Everyman and the Implications of Bernardine Humanism in the Character ‘Knowledge.’
[In the following essay, Jambeck argues that Bernadine Humanism sheds much light on the principles of Everyman.]
In his recent essay on the play Everyman V. A. Kolve addresses himself to what persists as “one of the most difficult questions in Everyman scholarship. Namely, is the character Knowledge to be understood in something like our modern sense of that term [scientia, intelligentia]? Or does it stand instead for the even then rarer, and now archaic, medieval sense of ‘acknowledge,’ naming that part of the sacrament of penance which concerns a full confession of sins?”1 With few exceptions, most readers subscribe to one of the two general definitions which Kolve succinctly outlines: Those who regard her as scientia note the humanistic implications in the “crucial placement of Knowledge … as the pivot that turns Everyman toward salvation”;2 those who interpret her as contrition or acknowledgment of one's sins remark the play's emphasis upon the efficacy of the sacraments, particularly the “hous of saluacyon” episode in which Knowledge introduces the hero to “Shryft.” However, while either definition satisfies the doctrinal, as well as dramatic interests of the morality when applied to isolated instances of Knowledge's “counseyll,” neither is sufficiently inclusive to account for the complex of meanings which the character embodies. For example, Knowledge's ministrations are not confined to the “hous of saluacyon,” as well they might be if she is to be narrowly defined as contrition. Thereafter, Knowledge continues to advise Everyman, calling his attention to particulars that are quite outside the province of contrition but which nonetheless bear significantly upon the hero's progress, as, for instance, when she admonishes Everyman to receive the holy sacraments of the Eucharist and extreme unction (lines 706-709) or when she delivers her disquisition on evil priests (751-763). Similarly, to define Knowledge simply in “the modern sense of that term” is to neglect her obvious role in the penitential sequence of the play. Knowledge not only guides Everyman through the rigors imposed by Shryft, but also represents a requisite preliminary in the sacramental ordinance. Clearly, as the playwright is careful to point out, the acknowledgment of one's sins and contrition are dispensations which occur in a precisely delineated chronology, one anticipating the other, indeed imposing the necessary condition for its salutary effect (638-647).
An attractive alternative interpretation of Knowledge is offered by A. C. Cawley in the introduction to his edition of Everyman. Defining the ultimate end of human knowledge as the knowledge of God, Cawley cites a fifteenth-century paraphrase of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux's dictum: “ther is non saued / wythoute to haue knowleche of hym self. for of this knowleche groweth humylyte. which is moder of helthe.”3 Although Cawley does not pursue the argument beyond this brief notice, his observation is suggestive on several counts. First, Bernard's theory of knowledge describes a penitential ascesis much like that depicted in the morality, an ascesis which serves to clarify the apparently disparate functions that “knowledge” performs as a counselor to the hero. Too, Bernard's concept of knowledge—especially as it reveals his profound interest in the psychological process by which the soul comes to grapple with the motive principles of human salvation—also serves to unravel several doctrinal puzzles which have occasioned a good deal of theological uneasiness among the readers of the play: that is, the dramatist's insistence upon “Good Dedes” as the regenerative principle of Everyman's salvation; his intimation that the hero, sustained by Knowledge, is the agent of their restitution; and his notion of the role of the four auxiliary advisers—“V. Wyttes,” “Beaute,” “Strengthe,” and “Dyscrecyon”—in the moral play's penitential sequence. That is not to suggest, of course, that the playwright had his Bernard open before him. As has been frequently noted, the influence of Bernardine mystical theology on English morality plays, while considerable, is seldom direct.4 And this is particularly true in the case of Everyman. The lines of influence between the saint and the playwright, crossing as they do some three centuries of popular interpretation and commentary, can hardly be restored with any confidence. Nevertheless, Bernard's theology remains an especially valuable aid to the modern reader of Everyman in that it serves as a kind of index to the sensibility, so popular in the later Middle Ages, which informs the doctrinal matrix of the play.
A convenient starting place for a preliminary appraisal of that sensibility is the “hous of saluacyon” episode. Having despaired at the infirmity of his Good Deeds, those acts of charity by which one merits salvation, Everyman is conducted by Knowledge to Shryft, under whose ministrations the hero will receive the “scourge of penaunce” (605). Where, according to the ordinance of the sacrament, we would expect Shryft as the priestly mediator to apply the salutary strokes of the penitential rod, thereby indicating that the hero has received the absolving grace which penance confers, we witness instead a rather curious shift in the sacramental process. Turning to Knowledge for the scourge, Everyman proceeds to flagellate himself, and as he does so, he is gladdened by the appearance of his Good Deeds, once unable to stir, now “hole and sounde, / Goynge vpryght vpon the grounde” (625-626). The implication is, of course, that Everyman himself is able to perform the expiatory satisfaction required for his sins, an implication which is corroborated by the subsequent scene. As Everyman rejoins the company of his counselors, having emerged from the “hous of saluacyon,” V. Wyttes remarks the hero's transformation: “Peas! For yonder I se Eueryman come, / Whiche hath made true satysfaccyon” (769-770). V. A. Kolve notes in this instance that V. Wyttes “names the change as though Everyman were its agent; but of course the facts are otherwise. Christ alone could make true satisfaction for sin—He is the great restitution—but it is available to any man through the sacrament of the altar.”5 Similarly, Arnold Williams questions the dramatist's orthodoxy, arguing that according to Catholic theology, man is not saved by good deeds, but by grace: “I have the feeling that all the great historical forms of Christianity agree that, after Adam's fall, man is unable to achieve salvation by his own merits. As a race, man is saved by the sacrifice on the cross—the cycle plays make this point—and as an individual, man is saved by grace earned by this sacrifice—the moral plays make this point.”6 Consequently, Williams concludes that while medieval Christianity does not yield a theology which answers wholly to the Everyman penitential sequence, “there is a theology in which man achieves his salvation through his own efforts, aided by knowledge. This is a fundamental Buddhist tenet, and it ought to come as no surprise that the original source of Everyman is a Buddhist parable.”7
One need not go quite so far afield. As Kolve and Williams attest, at the very center of Everyman's doctrinal concern is the generic morality emphasis upon the expiatory action of Calvary as the primary means by which “euery man” might share in the fruits of the Atonement. Thomas F. Van Laan has pointed out in this regard that through his extensive references to the Passion, the dramatist sets Christ's sacrifice and Everyman's progress in a significant thematic parallel: The Christic action—Christ's assumption of human form, his suffering and death, and his subsequent resurrection—“is pertinent to the meaning of Everyman, for it alone has made possible the salvation there enacted, and in Christian thought the successful pilgrimage of the individual analogously recreates that action.”8 What has been generally ignored, however, is that the playwright reorders the traditional moral play categories of human salvation in a wholly fresh direction. Implicit in the Christocentric interest of the play is a functional definition of the efficacy of human knowledge as the principal disposition by which man may indeed become an active agent in the work of his own redemption. Aberrant though it may appear, the dramatist's theology hews closely to the theory of satisfaction which arose in the later Middle Ages as an adjunct to the soteriological doctrine of Christus patiens, a theory that is largely Bernardine in the intellectual, as well as affective design by which it was known to the Everyman audience.
To understand the impact of the Bernardine penitential piety upon the doctrinal structure of Everyman is to appreciate the late-medieval emphasis upon the potentialities of human nature—not only that of Christ, but also that of man himself—as the operative principle in the redemptive process.9 Unlike the earlier Church Fathers who saw the victory of Calvary in terms of a contest between the divinity of Christ and the diabolical powers, a cosmic drama in which mankind was a “helpless spectator,” later commentators on the Atonement locate the Savior's triumph in his suffering humanity and man's hope for salvation in his active participation in that exemplary human nature.10 Bernard's theory of knowledge reflects this shift in attitude. For Bernard, the Savior's sacrifice not only redeemed man, but also established the pattern of human response by which man could repay the debt incurred by the price of Christ's “infinite love wherewith He gave Himself for our salvation.”11 The very paradigm of human charity, Christ's passion provides for those men “who knew how to love only in a carnal manner,” a palpable realization of human perfection which may draw them to a more spiritual love of God himself.12 That the contemplation of Christ's suffering humanity must appeal, of necessity, to the more physical impulses of human affection is of little concern to Bernard, for the very existence of Christ as man has as a crucial function to portray the potential value of human experience in the plan of salvation.13 What other reason, Bernard asks, for the ignominious death but that “he wished to partake of the same suffering and temptation and all human miseries except sin … in order to learn by his own experience how to commiserate and sympathize with those who are similarly suffering and tempted”?14 Although Christ as the Word of God knew man's anguish from all eternity, he did not know it by experience and, what is more, could not, without taking on the guise of the servant himself.15 And this was one of the reasons for the Savior's having abased himself, that he might learn compassion,
not with that pity which he, ever blessed, had from eternity, but with that which he learned through sorrow when in our form. And the labor of love which he began through the former, he consummated in the latter, not because he could not consummate it in the one, but because he could not fulfill our needs without the other.16
The implication for mankind is clear: If Christ “made himself wretched … in order to learn what he already knew; how much more should you … observe what you are, that you are wretched indeed, and so learn to be merciful, a thing you cannot know in any other way.”17 Thus, for Bernard, the ascent to that love which man owes God begins and ends with knowledge: To know yourself is the inception of that wisdom from which charity issues; “to know God is its consummation.”18
Crucial to Bernard's theory of knowledge, particularly as it bears upon his penitential system, is his perception that between the knowledge of self and that of God there exists an implicit identity.19 Citing the Scriptural injunction that man is made ad imaginem dei, Bernard explains that since Christ alone is the image of God, it is from him that the soul, made in his image, has its likeness.20 Accordingly, the mysterious filiation between Christ and the human soul exacts of mankind a terrible personal burden. When the individual conforms his will to that of the Savior, he is capable of participating in the divine eminence which constitutes the soul's “greatness”; to know one's self, that is, to recognize the imprint of Christ in one's soul, is literally to know God, indeed to become like him. But to sin, thereby miring the soul in its fleshly existence, is to obviate man's natural resemblance to God. In his sermon, “De imagine sive Verbo Dei,” Bernard recounts the Bible's censure of those who have willfully divested themselves of the image in which they were made:
Every man walketh in a vain shew; surely they are disquieted in vain. Altogether in vain, for it goes on to say: He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. And why is he ignorant, except that he bends down towards things low and earthly, and treasures up for himself nothing but earth? He does not know in the least for whom he is gathering those things which he confides to the earth. …21
Bernard's description of the spiritual myopia which attends man's defection from the will of God calls to mind the opening scene of Everyman, where God, decrying mankind's thoughtless abandonment to “wordly ryches,” complains that they have lost sight of the very “beynge that I them haue lent” (22-57). For Bernard, like the playwright, the implications of “euery mannes” ignorance are tragically apparent: Deformed by the vicious appetites of a corrupt body, the soul is blinded to its own nature as a “divine analogue,” a blindness which severely impairs its ability to recover the resemblance that constitutes its essence.22
Blinded as he is by his inordinate love for the “goods” of this world, man is gravely deflected from that charity which constitutes his only hope for salvation. Therefore, the first order of knowledge for one who would recover the path of charity is to know himself and his predilection for cupidity, to recognize, as Everyman himself perceives, “A, Good, thou hast had longe my hertely loue; / I gaue the that whiche sholde be the Lordes aboue” (457-458). However, as Everyman's progress testifies and Bernard confirms, self-knowledge, while a necessary prerequisite, is inadequate as the efficient cause of satisfaction, for, having judged himself contemptible, the penitent requires of himself the “strictest expiation.”23 Accordingly, between the inception of wisdom and its logical conclusion—the knowledge of God—is an intermediate step without which spiritual advancement is impossible. Hoping for the justice that promises emendation but despairing at their own depravity, “those whom truth has caused to know, and so condemn, themselves,” must flee to Christ and embrace the precept which his sacrifice enjoins: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And this is the second step of truth, when they seek it in their neighbors, when they learn others' wants from their own, when they know from their own miseries how to commiserate with others who are miserable.”24 Each individual, recognizing that he is the spiritual heir of Adam, must come to the understanding that his sinful wretchedness is the common legacy of all mankind. To apprehend one's own moral deformity is to know and, consequently, for the contrite Christian, to have compassion for the similar plight of one's neighbors. Moreover, Bernard insists, this knowledge must be eminently compassionate, revealing itself in the works of active charity, or it remains a fatal impediment to salvation:
knowledge stored up in the memory—which is, as it were, the stomach of the soul—unless it has been cooked over the fire of charity and so distributed and disposed amongst our spiritual members—which are our habits and our acts—so that the soul herself derives a goodness of the things she knows—unless this be the case, our knowledge shall be imputed to us as sin. …25
The second order of knowledge, then, is to understand the intimate rapport which exists between the penitent and his Savior, to apprehend that Christ's resolve to suffer the frailties of human nature obliges man to a certain reciprocity. As the Savior learned mercy through the agonies of His passion, so, too, the penitent, through the knowledge of his own soul's misery, must recreate his Redeemer's act of charity by performing those good works which the sacrifice of Calvary prescribes. Illumined by the wisdom of the Word, the penitent ascends to the final stage of knowledge wherein the soul “shall know, even as also it is known; then shall it love even as it is loved, and the Bridegroom shall rejoice over the Bride, because knowledge and love are reciprocal between them.”26
What is interesting in Bernard's analysis of human knowledge, particularly as it recalls Everyman's progress, is his insistence that self-knowledge is not merely rational cognition.27 It consists, as well, of an exercise of the will. Animated by the first stirrings of knowledge, the soul turns from the distractions of sense data to examine itself “in the light of truth.”28 For Bernard, the soul's introspection is the prelude to true wisdom, for, having contemplated itself, the soul discovers “how far removed she is from the ideal of perfection.”29 At this juncture, the penitent, chastened by truth, willingly acknowledges his loss of innocence and acquiesces to the purifying emotions of the will—sorrow and penitence. Both dispositions, Bernard maintains, are crucial to spiritual regeneration: sorrow, because it purges the reason of its pride; penitence, because it stimulates the rational faculty to distinguish properly the most expedient course to salvation. Thus, in Bernard's penitential program, self-knowledge represents a tripartite progression: The penitent must have cognition “of what he has done,” humility for “what he has deserved,” and the intention, born of compunction, to recover “what he has lost.”30 With the cooperation of the will and reason, the penitent ascends to the condition of “free counsel” (liberum consilium), that is, “enlightened understanding,”31 by which the judgment, clearly perceiving and consenting to the good, fervently desires justice and resolves to perform the good works of active charity.
Interestingly enough, it is to Everyman's plea for “counseyll” (516) that Knowledge appears for the first time, her arrival signifying the hero's newfound understanding (524-526). Commenting on Knowledge's entrance, Van Laan notes what has become a commonplace in Everyman criticism: “that Knowledge comes from outside Everyman, that she is unexpected, that her entrance is not prepared for—all suggest that Everyman has finally received the grace which he also needs to make his penitence effective, the grace which had always been available but which in his blindness he had been unable to perceive.”32 While Professor Van Laan's observation accurately assesses the transformation of Everyman's “condycyon,” a conversion which Knowledge's arrival declares, his reading fails to take into account the theological implications that underpin the dramatic situation. Indeed, that Knowledge is an external force, “unexpected” and “not prepared for,” is denied by the action of the play. What is particularly striking in this regard is that the playwright, like Bernard, does not characterize his penitent's acquisition of knowledge as a passive acquiescence of a force imposed from without, but as the logical fruition of an internal probing, a psychologically intelligible ascent through three successive stages of augmented understanding. What is more, each stage adheres exactly to the Bernardine tripartite sequence; and, apparently to underscore the climactic progression of Everyman's growth, each step is dramatically signalled by an impassioned appeal for “counseyll.”
Despairing at the flight of Fellowship, Cousin, and Kindred, Everyman turns to Goods, of whom he makes his first explicit request for Counsel: “Come hyder, Good, in al the hast thou may, / For of counseyll I must desyre the” (339-400). Ironically, it is Goods, the allegorical metaphor of inordinate worldliness, who, in response to the hero's entreaty, echoes God's opening rebuke of Everyman for having “combred” himself with “worldly ryches” (60). Goods confirms Everyman's abased reason (“For bycause on me thou dyd set thy mynde”)33 and his spiritual myopia:
For my loue is contrary to the loue euerlastynge. / But yf thou had me loued moderately durynge, / As to the poore gyue parte of me, / Than sholdest thou not in this dolour be.34
Thus, he confronts the hero with his prideful ignorance, manifested by Everyman's self-indulgent submission to the transitory “goods” of fleshly gratification. The playwright's selection of Goods's testimony as the antecedent to true knowledge is by no means fortuitous, for in Bernardine terms, the soul's path to enlightenment begins with the promptings of the immediate objects of temporal satisfaction perceived “in the light of truth.”35 Consequently, Goods's revelation, however malicious his intent, forces Everyman to recognize the onerous nature of his transgression: “I gaue the that whiche sholde be the Lordes aboue” (458). Incipient though it may be, the penitent's awareness signals, according to Bernard, not only the first stage of self-knowledge—the freeing of oneself from the inertia of sin—but also the first stirrings of grace, a spontaneous revivification which does not presuppose any prior merit in the penitent.36
So, too, Everyman, discerning the implications of “what he has done,” ascends to the second stage of penitence—the dissipation of pride, “the daughter of ignorance of self,”37 by a humble examination of his own wretchedness:
For my Goodes sharpely dyd me tell
That he bryngeth many in to hell.
Than of my selfe I was ashamed,
And so I am worthy to be blamed;
Thus may I well my selfe hate.
Of whome shall I now counseyll take?
(474-479)
The consequence of his self-examination and subsequent recognition of his need for additional “counseyll” is immediately apparent: Everyman's introspection, his candid assessment of “what he has deserved,” enables him for the first time to perceive his soul's corruption, dramatically symbolized by his Good Deeds “so weke / That she can nother go nor speke” (482-483). The playwright's description of Good Deeds as shackled by the weight of sin (486-488) and, later, his depiction of Everyman's enfeebled “boke of counte” (503-505) follow the Bernardine scheme closely, in that the dramatist couches his representation of the soul's supine condition in the very imagery which Bernard uses to demonstrate the efficacy of this stage of self-knowledge: “for how can she (the soul) help being truly humbled in this true knowledge of herself, when she beholds herself laden with sins, oppressed with the weight of this corruptible body, entangled in worldly cares, polluted with the filth of carnal desires, blind, earthward stooping, feeble … ?”38 But the humility induced by self-contemplation, Bernard continues, is hardly debilitating, for while it reveals the soul's impotence, it also serves to liberate the reason from the corrupting blindness of the flesh. Having recognized the “helplessness of his condition” through the ministrations of humility, the penitent comes to the realization that his only recourse is Christ's mercy: “Turn to me, O lord and deliver my soul: Oh, save me for thy mercy's sake.”39 The appeal for mercy, Bernard observes, anticipates the final stage of self-knowledge in that it is motivated by the fearful understanding that the loss of one's soul is imminent without the intercession of Christ's redemptive power.
Thus, Everyman, disheartened by the “blynde rekenynge” of his soul and agitated by the urgency of his plight, implores the supernal aid which only Christ's mercy can provide: “Our Lorde Iesus helpe me! / For one letter here I can not se” (506-507). That Everyman's prayer represents the reversal of his “dystres” is signalled on two contextual levels: dramatically, by his accord, however unwitting, with the salvific remedium invoked by God in the opening lines of the play: “I profered the people grete multytude of mercy, / And fewe there be that asketh it hertly” (58-59). And, doctrinally, by his subsequent ascent to the final stage of self-knowledge—the fear of God's justice which, according to Bernard, “is the beginning of salvation quite as much as it is the beginning of wisdom”:40
Good Dedes, I praye you helpe me in this nede,
Or elles I am for euer dampned in dede;
Therefore helpe me to make rekenynge
Before the Redemer of all thynge,
That Kynge is, and was, and euer shall.
(509-513)
Having completed the three preparatory steps to enlightenment, Everyman makes his final appeal for counsel (516), and in response to the hero's heartfelt request, Good Deeds introduces her sister “Called Knowledge, whiche shall with you abyde / To helpe you to make that dredefull rekenynge” (520-521). Here, the shape of Everyman's dramatic development and the doctrinal structure coalesce—unlike most other moralities, where the appearance of allegorical personifications never quite coincides with the hero's spiritual progress and where vices and virtues in turn bedevil and redeem a hapless soul who awaits the outcome of a struggle it barely shares in. Knowledge's arrival at this decisive moment is no deus ex machina resolution of the hero's “dystres.” Hardly “unexpected” or “not prepared for,” her entrance symbolizes, indeed dramatically realizes, the fruition of Everyman's frenetic attempt to understand and thereby avoid his impending doom. By embodying the private motions of the hero's conscience, the playwright emphasizes the psychological experience which Everyman and the audience share alike, the mounting recognition of the terrible but salutary knowledge that in the economy of salvation one's wilful capitulation to the “Goods” of this world renders his personal account a “blynde rekenynge,” and therefore a personal act of satisfaction—the restitution of his Good Deeds—is required to make that “counte full redy.”
For Bernard, this juncture in the progress of the soul is crucial, in that having attained to “the knowledge of yourself, that you may fear God,” the penitent must discover the subsequent and curative step, to “attain to the knowledge of Him, that you may love Him also. In the one is the beginning of wisdom, in the other is the consummation of it. …”41 In his compassionate regard for mankind, Bernard points out, Christ provides every man the means by which he may personally revive those good works that, on the one hand, promote the penitent's knowledge of God and, on the other, witness his love for the Creator: penance, through which one crucifies himself with the Savior; the Eucharist, by which one incorporates himself with Christ; and alms, “since by the labour of your hands you feed and clothe Jesus Christ in His poor, so that nothing may be wanting to you.”42
In his “De septem gradibus confessionis,” Bernard notes that although self-knowledge conduces one to recognize his own shameful condition, unless he discover in that wisdom the most expedient path to redemption, it remains unprofitable. Having realized the nature of his soul's “dystres,” the penitent must take the necessary steps to recover his original innocence by submitting himself to the sacramental renewal of confession: “The first path and the first step in this way is undoubtedly self-knowledge” (cognitio sui); the remaining are penitence (poenitentiae), sorrow of the heart (dolor cordis), confession of the mouth (confessio oris), mortification of the body (maceratio carnis), purification of one's works (correctio operis), and perseverance (perseverantia).43 Thus, Knowledge, her appearance witnessing the fruition of Everyman's self-scrutiny, introduces him to “Confessyon.” That the hero is ready to participate in the rigors which attend the expiation of his sins is affirmed by his recapitulation of the threefold ascent to knowledge (cognitio sui, dolor cordis, and poenitentiae) that he has just completed:
O gloryous fountayne, that all vnclennes doth claryfy,
Wasshe fro me the spottes of vyce vnclene,
That on me no synne may be sene.
I come with Knowlege for my redempcyon,
Redempte with herte and full contrycyon.
(545-549)
Shryft, who perceives that Everyman is rightly disposed “bycause with Knowlege ye come to me,” outlines the remaining steps of the penitential sequence:
I wyll you comforte as well as I can.
And a precyous iewell I wyll gyue the,
Called penaunce, voyder of aduersyte;
Therwith shall your body chastysed be,
With abstynence & pesueraunce in Goddes seruyture.
(556-560)
Like Everyman's recitation of the preliminary stages of Bernard's way to confession, those steps which stimulate the inward turning of the will to God, Shryft's program accords point by point with the remaining conditions of the Bernardine taxis, the outward signs of sacramental renewal: Everyman must first mortify his flesh with the rod of “abstynence” (maceratio carnis); he must then persevere in “Goddess seruyture” (perseverantia); finally, turning to Knowledge for the “scourge of penaunce,” the hero embarks upon the last stage of the penitential program—correctio operis—and therein resides the peculiarly Bernardine conception of the penitent's role in the salvific transaction.
Admonishing Knowledge to “kepe hym in this vyage,” Shryft reminds Everyman of the enduring reciprocity which penance commemorates:
Here shall you receyue that scourge of me,
Whiche is penaunce stronge that ye must endure,
To remembre thy Sauyour was scourged for the
With sharpe scourges, and suffred it pacyently;
So must thou or thou scape that paynful pylgrymage.
(561-565)
In terms of the narrative structure, Shryft's exhortation answers, and thereby resolves, God's opening complaint that “My lowe that I shewed whan I for them dyed / They forgete clene, and shedynge of my blode rede” (29-30).44 Doctrinally, Shryft describes the popular medieval conviction that the sacrifice of Calvary, while an historical event, is not circumscribed by space or time. Transcending the perimeters of history, Christ's loving immolation reaches across the ages to engage man spontaneously and personally in the work of the Redemption. In his sermon, “On the Two Visions of God,” Bernard notes, for example, that to know and therefore to love God is to share affectively with Him His every torment:
Be like to Him now also whilst you see Him as He has made Himself for your sakes. For if you refuse not to resemble Him even in His humiliation, you have acquired the right to resemble Him in His glory as well. He certainly will never suffer the partners of His sorrow to be excluded from a participation in His triumph.45
Consequently, essential to Bernard's program of spiritual progress is the fervent meditation upon Christ's suffering and death as representing not only the “once-for-all” determinant of human salvation, but also an ongoing disposition, a contemporary reality, which serves as an invitation for man to realize that he may participate actively in the process of the Atonement by becoming, in the most literal sense of the word, a “partner” with his Savior in the Redemption: “Is it that we want to share in His joys and to have no part in His sorrows? If that be the case, we prove ourselves unworthy to be His members. For all that He suffers, He suffers for our sake. But if we are unwilling to cooperate with Him in the work of our own salvation, how, I ask, shall we show ourselves his coadjutors?”46 That the playwright subscribes to the notion of the penitent as “coadjutor” is affirmed in Everyman's subsequent prayer. Echoing the Bernardine sentiment that he will become a “partynere” with Christ in his glory through the “meanes of his passyon,” the hero turns to Knowledge for the “scourge of penuance” (602-605), and it is Knowledge who, as she relinquishes the scourge, identifies the co-agency of Everyman's regeneration: “Thus I bequeth you in the handes of our Sauyour; / Now may you make your rekenynge sure” (609-610).
That Knowledge should precipitate Everyman's self-mortification coincides precisely with Bernard's conception of the profound relationship which exists between human wisdom and the works of charity in the scheme of salvation. In his The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard Etienne Gilson observes in this connection that, for Bernard, the act of mortification is the process by which we prove “that we are aware of our misery, and pass judgment on ourselves.”47 It gives proof, moreover, that “even in its secret depths the will is now accordant with the divine will; it is thus the concrete expression of an inner communion between our willing and God's willing. …”48 By flagellating himself, then, Everyman affirms that he not only recognizes the gravity of his sinfulness but judges it worthy of punishment, indeed judges himself, according to Bernard, “as God judges him … inasmuch as he begins to know himself by process of reason as God Himself knows him.”49 However, merely to appraise one's wickedness as deserving of God's justice is not sufficient compensation. The penitent must invite that judgment, initiate it, thereby witnessing his resolve, as Gilson puts it, to go “half way to meet the punishment that he knows he deserves.”50 Thus, Shryft's injunction that Everyman share in Christ's every anguish is no empty bromide of an extravagant piety but a consummately practical expression of the penitent's capacity to collaborate with the Savior in the ransom of his own soul. By identifying his sufferings with those of the Redeemer, by compassionating through his personal trials with the Passion of Christ, Everyman testifies that his will is in accord with God's, that he wills what God wills, and this affinity, according to Bernard, is “spiritual charity itself.”51 It is under the aegis of penance, then, that Everyman gives witness to the second degree of knowledge which directs the penitent to participate in the act of charity and the reparation derived therein by affectively sharing in the loving immolation that the sacrament celebrates. Characteristically, it is Knowledge who announces that Everyman has successfully reestablished in his soul the condition by which it may recover the vigor impaired by the “synne of the flesshe”:
Now, Eueryman, be mery and glad!
Your Good Dedes cometh now; ye may not be sad.
Now is your Good Dedes hole and sounde,
Goynge vpright vpon the grounde.
(623-626)
For Bernard, the soul, enlightened by knowledge and animated by charity, “stands upright … because it has been lifted up by the hand of the Word, and set, as it were, upon two feet. …’52 But, newly vivified, the soul requires the additional support of certain props without which it “can neither stand firm in the good to which we have attained, nor rise up towards any fresh good.”53 And the chief among these supports are: scientia (the wisdom which is the result of man's wits), discretionem (discretion), virtus (strength), and decor (beauty).54 The same powers—V. Wyttes, Dyscrecyon, Strengthe, and Beaute—appear in Everyman as auxiliary counselors to the hero, an appearance, it should be noted, that has prompted a rather curious ambivalence among the readers of the play. For example, Van Laan has pointed out that while the arrival of the new advisers “visualizes the accomplished purgation of sin and the resulting restoration of natural gifts,” they can “ultimately contribute little of value” to Everyman's progress.55 Similarly, for John Conley, although Dyscrecyon and V. Wyttes provide “some measure of spiritual comfort,” that of Strengthe and Beaute is “brief and delusive,” all four failing to “comfort Everyman in extremis.”56 However, when viewed within Bernard's penitential catechesis, the appearance of these “persones of grete myght” (658) not only constitutes the logical fulfillment of Everyman's potential as the co-agent in the work of his salvation, but also serves to clarify the doctrinal structure which the play to this point has dramatized. As has been frequently noted, the new companions, unlike the first group of friends (Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods), are not accidental properties but the “natural powers” of the hero himself, discovered to him only after he has undergone the mortification of penance.57 That is, having satisfied the requirements of the sacrament, Everyman is proffered the help of those additional counselors who, according to Bernard, confirm the incursion of grace into the penitent's soul and therefore elevate the human condition by augmenting its capacity for those natural endowments which link man's nature with that of Christ—knowledge and charity.
Accordingly, like his counterpart in Everyman who promises “aduysement and delyberacyon” (691), Bernard's discretion is also a “moderator and conductor,” a “director of the affections,” who tempers the novice's fervor for charity by the moderating influence of knowledge:
Where zeal is eager, there discretion, which is the rule of charity by order, is most of all indispensable. Without knowledge zeal is found to be almost less useful and less effectual; and most often it even very dangerous. The more fervent is zeal, the more eager the temper, the more profuse the charity; the more need is there of a watchful knowledge, which moderates zeal, tempers the warmth of the disposition, and regulates the gushings of charity.58
Dyscrecyon regulates Everyman's latent impetuosity (My herte is lyght, and shal be euermore; / Now wyll I smyte faster than I dyde before”).59 Strengthe offers the resiliency calculated to fortify the hero in his struggle for perfection: “and I, Strengthe, wyll by you stande in dystres, / Though thou wolde in batayle fyght on the grounde” (684-685). Again, it is Bernard's definition of the adviser's special office that places Everyman's role as “coadjutor” in clearer relief, for the Bernardine notion of virtus as that power which renders “the soul victorious over itself, and consequently, invincible by all other adversaries”60 underscores the significant relationship between Strengthe, Knowledge, and Good Dedes in the morality's thematic structure. Encumbered by the bulk of his own corruption, the penitent, according to Bernard, is especially vulnerable to the assaults of three adversaries—the World, the Flesh, and the Devil-which impel the soul to evil by their wicked suggestions.61 However, while the three foes impel the penitent to sin, Bernard argues, they cannot overthrow him unless, captivated by their wiles, he personally surrenders. Consequently, since man is the principal occasion of his own fall, it is necessary that he arm himself with that “strength, which, as far as in it lies, directs and rules all things according to reason.”62 Marshalling the forces of reason against its enemies, the soul acquires the strength of the Word, who makes “all those whose hope is in Him to be, as it were, all powerful,” and therefore cannot “possibly be either overthrown or brought into subjection by any open violence, secret guile, or enticing allurement.”63 Thus, raised up by its ability to assess the nature of its “dystres,” the soul is prevented from falling again by strength. And, in so far as it witnesses the penitent's firm resolve to bring his will into accord with that of the Word, strength is nearly analogous to the love of virtue which is the pinnacle of human wisdom, so that “whatsoever strength laboriously prepares, wisdom makes of and enjoys; and that which wisdom ordains, contemplates, regulates, strength carries into effect.”64
Once the soul has recovered “stability by the gift of strength,” Bernard observes, and “maturity by that of wisdom, it remains that it should obtain the gift of beauty.”65 At first glance, Bernard's definition of beauty as that “resemblance to Him” without which the soul “is not able to please Him who is the fairest among the sons of men” hardly seems consonant with the frivolity of Beaute in Everyman, particularly her rather fickle desertion of the hero as he approaches the grave (794-801). For Bernard, Beaute's defection is by no means inconsistent with her nature, for of the endowments which God bestows upon man, beauty is a gift of the body whose term is circumscribed by the very transiency of its agent. Having recognized that his soul has been salved by the unction which Christ's merciful love provides, the penitent acknowledges his soul's health through his external behavior, “providing for things honest not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.”66 Thus, while beauty attests to the eternal values of Christ's love, its tenure is necessarily brief, in that beauty's testimony inheres in the outward reflection of the penitent's inward capacity for virtue: “when, then, all the movements of the body, all its gestures and habits, are grave, pure, and modest, far removed from all boldness and licence, from all lightness and luxury, but adapted to righteousness, and to every duty of piety, then the fairness of the soul shall be visible …”67 It is not surprising, then, that with the appearance of Beaute and her companions, Everyman resolves to perform the two remaining “Goode Dedes” which, unlike the private expression of charity enjoined by the mortification of “penaunce,” give public confirmation of the penitent's desire to love as he himself is loved: almsgiving, through which he may re-act the Savior's compassionate regard for his misery by performing like acts of mercy for his neighbors; and the eucharist, in which he communicates with Christ's Passion, celebrating the “words, ‘eat My Flesh’ and ‘drink My Blood,’ as an injunction to participate in His sufferings and imitate the example which He has given us in the flesh.”68 Therefore, heeding the “vertuous monycyon” of his new advisers, Everyman is moved to make his personal testament: “In almes / halfe my good I wyll gyue with my handes twayne / In the way of charyte with good entent” (699-700). Thereupon, at the behest of Knowledge and V. Wyttes, the hero determines to visit Preesthode from whom “Fayne wolde I receyue that holy body” (728).
V. Wyttes' advice to the hero in this instance, particularly since he seems to digress from the doctrinal center of the play by his lengthy eulogy of priesthood, has received considerable critical attention and any prolonged discussion here would be redundant. However, one aspect of V. Wyttes' sermon on Preesthode is clarified by Bernard's notion of scientia and should be noted briefly. While Good Deeds summons the other advisers, it is Knowledge who introduces V. Wyttes to the hero, and logically so, for as his name indicates and Bernard confirms, V. Wyttes represents the bodily senses, those avenues of knowledge without whose help the soul “could never acquire that science” which should bring the penitent to the knowledge of the Word that he might learn the truth of “His ways.”69 For Bernard, scientia, as the product of the five senses, imparts to the penitent that special vision which enables him not only to recognize, but also to practice the good “when it appears.” A novice in the ways of God, the penitent, wishing to “do good, but not knowing how,” runs the terrible risk of wandering from the path of righteousness, lured by his incapacity to discriminate between that good which liberates the soul and those “goods” of the flesh which imprison it.70 Thus, as an antidote to Everyman's manifest inability to sort out the ephemeral from the spiritual, V. Wyttes endorses Preesthode, who, according to Bernard, possesses the “senses trained to discern good from evil” and therefore can instruct the soul “in the truths she needs to know.”71 By commending the “lest preest” whose power as the surrogate of Christ on earth is greater than “ony aungell that is in heuen” (736), V. Wyttes offers to Everyman the most expedient access to those remedia which constitute the temporal source of man's spiritual solace:
For of the blessyd sacramentes pure and benygne
He bereth the keyes, and therof hath the cure
For mannes redempcyon—it is euer sure—
Whiche God for our soules medycyne
Gaue vs out of his herte with grete pyne.
Here in this transytory lyfe, for the and me. …
(716-721)
As the symbols of Christ's suffering humanity and the visible links between man and his Savior's propitiation, the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, give palpable form to the most profound truths of the redemptive mystery. And it is priesthood who is the human steward of those mysterious but salutary truths. By reenacting sacramentally what took place historically on Calvary, the priest “bereth the keys” of redemption which open the way for the penitent not only to fathom the good communicated by the Redeemer's sacrifice, but also to share in it by personally participating in the sacramental renewal of that action. Thus, true to his nature, V. Wyttes extols the “blessyd sacraments” as the sensible signs which bring man into direct and intimate contact with the cross of Christ. Hardly a digression, his sermon gives dramatic voice to the truth which Everyman has come to know through his own penitential experience, a truth that is theatrically realized when the hero rejoins the company of his counselors, having “receyued the sacrament for my redempcyon” (773):
And now, frendes, let vs go with-out longer respyte.
I thanke God that ye haue taryed so longe.
Now set eche of you on this rodde your honde,
And shortely folowe me.
I go before there I wolde be. God be our gyde!
(776-780)
Now assured that the hero has received the grace which the sacraments perpetuate and, what is more, that he is willing to cooperate with that grace by persevering in the good which they commemorate, V. Wyttes can exclaim with full confidence: “Peas! For yonder I se Eueryman come, / Whiche hath made true satysfaccyon” (769-770).
Despite their “vertuous monycyon” and the obvious succor it provides, the new counselors must desert Everyman when he enters the grave. As the bodily endowments of the hero, theirs is the temporal solace which, while it promises a spiritual good, pales in the face of eternity. However, structurally paralleling as it does the first desertion in which the hero's friends leave him bereft of worthwhile counsel, forsaken in his “moost nede” (371), this second defection offers a touchstone by which Everyman's spiritual progress can be measured. Unlike the earlier desertion, which is marked by Everyman's frantic despair, the exit of his trusted companions serves to emphasize the hero's newfound wisdom which each auxiliary adviser has helped to realize (841-844).
Once ill-equipped to answer Death's summons because of his appalling ignorance, Everyman now testifies to the depth of his understanding by becoming himself the spiritual adviser to an audience who has yet to complete its “iornaye” to salvation:
Take example, all ye that this do here or se,
How they that I loued best do forsake me,
Excepte my Good Dedes that bydeth truely.
(867-869)
For Bernard, the penitent's role as counselor is not only a logical, but an indispensable stage in the ascent to the knowledge of God. In his final sermon on the Canticles, “De septem necessitatibus, propter quas anima quaerit Verbum,” Bernard summarizes the steps by which the soul seeks the presence of its Savior, a summary that serves as a convenient plot outline of Everyman itself:
The soul seeks the Word, and accept His correction with willingness and joy, so that she may obtain enlightenment and the knowledge of Him, that by His support she may attain to virtue, and be reformed according to wisdom, that she may be conformed unto His likeness and rendered by Him fruitful in good works, and finally, may be happy in the enjoyment of His Presence.72
Of the seven stages, the penultimate is of particular interest in that Bernard here defines “good works” specifically in terms of the penitent's responsibility to assume his Savior's pastoral function as teacher. Illumined by the merciful knowledge which Christ taught through his own example, the penitent in turn must also generate “new spiritual lives,”73 to “bring forth souls by preaching.”74 Everyman's personation of Christ's priestly role, according to Bernard, consummates the penitential ascent; for it indicates that the hero has finally arrived at the point in his spiritual progress wherein, purged of the ignorance which obviates the soul's likeness to God, he fervently desires to restore his natural resemblance as the imago dei by identifying his every action with that of the Redeemer. With the kind of expert timing and economy which characterizes the entire play, the dramatist drives home the significance of Everyman's new-found identity in the hero's final speech. As he enters the grave, Everyman declares his affinity with Christ, his desire for complete and intimate conformity to the will of his Creator, by intoning those very words which Christ himself uttered at the moment of his death: “In manus tuas, of myghtes moost / For euer, Commendo spiritum meum (886-887).
Lest the import of Everyman's dying words escape the audience, the playwright invokes the metaphor so often used by Bernard to define this state of beatific similitude: “that of a soul which God can henceforth seek to make His spouse because He recognizes Himself in it, and because nothing now remains in it to which His love cannot be given.”75 Thus, at the close of the play, an Angel, exalting in the hero's betrothal to Christ, welcomes Everyman's soul: “Come excellence electe spouse to Iesu!” (894).76
While the Angel's greeting signals Everyman's salvation, the Doctor's epilogue reasserts the doctrinal premise of the hero's progress to redemption. Addressing the audience who, as the nominal heroes of the play, will themselves be summoned to a “generall rekenynge,” the Doctor warns that before the seat of judgment all supports forsake mankind “saue his Good Dedes”:
For after dethe amendes may no man make,
For than mercy and pyte doth hym forsake.
If his rekenynge be not clere whan he doth come,
God wyll saye, “Ite, maledicti, in ignem eternum.”
(912-915)
The playwright's emphasis upon the efficacy of the individual's personal “accounte” in the salvific transaction diverges radically from the penitential theology shared by the earlier English moral plays: in Mankind and The Castle of Perseverance, for example, man is indeed saved by “mercy and pyte” at the last moment and despite his soul's “rekenynge.” For the Everyman playwright, however, no such facile resolution suffices to explain the fearful eschatological reality of human existence. Confronting the paradoxical nature of the human predicament vis à vis the divine economy, an economy in which man, as the agent of his own fall, is rendered helpless, but nonetheless is to be judged finally on the basis of his own actions, the dramatist depicts a penitential ascesis which accommodates the limitations of human nature with man's awesome responsibility as the co-principal of his own conversion. Unlike the other moral plays where the mankind figure is depicted as mired in a kind of spiritual stasis, vexed and redeemed by powers that are ultimately beyond his ken, Everyman describes a hero of impressive energy and wit, one who, much like the dramatic heroes of later times, personally explores the recesses of his private conscience to seek out an informing experience which gives shape to his human destiny. While clearly the product of an age which was fond of analyzing the corporate nature of a hapless Humanum Genus, Everyman is a decidedly atypical product, one which looks forward to a humanism that is implicitly modern. And it is that humanism, particularly its emphasis upon the potential of the individual to reconcile the frailties of his bodily existence with his native aspiration for the eternal, which is Bernard's legacy to the age of Everyman; for in his penitential theory of knowledge, affirming as it does the capacity of the penitent not only to apprehend, but also to enact a course of action that will determine his salvation, Bernard rescues human nature from its limbo of passivity and places it squarely at the center of the redemptive mystery.
Notes
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“Everyman and the Parable of the Talents,” The Medieval Drama, ed. Sandro Sticca (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971), rpt. in Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson, eds., Medieval English Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 325.
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Edgar T. Schell and J. D. Shuchter, eds., English Morality Plays and Moral Interludes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 112.
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Everyman (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), p. xxii. All references to Everyman are to this edition. Hereafter cited as Everyman.
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Edgar T. Schell, “On the Imitation of Life's Pilgrimage in The Castle of Perserverance,” JEGP, 67 (1968), 235-248. E. N. S. Thompson, The English Moral Plays (1910; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1970), pp. 295-310, 330-339. E. K. Chambers, English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (1945; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 50. Arnold Williams, The Drama of Medieval England (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1961), pp. 142-162. The Marco Plays, ed. Mark Eccles, EETS No. e.s. 262 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. xx-xi, 202-16. Robert Potter, The English Moral Play (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 19-22.
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Kolve, 333.
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“The English Moral Play Before 1500,” Annuale Mediaevale, 4 (1963), 20.
-
Ibid.
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Thomas F. Van Laan, “Everyman: A Structural Analysis,” PMLA, 78 (1963), 473.
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Cf., for example, Richard W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 219-241. Robert D. Marshall, “Dogmatic Formalism to Practical Humanism: Changing Attitudes Towards the Passion of Christ in Medieval English Literature,” Diss., University of Wisconsin, 1965, Chs. 1-3.
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Southern, p. 235.
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Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940), p. 36.
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St. Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray (Dublin: Browne and Nolan Ltd., 1920), I, p. 202. Hereafter cited as Canticles.
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Cf., for example, Marshall, Ch. 1.
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The Steps of Humility, trans. by George Bosworth Burch (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), p. 137. Hereafter cited as Steps.
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Gilson, ch. 3, especially p. 77. Gilson cites by way of example, De Gradibus Humilitatis: “non ergo debet absurdum videri si dicitur Christum non quidem aliquid scire coepisse quod aliquando nescierit, scire tamen alio modo misericordiam ab aeterno per divinitatem et aliter id tempore didicisse per carnem.” Gilson notes that “it is necessary to emphasize in didicisse the force that expresses the value attributed by St. Bernard to experiential knowledge.” p. 234, note 100.
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Steps, p. 143.
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Ibid., p. 147.
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Ibid., p. 39. Canticles, I, p. 441.
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Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 290. And, Canticles, II, p. 445.
-
Canticles, II, pp. 446-447.
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The translation is that of Samuel J. Eales, Cantica Canticorum: Eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Solomon (London: Elliot Stock, 1895), p. 490. Hereafter cited as Cantica.
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The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, p. 296.
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Steps, p. 155.
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Ibid.
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Canticles, I, p. 431.
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Cantica, p. 507.
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Steps, p. 55.
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Canticles, I, p. 432.
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Ibid.
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Saint Bernard's Sermons for the Seasons and Principal Festivals of the Year, trans. by a Priest of Mount Melleray (Westminster, Maryland: 1950), III, p. 447.
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Bernard of Clairvaux, Concerning Grace and Free Will, trans. Watkin W. Williams (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920), p. 20.
-
Van Laan, 470.
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Everyman, p. 13.
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Ibid.
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Canticles, I, pp. 432-433.
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Steps, p. 163: Cf. also, p.52.
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Canticles, I, p. 441.
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Canticles, I, p. 433.
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Ibid., p. 434; Cf. also p. 451.
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Ibid., p. 436.
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Cantica, p. 239.
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Sermons, I, p. 153.
-
Patrologia Cursus Completus: Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1859), Vol. 183, Col. 647ff.
-
I have silently amended Cawley's reading of “Lawe” to “lowe.” Cf., for example, his note at p. 29.
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Sermons, II, p. 345.
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Ibid., p. 68.
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Gilson, p. 72.
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Ibid., p. 76.
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Ibid., p. 73.
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Ibid.
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Ibid., p. 72.
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Cantica, p. 517.
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Ibid., p. 520.
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Cf. Sermons LXXXV and XLIX in Cantica, pp. 516-525, and pp. 297-307.
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Van Laan, p. 472.
-
John Conley, “The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman,” Speculum, 44 (1969), 381-382.
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Lawrence V. Ryan, “Doctrine and Dramatic Structure in Everyman,” Speculum, 32 (1957), 730.
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Cantica, pp. 299-300.
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Everyman, p. 19.
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Cantica, p. 519.
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Ibid., p. 518.
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Ibid., p. 519.
-
Ibid.
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Ibid., p. 521.
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Ibid., p. 522.
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Ibid., p. 523.
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Ibid., pp. 522-523.
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Sermons, I, p. 150.
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Canticles, I, pp. 32-33.
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Cantica, p. 517.
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Ibid., pp. 471-473.
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Ibid., p. 516.
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Steps, p. 110.
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Cantica, p. 524.
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Gilson, p. 99.
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Cawley punctuates lines 894: “Come, excellente electe spouse, to Iesu.” Cawley's punctuation, however, is largely editorial and ignores an imporant variant meaning of the line; that is, Everyman is the “spouse to Iesu.”
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