‘Songes of Rechelesnesse’. Langland and the Franciscans. By Lawrence M. Clopper. (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization.) Pp. xviii+368 incl. frontispiece. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. £39.50 ($52.50). 0 472 10744 5 (original) (raw)

1999, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History

In this book Professor Clopper advances the thesis that a Franciscan mentality pervades Langland's Piers Plowman, that the work addresses Franciscan issues and particularly exhorts Franciscans to return to the ideal of their unaccommodated rule. Chapter 1 sketches the original ideal of the rule and Francis's Testament and subsequent developments, which led to writings like Bonaventure's letters castigating fraternal greed and other abuses. It places Langland among the "internal" critics of the order rather than among external, antifraternal writers like William of St. Amour, FitzRalph, and Wyclyf; unlike some external critics, Langland never urged the abolition of the friars. Chapter 2 argues that Will encounters friars at crucial points in the poem (B 8, B 11, B 20) and that these friars are not portrayed as "wrong." Clopper thinks Langland echoes Franciscan ideals and concerns: Will is an itinerant beggar; Rechelesnesse recalls Franciscan lack of solicitude; and the poem stresses Christ's absolute poverty. Moreover, Langland omits some criticisms stressed by external critics (notably that the order "steals children"). Ultimately, "Langland's polemic is informed by Franciscan reformist rhetoric" (p. 105). Chapter 3 posits that Bonaventure's "exemplarism" (finding analogies of the Trinity in all aspects of creation) fundamentally shaped Langland's habits of thought and that we must understand Langland's use of triads in general and of the three Do's in particular in the light of, for example, Bonaventure's Apologia paupertatis. Chapter 4 applies this exemplarism to the triad of the estates. Though Trinitarian analogies had previously been posited for them, Clopper argues that Langland invests them with particularly Franciscan qualities: for example, in giving the bellatores all dominion over temporal goods and in giving "priority" to the commons through Piers. Chapter 5 seeks to associate idiotae, viri apostolici, lunatyk lollares, and Piers, positing the Franciscan conflation of the two scriptural senses of idiotae (laity, apostles before their accusers). Piers, identified with "common workmen," "renounces" labor (B 7) so that he can become one of God's fools like those "who abandon their manual labor to follow Christ" (p. 195). This is the "apostolic life" lived by the man who is "a personification of the properly oriented human will" (p. 199), and it finds its most dramatic expression in the lunatic lollars of the C text (p. 201); Piers is a lunatic lollar, an idiota in the Franciscan sense. Chapter 6 finds in Rechelesnesse a challenging figure who represents both heedlessness and the Franciscan ideal of lack of solicitude; Will, modeling reform for the friars, moves from the former toward the latter, which finds its perfect expression in patient poverty. Since the Franciscan rule emphasized the spirit of detachment rather than establishing lists of observances, the Franciscan mentality must achieve the ideal lack of solicitude experientially. Likewise, in his rejection of learning for its own sake, Langland seeks to recall Franciscans "from speculative inquiry to a simple understanding of things" (p. 247). Chapter 7 argues that Langland attempted to hold up a mirror to the friars by asserting their crucial role in the church's renewal. Anima's speech (B 15) is a sermon on the apostolic life declaring the friars to be the heirs of the apostles, established to restore the church; Anima reminds them of their origin and ideals. The Trinitarian recapitulation of salvation history (B 17-20) concludes by portraying Franciscan idiotae (Langland's foles) whose historical failing put the church in jeopardy; Conscience sets out, at the conclusion of the poem, to recover the unaccommodated Franciscan rule, perhaps as expressed in Exivi de Paradiso. The final chapter suggests that in Will Langland has specifically modeled a failed mendicant, imperfect in his patience and lack of solicitude. Clopper goes on (after caveats) to offer a speculative biography of the poet which puts him, if not in the Franciscan order, at