Chapter 2

Elisions of Abstract and Concrete, Epitomized in a “True-love”

In a valey of this restles mynde,

I soughte in mounteyne and in mede,

Trustynge a trewelove for to fynde

—“In a Valley of This Restless Mind,” 1–3

And al þat mark hath ymade, Matheu, Ion and lucas

Of thy douhtiokest dedes was don in oure sekte:

Verbum caro factum est.

—Piers Plowman, 7.139–40a ~ B 5.499–500a

. . . also by the curtes geft of his Fader we be his blis, we be his mede, we be his worshippe, we be his corone—and this was a singular mervel and a full delectable beholdyng, that we be his corone.

—A Revelation, 22.23–26

EARLIER I NOTED how Julian, Hilton, and the Cloud-author distinguish between “bodily” and “ghostly” interpretations of language, with the Cloud- author’s “bodely conseyte of a goostly þing, or elles a goostly conseyte of a bodely þing,” Julian’s “gostly weping,” and Hilton’s explanation how to “turne lightli inowgh alle sich wordes of bodili thyngis into goostli undirstondynge.” They point towards spiritual understanding by means of analogy with a physical experience of the material world. Ironically, that spiritual understanding must be represented in concrete terms precisely because the very nature of its subject matter is highly abstract. This chapter investigates what happens when writers want both senses simultaneously in play, as is the case in “the Word made flesh,” where “Word” carries heightened abstract potential compared to the relatively concrete “flesh.” In the second and third epigraphs, Langland’s treatment of “sekte” and Julian’s “we be his corone,” the materiality of the concrete component of the metaphor (clothing or enwrapment) contrasts sharply with the immateriality of the nature of humanity (embodied existence) and ultimately the divine aspect of Christ himself. At the same time, the materiality of Christ’s body is concretely reified as something other than a human body. That interplay of concrete and abstract centered on the materiality of Christ’s body draws attention to the challenge of comprehending the nature of the hypostatic union, God and man together in one person. This chapter also is concerned with what happens when a word or phrase describing an abstract concept is given a certain concreteness within the text: such a compressed interplay between concrete and abstract is central to not perceiving “the Word made flesh” as a metaphor, for example.

This technique of making the abstract concrete in order to highlight the abstract is fundamental to the effectiveness of the “true love” metaphor of the first epigraph. What is a “trewelove”? Given that the “I” of the poem seeks it in mountains, meadows, and valleys, does “a trewelove” sound more like a concept (the epitome of love), a person (my true love!) or a plant (the true-love)?¹ For fourteenth-century readers, all three of these are likely to be true readings, even simultaneously true ones. Equally, two aspects of love are potentially in play: sexual, desiring love (eros), and the salvific love of God and neighbor (caritas).² While the polysemous term “true love” may occur in secular (as opposed to sacred) contexts, “true love” bears Christological associations based in exegetical commentary on the Song of Songs and centered on the body of Christ, as I have argued elsewhere.³ The delicious ambiguity of the first epigraph raises another question: if “I” seek “a trewelove” in a valley of “this” restless mind, whose mind is “this”? The speaker’s, presumably, although a neo-Platonic interpretation could argue that the mind is God’s, surrounding and encompassing and comprehending all. Even more interestingly, the mind could be the reader’s, puzzling through meanings to arrive at the sought thing, “trewelove,” Christ himself. What, then, is “a trewelove”? Part of the pleasure of reading “In a Valley of This Restless Mind” is gained from sustaining all three possibilities (concept, person, plant) simultaneously in mind, in both sacred and secular senses. For that effect, the poet relies on the interplay of concrete and abstract maintained in a state of tension. The vernacular English name for the true-love plant (“true love”) offers a useful catch-title for this chapter because it encapsulates the organic and rich ambiguity of significance that can result from compressing the concrete and the abstract, the material and the immaterial. My focus in this chapter is on that compression, which in an Incarnational poetic both represents and explores the nature of the hypostatic union on the page, enabling supereffability in Christological and, in some cases, specifically Incarnational contexts. The rich ambiguity of the “true-love” thus provides a jumping-off point for this aspect of an Incarnational poetic.

Truelove: Christ and Salvation

In English and in England, the true-love is a plant. Both “true” and “love” offer attractive potential for poets interested in the Incarnation, possibilities that do not inhere in the Latin name for the plant, “quadrifolia,” or in its other English names. An early fifteenth-century macaronic sermon makes the play of meaning in the name of the true-love plant abundantly clear; here, the plant is first named in the English vernacular as “trewloue,” then backtranslated from English into Latin as “fidelis amor” rather than its proper Latin name, “quadrifolia,” presumably to underline the preacher’s didactic message about the concepts of truth and love:⁴

Et oportet quod de corde isto procedat vnum trewloue: itaque diligas eum ex toto corde et perseueranter, quia diligere eum hodie et cras derelinquere nichil valet. Quatuor folia istius fidelis amoris sunt dileccio Dei super omnia, dileccio proximi, dileccio animi siue anime tue, et dileccio inimici.

And from the heart a trewlove must come forth; you must love him with your whole heart and with perseverance, for to love him today and to leave him tomorrow is worthless. The four leaves of this trewlove are the love of God above all things, the love of your neighbor, the love for your own soul, and the love of your enemy.⁵

Here the preacher has not needed to explain that a true-love is a plant; he evidently expects that the true-love is familiar enough to his contemporaries that he can wait for several clauses before explicitly shifting the metaphor to the botanical realm with “four leaves.” Nevertheless, his syntax cues the interpretation of “trewlove” as a plant more strongly than does “In a Valley of This Restless Mind”; it would be hard to substitute “from the heart a lover must come forth” or “from the heart a concept-of-faithful-love must come forth.” The preacher evidently feels he can draw on the Truelove tradition with only the briefest of outlines. To elucidate the Incarnational significance of the true-love, I shall begin by sketching the plant’s place in existing traditions drawn on by fourteenth-century writers, before moving to Incarnational examples.

Writers familiar with the Truelove tradition capitalize on the ambiguity inherent in the plant name “true-love” to slide from an abstract reference into the concrete botanical context or (more frequently) from the specificity of the true-love plant with its mnemonic or enumerative potential to a broader range of meanings. In devotional contexts, in particular, the signification of the words “true love” may be ambiguous: from Christ, as the supreme example of charity (particularly the crucified Saviour—the earliest known name for the plant is “crux Christi”); to Mary, who both exemplifies and carried within her body “true love,” God incarnate; to divine love abstractly conceived; to salvation in general.⁶ When context clearly reinforces a botanical reading, “true love” may be described as a prized object to be sought or that may be found repeatedly and reliably once one knows where to look: a plentiful, recurring, generative, medicinal or curative power.⁷ Puns on “grace/grass” (herb, merciful attention, medicine, favor) or “vertue” (favorable quality, power, medicine, manliness) may carry sexualized overtones. Where Truelove poems intersect with the topos of Christ as lover-knight, the shading over from earthly to divine lover may take on especially lyrical or mystical qualities, sometimes within a chanson d’aventure framework.⁸

A poem of this sort is the one with which this chapter began, the lyric poem “In a Valley of This Restless Mind.” This poem sets eros and caritas alongside one another, drawing heavily from the Song of Songs and courtly love poetry for its imagery. As my brief examination of its opening lines suggests, the poem also generates wordplay based in paradoxes and polysemy. In the following example, the intimacy between Christ (“I am Truelove that fals was nevere” [17]) and “Mannis Soule” (18) is imagined as both maternalistic and erotic.⁹ Christ the lover-knight/mother/“Truelove” cries:

My love is in hir chaumbir. Holde youre pees!	peace
Make ye no noise, but lete hir slepe.
My babe Y wolde not were in disese;	I would not desire were
I may not heere my dere child wepe;	hear
With my pap Y schal hir kepe.	breast
Ne merveille ye not though Y tende hir to:
This hole in my side had nevere be so depe,
But quia amore langueo. (105–12)10	except because I languish for love

The Latin tag, “because I languish for love” (Cant. 2:5, 5:8) repeatedly resounds in Truelove poems; it is also the base text for the sermon I quoted earlier. The poet begins this passage with the notion of Christ as lover, whose address to an unspecified third party (the “ye” of the poem, here closely identified with the reader) demonstrates tender, protective concern for the beloved resting in her bedchamber (with all the sexual promise that space entails). With lyrical ease, the poet shifts to Christ’s maternal concern for the sleeping child at rest, a nurturing attention that leads naturally to caring for the beloved’s well-being in both body and soul. The pun on “disese” (107) points in two directions: toward a desire for soul-quieting rest with its eschatological implications (not “dis-ease”) and body-healing repose that encourages health in a growing child (not “disease”). Christ protectively nurtures the soul with mother’s milk, an effluence the poet then mystically links to the outpouring of blood from the wound in Christ’s side (109–11). The wound is paradoxically imagined as another protective and even medicinal space carved out because of the lover’s ardent and anguished attentions (“because I languish for love”); indeed, by implication, the wound is another chamber for repose large enough for the soul or even, as Julian of Norwich puts it, “large enow [enough] for al mankynd that shal be save [saved] to resten in pece and in love” (24.6–7). To prompt a deeper understanding of the all-encompassing and reliable love that in his view God both feels and is, the poet relies on the cumulative power of a series of paradoxes: how can your male-gendered lover also be your mother? How can a male body carry female attributes without being hermaphroditic? What can be medicinal about a life-threatening wound? How can a source of pain be a site of protection? While much of the imagery here is common to medieval writing influenced by the Song of Songs, the personification of true love in a narrative context works particularly well, in this instance, through its appeal to affect, an appeal made effective here by dialogue drawing on secular life-situations many or most people have themselves experienced. Indeed, one of the more intriguing aspects of the Truelove tradition centers on the elision between sacred and secular imagery. As Douglas Gray has remarked in another context:

Sometimes there is a simple transference from one tradition to another, which is occasionally so complete that we are hard put to decide whether a poem is “secular” or “religious”—one poem which begins

Trewlove trewe on you I truste,
Evermore to fynde you perseverawnt,	perseverant
Ellys wolde my herte yn sondir brest,	or else; burst
Bot I cowde love yn expyrant.	dying

might well be called a secular lyric, if it were not for the rubric that accompanies it in the manuscript: “querimonia Christi languentis pro amore.”¹¹

For those familiar with Truelove poems and the lover-knight motif, the lover’s reproachful reference to his heart bursting in two would be enough to suggest that the speaker is Christ, even in the absence of the explicit connection to the Song of Songs indicated by the Latin rubric. Gray’s example usefully demonstrates how the mapping of one tradition onto another allows a sort of no-man’s-land where both readings—sacred and secular—work equally well, where the ingenuity that capitalizes on intended ambiguity adds pleasure for those who recognize the sacred meaning.

Similarly, a poem from the preaching manual Harley 7322 further shows that resonances of the true-love’s botanical context may carry through in situations where the plant is not clearly indicated:

þey loue be strong & mikel of mith,	Although; great; strength (might)
for wele, for wo, trewloue mat lith.	joy; heals
treuloue is large, fre & hende	generous, noble and courteous
& loue 3if alleþing bleþeli to his frende.	gives; blithely, happily
in wele & wo, loue stondit faste,	stands
for lif, for det, trewloue wil laste.	death
fer & frey loue hat on heu	fair and courteous; has one color/form/appearance (hue)
for trewloue is fress & euere neu.12	new

For readers versed in the Truelove tradition, this poem works by gradually wakening recognition that culminates in lines that suggest the true-love plant continuously and generously replicating itself widely in a landscape, a common feature of Truelove poems. In “In a Valley of This Restless Mind,” for instance, the speaker situates the encounter with Christ within an interior landscape, within the self, as in the first epigraph to this chapter:

In a valey of this restles mynde,

I soughte in mounteyne and in mede,

Trustynge a trewelove for to fynde (1–3)

Seeking in a meadow, where we might expect to find plants propitious for love, precipitates the speaker’s finding of the man who identifies himself as “Truelove that fals was nevere” (17). Further imagery in the poem locates the site of the “trewelove” the speaker hopes to find (3) within the locus amoenus (the fair and delectable place) from the Song of Songs as well as within the speaker’s mind. In the Harley 7322 lyric, the meadow where flowers grow is implied by the singular and constant appearance of the “trewloue” (“hat on heu,” 7), its abundance, and the freshness and regenerative quality of its growth. The notion of love persevering through life and death (5–6) suggests either Christ’s victory or Mary’s steadfast vigil at the foot of the Cross, a subject common in Marian Truelove poems. The previous stanza tips the scales towards a Christological rather than a Marian reading: the generosity and courtliness of the “treuloue” (3) suits the Christ-knight motif, as does the first stanza’s emphasis on strength and power. Poems of this sort rely in part on our inability to decide definitively what is meant by “true love”; their strongest effect is achieved by simultaneously holding in mind resonances of multiple possible readings, particularly where varied readings are equally tenable but coexist in some state of tension.¹³ The tension sustained by the Truelove tradition is also generated, in part, by the interplay of concrete and abstract: the materiality of a four-leaved plant, the immateriality of love or salvation. Both personification and reification are in play, in equal parts that vie for salience: the personification of abstract love, the reification of Christ as the true-love plant.

The two-way pull of personification and reification plays an important role in the “Long Charter of Christ,” a poem of special interest because it combines all three image groups I track in this study (book, text, or language; cloth, clothing, or enwrapment; plant, growth, or life force): Christ’s body is the text and parchment of a charter of salvation, as well as the coat of arms that proclaims him to be lord of a certain property, humanity. The place to seek a true-love is in his side wound. I will consider the first two image groups in my third chapter, focusing here only on the botanical “true love.”

In some Truelove poems, the plant’s physical form serves as a convenient mnemonic: for the stages of penitence, or for remembering the nature of the Trinity, or for other such concepts that can be enumerated on the leaves.¹⁴ The leaves are used this way in the “Long Charter,” for instance, where Christ deeds over to mankind the gift of eternal life in heaven. This poem offers an abbreviated version of Christ’s life, narrated by him from the Cross, as a way of telling salvation history from the Creation to the end of time. The true-love’s leaves become a mnemonic for the stages of proper penitence (in the charter trope, the rent Christ reserves for himself):¹⁵

No more wole I aske of þe	will I/do I desire to
But a four leued gras to 3elde me	four-leaved herb (“true-love”); yield
That on lef is opon shryft	first leaf open confession
That oþer thin herte to smerte skyft	second; to cause to suffer
The tridde I wole namore don so	third; never more
The ferde drede god euermo	fourth; fear
Whan þuse leues to gydere ben set	together
A trewe loue men clepon it	call
Of this rente be not be hynde
ffor thor3 þe 3er þou may it fynde	year
Or elles seche it in my wounde	seek
ffor þere may trewe loue ben founde

The plant, initially referred to by its more generalized Middle English name, “four leued gras,” is introduced as an aid for remembering the stages of penitence; its further resonances become important after it has been named with more specificity (“A trewe loue men clepon it”). This naming makes possible the richness of meaning that moves it beyond a four-leaved, plentifully abundant plant: the admonition to “seche it in my wounde” no longer refers primarily to the true-love, a plant growing in a field, but rather to the indwelling of the soul characteristic of medieval exegesis of the Song of Songs, such as we saw in “In a Valley of This Restless Mind.” By a sort of elision of “trewe loue” and the wound in which it may be found, “true love” itself comes to have a referential link on this level to the body of the suffering Christ, wounded for love, or “quia amore langueo” (“because I languish for love”). Here is the logical extension of the imagery we saw begun in “In a Valley of This Restless Mind”: the wound is now bedchamber and meadow, an expansive site of both pleasure and rest, the locus amoenus (“fair and delectable place”) associated with the enclosed garden of the Song of Songs.¹⁶ Even where understated, the botanical link between “true love” and wound as an expression of love enables those who know the tradition to rediscover the link, as a fifteenth-century example attests:

Hayle precius wounded so large and wyde

Hayle trusty treuloue our joy to provide

Although the medieval original for this poem, William Billyng’s meditation on the Five Wounds, has not survived, the corresponding illumination for this verse apparently included a four-leaved plant springing from the wounded heart.¹⁷

By comparison with the “Long Charter,” in the lyric poem “Loue that god loueth” the true-love plant is explicitly associated with the body of Christ, leading similarly to a numbering of the leaves, in this case the wounded hands and feet of the crucified Christ (“His handes and feet, þe leves were; / His herte was wiþ a spere þurgh-shoue [shoved through]” [188–89]).¹⁸ Here, however, the enumeration is not mnemonic. The poet emphasizes the plant’s medicinal properties (“What soule is syk, lay þat herbe aboue, / Hit makeþ hool [whole] al y-fere [altogether]” [191–92]), continuing to extend the advice, repeated in various ways throughout the poem, that one should seek one’s own advantage, in this case by applying true love (the wounds of Christ) as if it were a poultice.

In Truelove poems, then, the deliberate interplay of concrete and abstract can lead to a specialized Christological statement of God’s love for humanity, drawing attention to the physicality of Christ’s body and of the leaves of the true-love plant at the same time as the poems make use of abstractions associatively linked to that body. Personification and reification work jointly, in a state of tension. The pleasingness of the complex reading process required to recognize God at the center of true love becomes very much the point in every sense of the word: the term true love, insofar as it resolves, offers an emotive entrance toward an understanding of the complex nature of God’s humanity and of God’s love, pointing the way inward, as it were.

Flexible ways of thinking about Christ’s body emphasize the compression of divinity and humanity in the hypostatic union, putting special emphasis on the nature of personhood: both the doctrine that explains the Trinity (one God in three Persons) and the nature of humanity (a person among other persons).¹⁹ A similar interplay between concrete and abstract in some botanical lyrics enables a near-but-not-complete elision of persons highlighting Christ’s lineage and the Incarnation’s role in salvation. As in “In a Valley of this Restless Mind,” the imagery is organic in several senses, linking salvation with nourishment and maternal care, and adding to that mix the topic of Christ’s lineage. In “Mary, the Rose-Bush,” for instance, Mary and Jesus are described as blossoms or branches of one bush, an image perhaps related to the Jesse tree, a common iconographical illustration of Christ’s lineage based on Isaiah 11:1 (“And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root”):²⁰

Of a rose, a louely rose,

Of a rose I syng a song.

Lyth and lystyn, both old and yyng,	attend; listen;young
How the rose begane to spryng;
A fayyrer rose to owr lekyng	liking
Sprong ther neuer in kynges lond.
v branchis of that rose ther ben,	five
The wyche ben both feyer and chene;	which; fair; beautiful
Of a maydyn, Mary, hevyn quene,
Ovght of hyr bosum the branch sprong.	out

The [first] branch was of gret honour:

That blyssed Mary shuld ber the flour, . . . (1–12)²¹

Mary here appears to occupy the place normally held by Jesse: the root or perhaps trunk. The bodily focus on generation parallels the emanative topos of the leaps of Christ; that topos is the poem’s organizing principle.²² The rose that “begins to spring” in line 4 is difficult to define but the qualifier “begane” is particularly important: this springing is the first of a series, the one that sets the other in motion. That “rose” conjoins Mary’s and Jesus’s actions in bringing about salvation: the five springings of the bush come at the Annunciation, Nativity, Visitation of the Magi, Harrowing of Hell, and Ascension. Although Mary is frequently called a rose in devotional poetry, in this context the simple equation of “rose” and “Mary” does not ring true; moreover, the last two springings of the branch shift decisively from the Marian realm.²³

The same elision of persons occurs in the fourteenth-century Vernon refrain lyric “Flourdelys,” again in the context of the leaps of Christ. In this passage, Mary and Jesus appear to be blossoms on one lily plant. Initially, they are compared to a prized flower, the fleur-de-lys; the complexity and compression of these lines is typical of this poet:²⁴

þat freoli flour . weore fair to fynde,	beautiful flower; splendid
what gome wolde go . þer-as hit greu3	man; grew
. . . . . . . . . . . .
What segge on soil . þat þat seed seu3	man; sowed25
Hit is holy . at myn a-vys	it; in my opinion
Aboue þe Braunches . beþ Blosmes neu
þe lele cheses fair . þe Flourdelys.	the faithful one courteously chooses
Þou lele ladi . I likne to þe	faithful; compare
Þe flour . to þi semeli sone also	beautiful
Þe blisful Blosme . þat euer mihte be	most praiseworthy
Treuly þat was . be-twix 3ou to (9–20)	you two26

At this stage of the poem the poet has not explicitly stated that Mary and Jesus are in fact flowers on the same bush; as the poem progresses, however, the identification of “Flourdelys” with Christ, or with salvation, or with Christ as the means of salvation, emerges. Mary’s status as flower is less definitive than in “Rose-Bush” but the opening stanzas suggest a similar conceit: two flowers, both excellent, springing from the same bush.²⁷ There is no simple, one-to-one identification of concrete image (“fleur-de-lys”) with abstract concept (excellence, or human and divine lineage conjoined in hypostatic union, or salvation). As with “true love,” the very ambiguity of signification allows a variety of abstract possibilities to remain simultaneously in play, based on the single concrete botanical prompt. Unlike “true love,” however, in the case of “fleur-de-lys” the plurality of signification stems from symbolic associations set up within the poem itself, rather than from the polysemy of the plant’s name.

In these botanical lyrics, the joint treatment of Mary and Jesus leaves the abstract signified of the concrete signifier, rose or fleur-de-lys, somewhat ambiguous, while by no means obscuring a clear distinction between the two as individuated persons. Unlike the true-love plant, the names “rose” and “fleurde-lys” do not contribute linguistically to the potential for polysemy in that ambiguity. What happens, then, when words themselves point up important aspects of a different jointure that furthers salvation, the hypostatic union of God and man?

Polysemy: Secte and Sute in Piers Plowman

The words “secte” and “sute,” as Langland uses them, are richly ambiguous.²⁸ Each implies a specific connection between the incarnate Christ and humanity, even where the meaning of that connection is, in Frisson and Pickering’s term, underspecified.²⁹ For both “secte” and “sute,” the connection hinges on the nature of the hypostatic union as imagined in material terms (with reference to Christ’s body) and immaterial ones (the relationship of Christ to humanity). The passage of interest occurs in Repentance’s prayer on behalf of those who desire to undertake the pilgrimage to St. Truth, and includes an explicit invocation, in Latin, of John 1:14 (“Verbum caro factum est”; “the Word was made flesh[, and dwelt among us]”).³⁰ A portion of the passage appears as the second epigraph to this chapter:

And al þat mark hath ymade, Matheu, Ion and lucas	made; John
Of thy douhtiokest dedes was don in oure sekte:	most valiant; “sect”
Verbum caro factum est. (Piers Plowman, 7.139–40a ~ B 5.499–500a)

The differences between the B and C versions of this scene are extensive and significant, bearing as they do on the way Langland investigates Christ’s humanity through a complex range of associations he draws in through two key words, “secte” and “sute.” To understand the role these words play in the prayer, it will be helpful to look initially at two passages that touch on a central and much-discussed issue of the poem, the problem of poverty.³¹ The first is Need’s brief recounting of the Incarnation. In the second, Patience links poverty with sloth by means of the word “secte,” and probably by “sute” as well. Sloth is the last of the sins to confess immediately before Repentance’s prayer, so even though Patience’s discourse comes much later in the narrative, in several ways it provides important context for interpreting Repentance’s “secte” and “sute” passage.

One important concern of the poem’s internal debate over poverty is this: should an almsgiver distinguish between those who could work but deliberately choose not to and those who legitimately cannot? And if so, how? Toward the end of the poem, consideration of this issue results in the stark simplicity of Need’s kenotic retelling of the Incarnation:

And god al his grete ioye goestliche he lefte

And cam and toek mankynde and bicam nedy (22.40–41)

If Christ voluntarily chose poverty, might the poor merit special consideration from those who do not lack the necessities? Need comes to advocate a self-interested interpretation of the axiom, “God helps those who help themselves”; according to Need, the poor may legitimately steal the necessities when their life hangs in the balance.³²

Patience takes up the problem of poverty from another angle: sloth is a trap for the poor, he says, because the poor might assume they should rely on God’s providence rather than helping themselves by working when they are able. He says this at dinner at Conscience’s house, a meal to which he was invited only because he was begging for food or money “pur charite” [for charity] (15.32–35). He reframes, then, the problem of 1 Cor. 13 with which I began Chapter 1: what is the nature of charity and how can one find the likeness of God in humanity? This passage comes in close proximity to the passage I examined in Chapter 1 for Langland’s use of “figuratyfly” (16.286–97). Patience’s argument relies on the keywords “secte” and “sute”; the poor man is not only God’s servant, imitating Christ’s servitude, but also his brother in the cloth, perhaps a member of the same religious order:

And thow sleuthe sewe pouerte, and serue nat god to paye	sloth follows; his pleasure
Meschief is ay a mene and maketh hym to thenke	Misfortune/Deprivation; go-between
That god is his gretteste helpe and no gome elles	man
And he his seruant, as he saith, and of his [seute/secte] bothe.33
And where he be or be nat, a bereth þe signe of pouerte	whether; he bears
And in þat secte oure saueour saued al mankynde.34
(16.94–99 ~ B.14.254–59)

On close examination, this passage conceals a number of subtleties that preclude an exact paraphrase. “Although Sloth follows poverty, and does not serve God to his pleasure [with pun on ‘serue’: ‘does not serve God as it would please God to be served’ but also ‘is not suitable for pleasing God’], Deprivation is always a go-between and reminds him [i.e., the poor man] that God and no one else is his greatest help, and he [the poor man] says that he is God’s servant, and also that he is of his ‘secte’ [probably, ‘sute’], and whether he is or he is not, he bears the sign of poverty, and in that ‘secte’ our Saviour saved all mankind.” While I have translated “Meschief” here as “Deprivation,” the reading “Misfortune” is equally plausible. The act of translation forces a choice that eliminates an important ambiguity: is Patience here describing all poor men (“Deprivation”) or only the deserving poor (“Misfortune”)? A general diffusion of agency also brings into being a representative “poor man” who is never mentioned directly in the text.³⁵ Standing alone, this passage would suggest that “secte” defines a group, certainly poor and perhaps an organized religious order, whose members can be identified visually by some sign, possibly heraldic or based in livery—in this case probably their clothing, or religious habit.

To return to Repentance’s sermon, then: Christ’s humanity becomes a central focus of Repentance’s prayer, which acknowledges a strong linkage between humanity in the Creation (“of nauhte madest auhte and man liche thysulue” [from nothing made everything, and man in your likeness], 7.123), the Fall (“a sykenesse to vs alle,” 7.124), the Incarnation (“bicam man of a mayde mankynde to amende,” 7.127), the Crucifixion (“in oure secte, as hit semed, deyedest,” 7.129), the Harrowing of Hell (“Feddest tho with thy fresshe blood oure forfadres in helle,” 7.133), and, reiterated, the Incarnation (“Verbum caro factum est” 7.140a). Scholars have generally tended to regard “sute” and “secte” as interchangeable, or at least to note that both carry similar meanings: clothing that distinguishes a group who dress alike or the members of such a group, a legal plea or the parties to a plea, and a group following a leader, with “secte” including the additional sense of a particular religious order or movement.³⁶ In the full passage below, with the comparable passage from the B-text, substantive changes between the two versions are indicated by underscorings. I have emphasized the phrase “in oure secte” in C, with its corresponding phrases “in oure sute”/“in oure secte,” “in oure sute,” and “in oure armes” in B. Note that whatever the literal meaning of the word “secte” might be, its triple repetition in C draws attention to Christ’s actions in the flesh, to this enigmatic way of describing Christ’s body:

Y shal byseke for alle synnefole oure sauiour of grace	I shal biseche for alle synfulle oure Saueour of grace
To Amende vs of oure mysdedes, do mercy to vs alle.	To amenden vs of oure mysdedes: do mercy to vs alle,
God þat of thi goodnesse gonne þe world make	GOD, þat of þi goodnesse gonne þe world make,
And of nauhte madest auhte and man liche thysulue	And of nau3t madest au3t and man moost lik to þiselue,
And sethe soffredest hym to synege, a sykenesse to vs alle,	And siþen suffredest hym to synne, a siknesse to vs alle,
And for þe beste, as y beleue, whateuere þe boek telle:	And for þe beste as I bileue whateuere þe book telleþ:
O felix culpa, o necessarium peccatum Ade.37	O felix culpa, o necessarium peccatum Ade &c.
For thorw þat synne thy sone ysent was til erthe	For þoru3 þat synne þi sone sent was to erþe
And bicam man of a mayde mankynde to amende	And bicam man of a maide mankynde to saue,
And madest thysulue with thy sone oure soule & body ilych:	And madest þiself wiþ þi sone vs synfulle yliche:
Ego in patre & pater in me est et qui me videt videt & patrem meum &c;38	Faciamus hominem ad ymaginem et similitudinem nostram39
	Et alibi, Qui manet in caritate in deo manet & deus in eo.40
And sethe in oure secte, as hit semed, deyedest,	And siþþe wiþ þi selue sone in oure sute deidest
On a friday in fourme of man feledest our sorwe:	On good fryday for mannes sake at ful tyme of þe day;
	Ther þiself ne þi sone no sorwe in deeþ feledest,
	But in oure secte was þe sorwe, and þi sone it ladde:
Captiuam duxit captiuitatem.41	Captiuam duxit captiuitatem.
. . . . . . . . . . . .	. . . . . . . . . . . .
The thridde day þeraftur thow 3edest in oure sekte;	The þridde day þerafter þow yedest in oure sute;
A synful marie þe sey ar seynte marye þy dame	A synful Marie þe sei3 er seynte Marie þi dame,
And al to solace synfole thow sofredest it so were:	And al to solace synfulle þow suffredest it so were:
Non veni vocare iustos set peccatores &c.42	Non veni vocare iustos set peccatores ad penitenciam.
And al þat mark hath ymade, Matheu, Ion and lucas	And al þat Marc haþ ymaad, Mathew, iohan and lucas
Of thy douhtiokest dedes was don in oure sekte:	Of þyne dou3tiest dedes was doon in oure armes:
Verbum caro factum est.	Verbum caro factum est & habitavit in nobis.
(C 7.12 0 –4 0 a)	(B 5.478–500a)

C here surely strives for greater clarity on a number of points. For instance, the B passage could be misconstrued to imply that God himself became sinful in taking human nature: “And madest þiself wiþ þi sone vs synfulle yliche,” “and made yourself and your Son alike to us sinful people,” rather than “and made yourself, through your Son, alike to us sinful people,” which would benefit from a further qualification, “though not himself sinful.” The C passage specifies in what respect God becomes like man: “And madest thysulue with thy sone oure soule & body ilych,” “like us in soul and body,” or incarnate. The Latin quotations immediately following these lines demonstrate similar concerns: in B, two similitudes are drawn between God and man: man created in the image and likeness of God, and charity as a state of mutual indwelling, “who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him.” The C passage, however, emphasizes seeing Christ, in his humanity, as an expression of God the Father: “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, and who sees me, sees the Father.” C clarifies the properties of the hypostatic union and focuses on the incarnate Christ.

Elsewhere, B has difficulties in explaining that the divine aspect of the Second Person did not actually die. Line 489, “Ther þiself ne þi sone no sorwe in deeþ feledest,” cannot mean “did not die at all,” since line 487 explicitly denotes a death: “wiþ þi selue sone in oure sute deidest,” “with your own son died in our ‘sute’.” Instead, “sorwe” seems to denote that aspect of the experience of death that results from sin.⁴³ These potential ambiguities are streamlined in C into the qualification “in oure secte, as hit semed, deyedest,” “in our sect, died, as it seemed.” In B, Christ’s human suffering is compassed by the phrase “oure secte”: “But in oure secte was þe sorwe, and þi sone it ladde,” “sorrow was in our sect, and your Son led it [the sect].” However, this could problematically be taken to mean that the Son did not himself feel sorrow. C drops the difficult “oure secte” for the more direct “fourme of man”: “On a friday in fourme of man feledest our sorwe.” Again, C more precisely centers on the hypostatic union, locating sorrow as a passion shared by humanity and the Second Person of the Trinity, although in the process C loses the lovely line “But in oure secte was þe sorwe, and þi sone it ladde,” rich with the suggestion of all four meanings of secte: clothing, law suit, group of followers, and the church. Note also that in line 130, the alliteration stresses incarnate “fourme”: “On a friday in fourme of man feledest our sorwe.”

I will not pause here to unpack the various implications of “in oure sekte” in lines 136 and 140 of C, beyond noting that the triple repetition draws attention to the phrase, whereas the B passage rings a series of changes on it. I am not entirely convinced that “secte” and “sute” should be considered synonymous expressions, especially since all pertinent figural uses noted in both the MED and the OED are derived from Piers Plowman itself.⁴⁴ Although I am not prepared to push this imagery to its logical limit, I find the apparent distinction between legal applications of these words to be suggestive: “sute” can mean the advocate who pursues the suit, and it can also mean the law suit itself. “Secte” would be the parties to such a suit. On this legal level, disregarding all other relevant meanings, to say that Christ is “in our sute” could place Christ in the position of being the legal plea itself or being in the legal plea, an image perhaps related to the “love deed” of the “Long Charter,” whereas Christ “in our secte” more overtly suggests Christ as advocate (since he could not in this case be the plea).⁴⁵ Similarly, if we focus on livery alone, we might distinguish between the clothing itself that sets the group apart and the collective members of the group set apart by such clothing. Other differentiations of “secte” and “sute” might become apparent in other instances when questions of agency predominate. In this passage, in any case, the polysemous “secte” and “sute” push forward the very sort of conjuncture of abstract and concrete that made “true love” so effective. Once again, the complexity of the effect resides, in part, in the word itself, as it signifies or points to the mystery of the hypostatic union.

“He is our clotheing” / “we be his corone”: Ecclesiastical Regalia and the Pauline Body of Christ

In the Truelove poems, the tension between concrete and abstract was generated by the botanical and Christological traditions associated with the word, taken together with the meaning of the word itself. In the case of “secte” and “sute” in Piers Plowman, that tension similarly came from cultural contexts associated with two related but quite different words. Both words were ambiguous in their meanings, both metaphorically signified the incarnate Christ’s relationship to humanity, and both drew (although in different ways) on imagery associated with clothing. That clothing was both historically particularized (aristocratic livery; clerical habits) and Pauline (Col. 3:9–10, “[strip] yourselves of the old man with his deeds, / And [put] on the new”; Rom. 13:14, “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ”; but especially Eph. 6:11, “Put you on the armour of God”).

Julian also engages clothing imagery to think through the mystery of the hypostatic union and relies similarly on a tension between a real-world example of clothing and the spiritual meaning of her metaphor. In her case, distinct types of clothing work together as concretely anchored metaphors that evoke the indwelling of God in the soul and the soul in God, a twinned indwelling that, as a highly abstract concept, is difficult to envision in anything but analogous concrete terms, and is still difficult, even then. She pairs the two metaphors “he is our clotheing” and “we be his corone,” stating them in the simple “A is B” formulation. In Julian’s thinking, the abstractness of enwrapment, concretely described as clothing, is associated with the Pauline notion of the body of Christ and the Johannine concept of indwelling.⁴⁶ Her encompassing vision of what it means to be human makes possible her chiastic statement about humanity: “Iesus is al that shal be savid and al that shal be savid is Iesus.” Julian thus offers a conceptual paradox, the resolution of which requires that one hold in mind simultaneously a realization of the individual (soul) and the collective (Church).

In chapter five, Julian elaborates the metaphor of “he [God] is our clotheing that for love wrappith us” to stress both the intimacy and the domesticity of divine embrace. Here the prominent property of clothing is the completeness and permanence of its covering, the familiarity with which it both embraces and, in the Paris and Winchester manuscripts, layers itself around the loved soul.⁴⁷ In the quotations that follow, underlining and braces (to signal omissions) indicate substantive points of difference among the Sloane, Paris, and Westminster manuscripts:

S: I saw that he is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us.

P: I saw that he is to vs all thing that is good and comfortable to our helpe.

W: Also, I saw that oure good lord is to us all thyng that is good and comfortable to oure helpe.

S: He is our clotheing that for love wrappith us {},

P: He is oure clothing, that for loue wrappeth vs and wyndeth vs, enwraps

W: He is oure clothyng, the which for love wrappith us and wyndith us,

S: halseth us and all beclosyth us {} for tender love, embraces; encircles

P: halseth vs and all becloseth vs, hangeth about vs for tender loue,

W: helpith us and ablyth us, and hangith aboute us makes excellent for tender love,

S: that hee may never leave us,

P: þat he may never leeue vs.

W: that he may never leve us.

S: being to us althing that is gode, as to myne understondyng.⁴⁸

P: And so in this sight I saw that he is all thing that is good, as to my vnderstanding.⁴⁹

W: And so in this syght I sawe that he is all thyng that is good, as to my undyrstondyng.⁵⁰

The totality of everything that is good, as well as everything that is good for the aid of mankind, surrounds an “us” that Julian imagines as an individual body, enclosed and enwrapped in a garment.⁵¹ The same individual “us” is simultaneously a collective “us,” making God’s presence both personal and general in Julian’s sight: “us” comprises each of us and all of us. In this way, she conflates the individual soul with the corporate body of Christ. For the metaphor to work, that which is surrounded is by implication compared to a human body; that which surrounds, while still concretely tactile, is not embodied. In Paris and Westminster, the enwrapment is amplified by further swaddling (“wrappeth vs and wyndeth vs”), while in Sloane and Paris enwrapment is reiterated by the double embrace of “halseth us and all beclosyth us,” an idea smoothed out in Westminster, which loses both embrace and enwrapment (“helpith us and ablyth us”).

The metaphor that began as the concretely imagined “he is our clotheing” recurs in more abstract terms in chapter fifty-four as the enclosure of the loved soul in divine embrace. This theologically complex passage culminates in a doubled triple enclosing; it comes in the midst of the consideration of “substance” and “sensuality” I discussed in Chapter 1. Julian’s focus here is on the distinction between God and human “substance,” God’s “substance” being uncreated and human “substance” created. The two are united through the “sensualite” of Christ:⁵²

And I saw no difference atwix God and our substance, but as it were al God, and yet myn vnderstondyng toke that our substance is in God: that is to sey, that God is God, and our substance is a creture in God; for the almyty truth of the Trinite is our fader, for he made us and kepith us in him; and the depe wisdam of the Trinite is our moder in whom we arn al beclosid; the hey goodnes of the Trinite is our lord and in him we arn beclosid and he in us. We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us: almytyhede, al wisdam, al goodnes, on God, on lord. (54.19–30)

The indwelling works in both directions here, as Julian considers how the soul dwells in the Trinity and the Trinity in the soul in a beautifully forward-moving passage that escalates to its affirming and concluding unity. She recapitulates the doubled indwelling near the end of A Revelation. Although she does not reintroduce the concrete “clothing” of chapter five, her diction recalls the initial reference, reiterating the intimacy of the embrace and its permanence while references to “tongue” and “heart” point toward inward as well as outward intimacy: “. . . notwithstonding that our lord God wonnyth [dwells] in us and is here with us, and al he halsith [embraces] us and beclosith us for tender love that he may never levyn [leave] us, and is more nere [near] to us than tongue can tellen or herte can thynken . . .” (72.29–32).⁵³

The loving embrace of God is as close as Julian gets to the notion of an erotic marriage between Jesus and the soul, derived from commentaries on the Song of Songs, the kind of relationship popularized in the later Middle Ages in the theme of the lover-knight. Theologically, the point of connection linking the two Trinitarian enwrapments is the Incarnation, a connection made solely through the humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity, as Julian is careful to note elsewhere,⁵⁴ but affecting all three Persons.⁵⁵ The Incarnation is also the pivot point for Julian’s twinned understanding of mutual embrace, the soul in God and God in the soul.

While the metaphor “he is our clotheing” leads to the immaterial and abstracted double enclosing by which Julian represents the concept of indwelling, the later metaphor “we be his corone” serves as its complement, progressing to a further doubled understanding of the relationship between divinity and humanity. “We be his corone” reverses the roles of “he is our clotheing” to imagine collective humanity as the embracing enwrapment. Again Julian offers the concrete starting point for her thought in the metaphoric form “A is B”; again the concrete element shifts toward abstract concept; and again the metaphor comes from the realm of clothing, in this case a specific aspect of royal regalia, the crown.

A complicated symbol, the crown circumscribes several key concepts: as regalia, it is adornment as well as a social marker of kingship, a sign of the King of Heaven; eschatologically, it signals eternal life, or heavenly reward. Early church writers held that the Son is crowned by humanity in two aspects: his human nature, which makes possible his transfiguration through sacrifice, and his body the Church, of which he is head. Later writers drew on this tradition, as Alanus de Insulis explains by means of a passage from Isaiah:

“And you will be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God” (Isa. 62). We find many meanings for diadem. It is said that the diadem of Christ is his human nature. . . . Next, the diadem of Christ is the orderly succession of the faithful, of whom it is said: “as an army set in order” (Cant. 6). . . . Of this crown it is said, “you have set, Lord, on his head a crown of precious stones” (Psal. 20). And this is said of the Church. And, “you will be a crown of glory in the hand of your God.” With this crown his own mother crowned him, that is, the Church. (“De nativitate Domini”)⁵⁶

When Julian first introduces the metaphor “we be his corone,” she does not initially press the concrete aspect of the crown as an encircling of the king’s brow. In this early chapter she describes the Father presenting the Son with the gift of humanity (“we”), figured as a crown:

wherefore we be not only his be [by] his beying [buying], but also by the curtes geft [courteous gift] of his Fader we be his blis, we be his mede [reward], we be his worshippe, we be his corone—and this was a singular mervel and a full delectable beholdyng, that we be his corone. (22.22–26)⁵⁷

Later she considers humanity as a present of the Son to the Father, courteously returned from Father to Son (55.5–11). In between, the crown of humanity reappears as part of the Son’s transfigured regalia in the example of the lord and the servant:

Now stondith not the Son aforn the Fadir as a servant dredfully [ fearfully], unornely [simply, humbly] clad, in party nakid, but he stondith aforn the Fadir ever rythe [correct], rechely clad in blissfull largess, with a corone upon his hede of pretious richess; for it was shewid that we be his corone, which corone is the Fadirs ioye, tho Sonys worshippe, the Holy Gost lekyng, and endless mervelous bliss to all that be in hevyn. (51.315–21)

“We be his corone” stresses some of the same aspects of the Incarnation I pointed out in the Truelove poems: Christ’s generosity, nobility, flourishing, abundance. These qualities, initially seen here in Julian’s point-by-point consideration of the Son’s clothing and demeanor, transfer in the course of the passage to the precious richness and abundance of humanity crowning him.

In the parable, the transformation of the Son’s clothing signifies, for Julian, an important theological point. Just as she sees the servant as both Adam and Christ—Christ as a Second Adam—, so too does she perceive the servant’s clothing as human skin, representative of humanity itself: “our foule dedly [mortal] flesh that Gods Son toke on hym, which was Adams old kirtle” (51.307–8). The servant’s clothing appears to her useful, serviceable, adaptable— a sort of working man’s outfit. At first glance it seems worn out and ready for the rag bag:

His clothyng was a white kirtle, sengil, old and al defacid [defaced], died [dyed] with swete of his body, streyte fittyng to hym and short, as it were an handful benethe the knee, bar [bare], semand [seeming] as it shuld sone [immediately] be weryd up, redy to be raggid and rent. (51.168–72)

Christ’s sacrifice transforms it, reinforcing the concept of felix culpa, the happy fault or fortunate Fall. Christ’s post-Passion clothing is more beautiful, she says, than the pre-Fall clothing of the Father. Adam’s old “kirtle” is transfigured into Christ’s “fair, semely medlur,” a cloth of a mixed color, sartorially preferable, she thinks, to the lordly blue of the Father’s unmixed clothing:

our foule dedly flesh that Gods Son toke on hym, which was Adams old kirtle, steyte [narrow], bare and short, than be [by] our saviour was made fair now, white and bryte and of endles cleness, wyde and syde [generously cut and ample], fairer and richer than was than the clothyng which I saw on the Fadir; for that clothyng was blew, and Christs clothyng is now of a fair, semely medlur [ fitting mixture] which is so mervelous that I can it not discrien; for it is al of very worshipps. (51.307–13)

The very mixedness of the cloth is what elevates it, to her mind. The focus here is on the hypostatic union—on the Incarnation, not on the Passion. The Father’s clothing, as she mentions here, had previously been revealed to her as indicating his lordship: blue, for steadfastness; ample, for largeness of the realm (51.154–59). In addition to the “medlur,” Christ’s regal appearance is reinforced by the crown of humanity.⁵⁸

Both aspects of crown Alanus had linked together—the human nature of Christ and the crown of the Church encompassing the Son’s head—coincide in Julian’s statement in chapter fifty-five that “Criste in his body mytyly [mightily] berith [us] up into hevyn” (55.6). She was well aware of the Pauline mystical body of Christ, as her exegesis of the example of the lord and the servant makes clear:

for all mankynd that shal be savid be [by] the swete incarnation and blisful passion of Criste, al is the manhood of Criste; for he is the hede [head] and we be his members; to which members the day and the tyme is onknown whan every passand wo and sorow shal have an end, . . . for the langor and desire of al mankynd that shal be savid aperid [appeared] in Iesus; for Iesus is al that shal be savid and al that shal be savid is Iesus . . . (51.257–69)⁵⁹

Here in chapter fifty-one, when Julian says that “Criste in his body mytyly berith [us] up into hevyn,” she again admits both an individual and a collective sense. By means of his humanity Christ made possible each person’s salvation; each member of his body, the Church, is offered salvation, and all members are offered it. Both meanings—each and all—are similarly conjoined in the figure of the Son crowned by humanity in chapter fifty-five, as they are in “he is our clotheing” in her chapter five.

With “we be his corone,” Julian lays the groundwork for the place where “he is our clotheing” and “we be his corone” coincide, her later revelation of the indwelling of Jesus in the soul:

And than our lord opened my gostly eye and shewid me my soule in midds of my herte. I saw the soule so large as it were an endles world and as it were a blisfull kyngdom; and be [by] the conditions I saw therin I understode that it is a worshipful syte [city]. In the midds of that syte sitts our lord Iesus, God and man, a faire person and of large stature, heyest bishopp, solemnest kinge, worshipfulliest lord; and I saw him clad solemnly and worshiply. He sitteth in the soule even ryte in peace and rest. (67.5–12)

Seeing Christ within the soul, Julian notes bodily attitude, social position, and apparel: large stature, bishop, king, lord, clad solemnly and worshipfully, sitting (later, reigning) in the splendor of the soul.⁶⁰ Given her other references to kingship and the crown, as well as her description here of the soul as a “blisfull kyngdom,” we might have expected that she would see Jesus as king, but why does she also see Jesus as highest bishop? Is the image associated elsewhere with Christ’s humanity?⁶¹ The possibility is all the more tantalizing because Langland similarly describes Christ as highest bishop (metropolitanus), head of the Church, where he links Christ’s episcopal office directly to the Incarnation:

For when þe hye kyng of heuene sente his sone til erthe	exalted
Mony myracles a wrouhte, men for to torne,	he performed; convert
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And bicam man of a mayde and metropolitanus
And baptised and bishinede with þe bloed of his herte	polished clean
Alle þat wilnede and wolde with inwit bileue hit (17.262–69)62	desired; intellect

The passage previously cited from Alanus de Insulis demonstrates how early church writers glossed the crown (corona and diadema) in Isaiah 62 as the Church, diadem of Christ. In Zech. 3:1–5, they interpreted Jesus, the high priest, as a “type” or prefigurement of Christ; he is crowned by angels not with a corona but with a cidara, headdress of the high priest of the Jews. The passage was commonly taken to be a figure of Christ as head of the Church, a connection so widely available in the writings of Jerome, Bede, Rabanus Maurus, and others that Julian might well have known it.⁶³

To make visible the symbolism of both corona and cidara, one particular form of tonsure (the tonsure of St. Peter) emphasized both the episcopal and the regal aspects of priesthood, with the shaved portion signifying priesthood and the remaining hair (ideally, blond, to resemble gold) corresponding to a kingly crown. As Isidore of Seville explains (although here he calls the cidara a thiara, a term later reserved for the papal crown):

I think that the priesthood and kingship of the church are represented in them [the priests], because the top of the head is shaved and the circular crown left below. The tiara, in fact, in the time of the ancients was placed on the head of priests (this, made from cotton, was round as if a half-sphere), and this is signified in the shaved part of the head; a crown, however, is the golden circular band that encompasses the heads of kings. Therefore, each sign is expressed on the head of clerics, so that what was written by Peter the apostle, when he taught, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2.9), also may be fulfilled in a kind of bodily likeness.⁶⁴

Although we cannot know the extent of Julian’s familiarity with such exegetical interpretation from whatever source, it seems probable that she was aware of a link between Church and crown, especially since the key passage for cidara also includes verses that early church writers used to interpret soiled garments as human flesh, as she does in chapter fifty-one. When Julian sees Jesus reigning in the soul as bishop, king, and lord, she reinforces her understanding of the Church as the Pauline body of Christ. She may well have intended an additional association between the Crown of Thorns so prominent in her early revelations and the crown’s later more glorious manifestation, as a few critics have noted.⁶⁵ Her earliest description of the Crown of Thorns indicates that the crown may itself entirely circumscribe her Revelation:

the first [shewing] is of his pretious coroning with thornys; and therewith was comprehended and specifyed the Trinite with the incarnation and unite betwix God and man soule, with many faire sheweings of endless wisedome and teacheing of love, in which all the sheweings that follow be grounded and onyd [united, “one-ed”].⁶⁶ (1.5–9)

Encompassing the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the unity of God and man, Julian’s first showing signals that the crown, a symbol of perfect enwrapment, proves to be more important in her work than it may first appear.⁶⁷

In Julian’s Revelation, then, the crown of humanity complements the enwrapment of the soul by God, with the images jointly pointing toward a union between God and humanity that is concretely realized in the hypostatic union. In the Langland example, the words “secte” and “sute” engaged a complex Incarnational interplay of concrete and abstract based in a clothing metaphor but evoking other specific cultural particulars from legal and ecclesiastical realms. In the Julian example, the imagistic cue lies in a concept rather than the polysemy of words—enwrapment or “beclosing” as expressed by the concrete examples of “clothing” and “crown.”

Linguistic Dilation: Abstractions and Near-Personification

Julian and Langland each elsewhere exploit the capacity of language to take on brief and surprising agency within a narrative, a topic that is properly the subject of my next chapter. Here, though, it is worth looking briefly at how such exploitation relies on the tension between concrete and abstract I have been examining. This rhetorical strategy, which I will call linguistic dilation, is a trope of sorts, whereby language dilates, or stretches out momentarily, giving agency to an abstraction in a way that shades toward but does not become personification.⁶⁸ While linguistic dilation may be noted in everyday conversation, it is an especially interesting phenomenon to consider in light of the Incarnation because of its enactment of linguistic agency, whereby a fragment of language momentarily takes on a sort of life of its own within a narrative. In this respect, linguistic dilation fleetingly enacts a certain making-concrete analogous to the emanation linguistically expressed in the Johannine “Word made flesh.”

Taken individually, linguistic dilations tend to efface themselves within their textual moment. Consider the following passages from Julian’s Revelation:

The merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher fulfilled al erth and descendid downe with Adam into helle, with which continuant pite Adam was kept from endles deth. And this mercy and pite dwellyth with mankind into the tyme we com up into hevyn . . . (51.138–42, emphasis mine)

Pite in love kepith us in time of our nede, and longing in the same love drawith us into hevyn . . . (75.7–9, emphasis mine)

And what tyme that our soule is inspirid into our body, in which we arn made sensual,⁶⁹ also swithe [as quickly] mercy and grace begynyth to werkyng, haveing of us cure [responsibility] and kepyng with pite and love . . . (55.19–22, emphasis mine)

In these three cases, abstractions engage in actions in time and over time as well as in figural movement through space. In the first instance, the personification of “mercy and pite” is noticeable because they dwell, or remain, with mankind. In exegetical tradition, mercy and pity are closely linked in the context of salvation, because the Psalm text, “Mercy and truth have met each other; justice and peace have kissed” (84:11), was read as a meeting of the “Four Daughters of God.”⁷⁰ Julian’s treatment is particularly noteworthy, however, for what it does not do: unlike the related examples cited by Colledge and Walsh, Julian’s “mercy and pite” are not characters in an allegory, as they are in Robert Grossteste’s Château d’Amour (ll. 289ff.) or in Piers Plowman (C.20.116ff.). They do not engage in dialogue; they are not sisters; they do not meet to confer. They do remain with mankind, as we have seen, but they do nothing more personified or allegorical than that. What of “the merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher”? We could consider it a personification as well, since “descendid downe with Adam into helle” is characteristic of personifications in the type of allegory common to morality plays, wherein a personified abstraction accompanies another who journeys through a (possibly internal) landscape. However, had the expression come without the cognitive priming for personification provided by “this mercy and pite dwellyth with mankind,” the potential for “the merciful beholdyng” to be personified would probably not even register. “Fulfill[ing] al erth” is less recognizable as a human action than “dwell[ing]” is, and even dwellen, in Middle English, carries a sense that does not sustain personification; it can mean, simply, “to remain.”⁷¹

“The merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher” is a useful case for noting how linguistic dilations hover between synecdoche and personification, attached, like synecdoche, to an associated agent but capable of temporal and spatial action independent of that agent; detached, like personification, from their associated agent but only fleetingly, being essentially undifferentiated from their agent.⁷² “The merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher” might be considered a synecdoche by reading God’s loving attitude as part of God’s loving self, indicating that God himself never left Adam even in the descent into hell or during his sojourn there. We might see “the merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher” as a personification because it descends into hell with Adam in fellowship, but neither synecdoche nor personification is clearly indicated in this case. The sense here is the more difficult to construe because Julian does not specify whether God or Adam is doing the beholding (God’s “lofly cher” directed toward Adam, or Adam perceiving that the “lofly cher” is so directed). Perhaps the beholding is particularly merciful, in this instance, because the syntax might allow for reciprocal gaze. In the absence of further specifically human postures, practices, or characteristics, “the merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher” hovers between synecdoche and personification as a temporary concentration on an aspect of God, a sort of linguistic vernicle: God’s countenance not fully fleshed out but fleetingly sketched.

The next two examples are not likely to seem like personifications at all, except perhaps when isolated for close attention. “Werkyng” and “kepyng” are not bodily actions, nor are they tied strongly to human cultural practices, as “dwellyth” is, although in Julian’s work they do express what the Trinity does for mankind. We might ordinarily think of these cases as near-personifications, if we consider them at all. However, these minor abstractions are an important feature of our language, common in everyday conversation, and worth noticing in their own right for their figural potential, since given the right conditions they emerge more prominently as figures of speech. For instance, the colloquial sentence, “Your love keeps me from giving up” is but a short step from the latent figural promise of “Your love sustains me.” While in ordinary conversation the figural potential of each sentence may remain unexploited, each contains the seeds of personification, given the right context. The latter sentence has greater figural potential because the verb additionally leads to multiple possible metaphors (nourishment, or architectural structure, or buoyancy), as well as to personification through bodily support. Because of its verb, the former sentence must rely more strongly on surrounding references to evoke personification. Keeping is neither particularly bodily nor specifically tied to human cultural practice, although with further development it may lead to a personification: keeping as a shepherd keeps his sheep, or as a lord keeps a servant, for example. In the cases cited here of “pite in love,” “longing in the same love,” “mercy and grace,” and “pite and love,” the linguistic dilations become visible by association: when these qualities are linked to the Trinity by the key actions of keeping, drawing, and working, we become increasingly likely to discern the indefinite outlines of linguistic dilation with each iteration of the verb.⁷³ In this respect, linguistic dilations align with the verb-centered focus of conceptual metaphor theorists, such as I described in Chapter 1.

Unlike symbols, linguistic dilations do not rely for their sense on a fixed signification available to a reader either from an earlier moment in the work or from some common stock. The emergent sense of linguistic dilation must be worked through anew in each case. In this respect, the trope relies heavily on the cognitive process of sense creation. While, as we have seen, the “literal-first” model of cognitive processing supposes that individuals select from among senses in their mental lexicons, other models acknowledge and account for online sense creation (sense creation in the moment of thought).⁷⁴ In a study in the early 1980s, for instance, Herbert Clark and Richard Gerrig wondered what happens when we come across novel uses of words for which no appropriate sense exists in our lexicon. The targets of their study were what they called contextual expressions, which they defined as expressions for which “word meanings must be created and not selected,” that creation being based in part on the linguistic context offered and in part on known associations with the words making up the contextual expression. Contextual expressions, as defined by Clark and Gerrig, share an important quality with linguistic dilations, in that “most contextual expressions are so prosaic that they escape notice.”⁷⁵ As an example, Clark and Gerrig offer the following observations on the word crab:

One dictionary lists the sense of crab that appears in A crab scuttled along the beach, but not the senses that appear in I like crab [“crab meat”], There’s crab on the menu [“a dish with crab meat”], How many crabs do you have there? [said by a grocery clerk, “cans of crab meat”], and I stopped in Perry’s for a quick crab [“meal of crab meat”] (from the San Francisco Chronicle). In a quick crab, note that it is the meal, not the crab, that is quick. If we have no more entries in our mental lexicons than there are in the dictionary, then we created the last four senses and did so unwittingly.⁷⁶

For their study, Clark and Gerrig crafted sentences in which proper nouns are treated as verbs. For instance, in one scenario they asked participants to envision their response to the prompt, “Please do a Napoleon for the camera.” Most people imagined “posing with one hand tucked inside their jacket à la Napoleon.”⁷⁷ In this case, they argue, the response is based on a conceptual framework derived from what the participant knows about Napoleon rather than on any lexical association; the cognitive processing involved is primarily conceptual, not linguistic.⁷⁸ The on-line sense creation involved in determining what action would constitute “a Napoleon” depends in part on the linguistic context in which “a Napoleon” is requested and in part on the image participants associate with Napoleon in the context of posing.⁷⁹

Such conceptual frameworks also underlie linguistic dilation, as they do allegory, personification, symbolization, typology, and tropes that rely for their effect on abstraction. In the particular examples of the interplay between concrete and abstract I have offered in this chapter, some conceptual expressions (“he is our clotheing,” “we be his corone,” “the merciful beholdyng of his lofly cher”) have depended on contexts based in literary or cultural traditions; others (like “trewe loue” and “sute”) additionally include a lexical component. In an Incarnational context, the tension between concrete and abstract highlights the conjunction of divinity and humanity inherent in the hypostatic union; medieval writers draw on that tension to offer views of Christ’s humanity that explore the nature of personhood. I began this chapter by noting the elusive suggestiveness inherent to the Truelove tradition’s shift between the concreteness of the true-love plant and the ambiguity of the term’s broader significations:

Whan þuse leues to gydere ben set

A trewe loue men clepon it

. . . . . . . . .

Or elles seche it in my wounde

ffor þere may trewe loue ben founde (“Long Charter,” 125–30)

Such movement—for medieval writers a seeking of meaning in language as well as a quest for medicinal aid—proffers the notion that agency lies behind action: who set the leaves together in this fashion? Who enables the finding that follows seeking? My next chapter takes up that focus on agency in narrative by means of the deictic markers—the pointing words—that gesture toward the source of salvific agency. When “trewe loue” enacts, as fourteenth-century writers see it, poetic form may sketch the outlines of such action as it issues forth emanatively in a “love deed.”