 1. 357. See also A. G. Little, Studies in English Franciscan History (Manchester, 1917), p. 68 ff.

60 Piers Plowman B, Passus 20, 11. 252-4, 262-70. Both Morton Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, 1961), pp. 145-6, and Robert Frank, Piers Plow- man and the Scheme of Salvation (New Haven, 1957), p. 110, have noticed the similarity of this passage to Fitzralph's charge. See Bloomfield, pp. 224-5, for further references to the "numbers" motif in Wyclif. In addition other references occur in Gower, Vox clamantis, Bk. 4, c. 20, 11. 951-6; c. 21, 11. 1009-10; c. 16, 11. 711, 723-4; Mirour de l'omme, 11. 21529-35; Upland's Rejoinder, 11. 43-6, 79-84.


This last passage suggests that the charges of proliferation in numbers by the friars have at least as much to do with a metaphysical as with a physical conception of number, and this we might expect because of the consistency with which Wisdom 11.21 appears in connection with the charge.

This verse was one of the most frequently quoted in the Middle Ages, and with the interpretation St. Augustine gave to it, it became, as has recently been observed, "the keyword of the medieval world view."61 Its essential idea is that all created things exist within divinely ordained limits and propor- tions, controlled by an overriding idea of harmony in the universe, including of course the church and its functionaries. To traditionalists among the secular clergy like William of St. Amour, the divinely ordained hierarchy of the church included only the successors to those who had received authority directly from Christ- that is, the Twelve Disciples, whose authority had been delegated to the bishops, and the Seventy-Two Apostles, whose author-

ity had passed through the ages to the parish priests and their helpers.62 This hierarchy was a closed system in which authority ran vertically from the

pope to the bishops and their deacons to the parish priests. It was also a

spiritually hereditary system, in which the mantle of authority could only be passed on by delegation through the properly appointed chain. No one could truly be said to be a prelate of the church unless he was directly involved in this ecclesiological Great Chain of Being, which in most cases meant that he was under control of the bishop. As we have seen elsewhere, the friars departed radically from this system of church governance. A friar was responsible primarily to the minister general of his order who was in turn responsible only to the pope, and the pope early granted the friars privileges of preaching and confession which had formerly been under the exclusive control of the local bishops. In short, the fraternal chain of authority was outside that normal for the church; it ran horizontally rather than

vertically, and most important, by-passed entirely the traditional authority of the bishops. Consequently from the very first, the friars are accused by the secular clergy of being illegitimately in the church at all. They are outside the church hierarchy, outside the apostolic succession, and therefore not "numbered," that is, not counted as part of the divine order which was reflected in the church. It is in this sense, to use Langland's phrase, that the friars "wex out of noumbre." Lack of "number" in such a cosmic sense is a

sign of spiritual enmity to Christ and the ordered church, and the charge of the friars' great numbers is simply a way of saying that they cannot be

spiritually "numbered." In addition to Wisdom 11.21, other biblical passages reinforce the charge

of excessive numbers made against the friars. Matthew 24.11, "Et multi

61 Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, 2nd ed. (New York, 1962), p. 25; see also Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard Trask (1953; rpt. New York, 1963), p. 504; W. J. Roche, "Measure, Number and Weight in St. Augustine," The New Scholasticism 15 (1941), 350-76.

62 See above at n. 42.


pseudoprophetae surgent, et seducent multos" is noted by Nicholas of Lisieux as a sign that the last days had arrived:

Contra hanc pseudopraedicatorum in diversitate habituum venturam multitudinem, & sub pietatis hypocrisi occultantem, quondam sollicite provisum fuerat ab ecclesia in concilio generali, extra de religiosis domibus, ut episcopis sint subjec- tae, Ne nimia, ubi dicitur: Ne nimia religionum diversitas gravem in ecclesia Dei confusionem inducat, firmiter prohibemus ne quis de cetero novam religionem inveniat: sed quicumque ad religionem transire voluerit, unam de approbatis assumat.

Sed quia omnia oportet impleri quae prophetae & apostoli praedixerunt de temporibus ultimis, istud salubre statutum a tantis patribus in concilio generali elaboratum, diu in ecclesia non potuit observari. Cum igitur tot pseudopraedicatores ecclesiam jam intraverint, in tot sectas & diversitates se diviserint, ut jam prae multitudine numerari vix possint .. .63

It is to the same verse from Matthew 24 that the author of Upland's Rejoinder, in his own uninspired way, refers when he predicts to Friar Daw the devastation of

e chirche pat pe multitude of 3ou han allemost destried. For b e gospel sai3,

Surgent multi pseudoprophete. Bot of hem [simple priests] ben fewe & gretly dispiside, And of 3ou ful many & euer be mo 3e werse.

(11. 79-84)

The conception of multiplicity here is different in origin but related to the

theological notion of "lack of number" derived from Wisdom 11.21. Here the friars' multiplicity is directly related to the eschatological multiplicity of the false prophets whose advent Christ prophesied in Matt. 24.11, and related to the similar multitudes of 1 John 2.18 - "nunc Antichristi multi facti sunt"-and of 1 John 4.1-"multi pseudoprophetae exierunt in mundum" - and perhaps related to the swarms of locusts and other evil creatures which appear in the Apocalypse. William of St. Amour places a

great deal of emphasis on the quality of multiplicity as a characteristic of those who will come at the end of time, as we see from this expostulation on 2 Tim. 3.6:

Ex his sunt qui penetrant domos, quia & in primitiva Ecclesia quidam tales fuerunt, per quales instabunt pericula illa. Sed appropinquante finali Ecclesia, in majori multitudine venient: & hoc dicit sic: Jam horum praenuncii quidam sunt, sed in fine plures futuri sunt.64

The eschatological multiplicity of the followers of Antichrist is symbolic in the same way as the theological multiplicity of those in the church who do

63 De antichristo, col. 1297 (see n. 12). 64 De periculis, Fasciculum rerum, 2:19, and Opera omnia, p. 20.


not conform to the divine principles of "measure, number, and weight." Both kinds of multiplicity are in the root sense opposite principles to unity, which is the principle of the godhead itself, the creative principle which informs all the world.

A theological notion closely related to the friars' disordered multiplicity is the conventional conception of them as wanderers, not only in a historical sense as mendicant wanderers, but in a spiritual sense as metaphysical wanderers. Gower asserts that none of the traditional three estates has a place for these new orders; rather "each estate leaves them wandering about in the world."65 They are moral wanderers and spiritual vagrants like the dispersed Jews. Nicholas of Lisieux compares them with the viros vagos of

Judges 9.4 and William of St. Amour frequently uses Benedict's gyrovagi as a contemptuous epithet for them.66 They are also associated with the am- bulantes of Phil. 3.18,67 but the most famous biblical wanderer they were linked to was Cain, the firstfrater, who was "vagus et profugus super terram" (Gen. 4.12, 14).68 The conceptions of the friars' vagrancy and their multiplicity are both expressions of essentially one thought, that physically and

metaphysically the friars are on the outer edges of society, of the church, and indeed of the cosmic order. They are, in a primarily moral sense, superfluous.

The stark historical inaccuracy of the charge that the friars were pro- liferating in late fourteenth-century England suggests that it had become a symbolic, not a realistic accusation. It may well have originated in the secular clergy's uneasy sense that these radically new orders were multiplying dangerously in the early years of their existence, but the charge evidently continues because it had become inextricably connected with a theological concept and a biblical verse. The pattern of crystallization around scriptural passages is precisely the pattern I have been trying to demonstrate with the Pharisaic and pseudoapostolic clusters of charges, which are not so easily

65 Vox clamantis, Bk. 4, c. 20, 1. 944, tr. Stockton, p. 188; see also Bk. 4, c. 23, 11. 1113-28, tr. Stockton, p. 192.

66 Nicholas of Lisieux, De antichristo, col. 1353; William of St. Amour, Collectiones, "Distinctio secunda de otiosis, et curiosis, et gyrovagis, qualiter vivant contra doctrinam Apostoli," Opera omnia, pp. 213-301. Gyrovagi is the term given to the undesirable class of monks described by St. Benedict in the Prologue of the Regula. It had become so common an epithet for the friars by the 14th century that Friar John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, specifically addressed himself to denying the charge. See C. L. Kingsford, A. G. Little, and F. Tocco, eds., Fratris lohannis Pecham quondam Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis tractatus tres de paupertate, British Society of Franciscan Studies 2 (Aberdeen, 1910), p. 24.

67Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 11. 87-90. 68 Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 11. 486-7, 559; T. Arnold, ed., Select English Works of Wyclif

(Oxford, 1869), 3:368, 369, 398; Wyclif, English Works, ed. F. D. Matthew, pp. 129, 211, 420, 448, 508, Polemical Works in Latin, ed. R. Buddensieg, 1:40, and Sermones, ed. J. Loserth, 2:85, 120; The Lantern of Light, ed. L. M. Swinburne, EETS O.S. 151 (London, 1917), 16; "The Orders of Cain" in R. H. Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York, 1959), p. 160, 11. 105-116; Upland's Rejoinder, 1. 374 n. (lines 9-11 of an interpolation).


shown to be false. If the pattern is correct, it is not a surprising one - nor is it a very noble chapter in the history of mankind. It is an instance of political mythopoeia, a common phenomenon in times of radical change and familiar in less elaborate manifestations to anyone who reads the newspapers. And if it is correct, it suggests a first consequence that this study points toward: the need for historians to reevaluate the antifraternal phenomenon. With a few notable exceptions students of the fourteenth century have tended to accept the hostile judgments of the friars' critics as more or less accurate. But the existence of biblical and theological conventions in antifraternal criticism not

only suggests that this is not so; it also offers a reason for the survival of inaccurate charges over more than a century in different countries and in

entirely changed political circumstances. A second consequence of this study lies not in the historical but in the

literary realm. If the friars were perceived symbolically by their contem- poraries, in the context of Salvation History rather than history as we know it, then they had a dimension brilliantly suited to works of the imagination, especially those like Piers Plowman already concerned with the interaction of society and Salvation History and written in a symbolic mode. It is hard to

explain the puzzling importance of the friars in Piers Plowman until it is recognized that they have a symbolic rather than social function throughout the poem. They and Piers are of exactly the same imaginative dimension: both are symbolic; both are representatives of the apostolica vita, one in bono (Piers is identified with Peter), one in malo. I have elsewhere tried to show how the apostolic associations from antifraternal exegesis unify Chaucer's Summoner's Tale and amplify the humor of the Pentecostal joke that ends it.69 Other Middle English poems await sympathetic readings which make use of the aspect of the antifraternal tradition that this paper has attempted to elucidate: it is a tradition based on an emphatically medieval mode of

perceiving the friars, a perception which was not political, not empirical, not realistic, but fundamentally theological and symbolic.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

69 "The Friar as False Apostle: Antifraternal Exegesis and the Summoner's Tale," Studies in

Philology 71 (1974), 19-46.

Anti Fraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature Speculum

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