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Prik of Conscience: Part Two: Of the World’s Unstableness
PART TWO: FOOTNOTES
2 Lines 180–81: Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God. James 4:4 (a Catholic, not a Pauline, epistle)
3 Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. 1 John 2:15
4 Lines 195–96: For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life. 1 John 2:16. A widely cited verse. See Howard, Three Temptations.
5 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 1 Corinthians 3:19. Contrary to usual practice, the paraphrase precedes the verse.
6 Lines 425–26: For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come. Hebrews 13:14
7 Lines 437–38: Be not silent: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were [Psalm 38:13]
8 Lines 605–06: And they provoked him with their inventions: and destruction was multiplied among them. Psalm 105:29
9 Lines 625–26: So I let them go according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions. Psalm 80:13
10 Woe to you who call evil good, and good evil. Isaias 5:20. Christ often preaches against hypocrisy and false living, but never quotes this specific verse.
PART TWO: EXPLANATORY NOTES
Abbreviations: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; MED: Middle English Dictionary; OED: Oxford English Dictionary; PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne.
1–4 “Worldes” in line 1 is plural (heaven, hell, and earth, plus the internal differentiations made in the following lines). Part 2 thus begins with the same cosmic perspective as Part 1.
36 as the booke neveneth. “The booke” is Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ encyclopedic De proprietatibus rerum, a thirteenth-century encyclopedia that was translated into English by John Trevisa circa 1398 (ed. Seymour et al.). See also Keiser, “Works of Science and Information,” pp. 3599–3601.
43 ff. the nyne ordoures of aungelles. Pseudo-Dionysius (fifth century) is credited with organizing the angelic hierarchy into nine orders. Paul hints at their existence in Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16. Bartholomaeus dedicates the whole of Book 2 of the De proprietatibus rerum to an analysis of angels and their orders.
53–68 The Ptolemaic cosmos is geocentric. Everything below the sphere of the moon is corrupt and changeable. The phases of the moon were regarded as a sign of this instability. C. S. Lewis (Discarded Image, pp. 92–121) supplies an excellent description of medieval cosmography. See note 5.755–58 below.
64 The “diverse signs” are the signs of the zodiac.
72 See below, line 337. “These worlds bothe” of the next line refers to the worlds of line 34, heaven and earth, not to the two parts (line 54), sublunar and ultralunar, of the physical world.
109–16 Another subdivision of the physical world into the “dale” of life (macrocosm, the “more world”; see below, line 535) and man himself (microcosm, “mon the les”). Compare Thomas Gray: “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, / Their sober wishes never learned to stray; / Along the cool sequestered vale of life / They kept the solitary tenor of their way” (“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” lines 73–76).
121–24 See Genesis 1:28.
155–64 Theselines resemble the opening of “Of þo flode of þo world,” ed. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, 2:67. See below, note 266–79.
176 by skil. See MED skil (4.c).
201 kepe. See MED kepen (2).
221–36 See Bartholomaeus, Book 8: “it is a prisoun of spiritis, and most cruel exilinge of soules, ande place and stede [of] ful meny wrecchidnes and paynes. For þe worlde is place of trespas and of gilt, of passinge out of kinde kontre and of pilgrimage, of sorwe and of woo, of wepinge and of teres, of trauaile and of faintes, of grysnes and of schame” (De proprietatibus rerum, 1:446, lines 3–8).
239–40 The world, previously an “it,” is now personified. See below, lines 312 ff. and 471.
257–59 Compare Walther, Proverbia Sententiaeque 19513.
266–79 These lines are similar to some lines and themes in “Of þo flode of þo world,” ed. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, 2:67–70, and see Raymo, “Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction,” 7:2336.
328–37 The wheel of Fortune, always controlled by a female allegorical figure, is the most famous image of the instability of the world. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is the classic treatment of how good and bad times alternate in reciprocal cycles. N.b., how Troilus moves “Fro wo to wele, and after out of joie” in Troilus and Criseyde 1.4, how “oft boþe blis and blunder / Ful skete hatz skyfted synne” in Britain (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 18–19), and how Arthur dreams of the ascent and descent of kings on Fortune’s wheel in the Alliterative Morte Arthure (lines 3260–3337, ed. Benson and Foster in King Arthur’s Death).
352–53 Jerome’s commentary on Joel ( PL 25:971C), with “virtutibus” for “diuicis” and with “corruamus” for “cadamus.”
360–61 Also in a letter of Marbod of Rennes ( PL 171:1471D).
368–69 Gregory’s commentary on Job ( PL 75:679a) and his exposition of the seven penitential psalms ( PL 79:646c), though not exact in either case.
379–81 As bereth wittenes Seynt Austyne. Not traced in the works of Augustine, but this saying (along with the one attributed to Gregory in lines 388–89, just below) echo the contrast described by Jesus between the respective fates of the fortunate and the unfortunate in the afterlife. See Matthew 19:23–30 and Mark 10:23–31 (“But many that are first will be last, and the last first”).
401 In alle that tyme thinke profytable. “In all times that [they] think profitable”? The line is unclear. Cotton Galba E.ix reads “In alle that tham thynk profitabel” (ed. Morris, line 1345).
434 as pore pilgrymes. Compare Egeus in The Knight’s Tale: “This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, / And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro” (CT I[A]2847–48).
453–64 Compare Matthew 7:13–14: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. / How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!”
488–521 These verses marked by anaphora are reminiscent of Ecclesiastes chapter 3.
529 heelde is presumably a Scandinavianism, from Old Norse heldr, “more rather”; thus “certainly” or “probably.” See MED helde (adv.).
530 See above, Entre.49-56 note.
535 See above, line 113, where the poet uses “dale” as the equivalent of “slade.” The MED suggests “glade” or “grassy plain” as possibilities but those have more positive connotations than the passage here. Thus I have followed their first suggestion of “valley,” with its hint at “valley of death” as in Psalm 23.
546 See the “Vitruvian Man” in the sketchbook of Leonardo Da Vinci.
557–60 Innocent, De miseria 1.25 (ed. Lewis, p. 137; PL 217:715c), and a succinct statement of the microcosm/macrocosm theme of the preceding section. See Stock, Myth and Science, pp. 275–76, 197–207.
567–695 This section of Prik of Conscience on the “pompe and pryde and vanyté” (line 568) of “bothe worldes” (line 566a) bears many similarities of concept, wording, and staging to the fifteenth-century morality play Mankind, where, as the Prik-poet explains, “selcouthe maneres and sere gyses” (line 569) are personified through the deceitful trickery and deceptions of the comical characters like Nowadays, Mischeff, and New-guise, who might well have their origin in this passage, where the seductive worldliness of fashionable clothing these days. N.b., the “veyn apparayl and weryng” of “mykel veyn coostage,” “greet outrage,” and “Such degyses and suche maneres / As yong men usen and nowe leres / And comonly uche day are sene [i.e., Nowadays]” (lines 572–77), along with “new gyses” (line 612) and “mony myscheeves” (line 616), that seem to anticipate the dramatist’s personifications of the trio who are set upon entrapping Mankynde with their jokes. The inventiveness of the scoundrels’ jests as they rob Mankynde of his coat, trim it to make it fashionable rather than functional, and play upon his despair for their raucous amusement parallels the behavior of vices in Prik of Conscience as they work situations with “newe fyndynges as thei go” (line 629) to “play and bourde” with humankind’s conscience (line 640), almost without Conscience's being aware of what’s really happening.
590 hippyng as a ko. Morris glosses as “limping as a cow” (p. 262n1539). Proverbial. See Whiting C503, citing this line. Some have argued that “cow” means “chough,” a British ground-feeding bird that hops, in which case “hopping as a chough” would be the better gloss. See the note to the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, line 252, in The Riverside Chaucer (p. 867).
591 See Chaucer’s Pardoner in CT I(A)682.
601 In her gyses shullen thay falle. Proverbial. Compare lines 621–23. See variants in Whiting G493, B211, B529, C201, and variations on “hoist on his own pitard.”
649–50 The theme of the “world upside down” corresponds to the classical topoi of antithesis and oppositio.
PART TWO: TEXTUAL NOTES
Abbreviations: see Explanatory Notes
75 hygheste. The first “e” is corrected from a long “s.”
168 habebit. The manuscript reads “hebit.”
266 worlde. The manuscript reads worde.
267 May. The “a” is written above the line.
308 A dittographic “the” appears before “worlde.”
428 anothur. The manuscript reads and othur.
549 Thus. The manuscript reads Thas.
558 microcosmus. The manuscript reads mucrocosmus.
695 Of. The manuscript reads Or.
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