Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture

by Virginia Langum

  Yet excessive mortification and deliberate diminishment of one’s health may also constitute forms of pride. Particularly in the high and later Middle Ages, discussions of indiscreet or extreme forms of abstinence often raise concerns of pride. 70 Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime condemns excessive abstinence as a form of pride, as it “commits robbery when it deprives nature of its necessary substance, when it robs it of food and sleep and other necessary contributions.” Furthermore, such behavior “takes from God what is his, when because of its lack of strength and excessive weakening of the body it withholds payment of the owed service.” 71

  The Cloud of Unknowing provides a compelling discussion of the dangers of excess virtue, as it details the perils of allowing pride not only to destroy one’s body, but to lead one to misinterpret the spiritual or metaphorical as the literal. In an example of such absurdity, the author describes young “presumptuous” novices who upon hearing that they should “lift up here herts vnto God” misunderstand “up” in literal terms, staring up at the stars as though they might “wiþ þe coriouste of here ymaginacion peerce þe planetes, & make a hole in þe firmament to loke in þerate.” 72 In their pride, they mistake spiritual for material references, endangering the health of their bodies. Again the young noviceshereþ his sorow & þis desire be red & spokyn, how þat a man schal lift up his herte vnto God, & vnseesingly desire for to fele þe loue of here God. & as fast in a curiouste of witte þei conceyue þees wordes not goostly, as þei ben ment, bot fleschly & bodily, & trauyalen þeire fleschly hertes outrageously in þeire brestes. & what for lackyng of grace, þat þei deseruen, & pride & curiouste in hemself, þei streyne here veynes & here bodily miȝtes so beestly & so rudely, þat wiþinne schort tyme þei fallen ouþer into werynes & a maner of vnlisty febilnes in body & in soule, þe whiche makiþ hem to wende oute of hemself & seke sum fals & sum veyne fleschly & bodily counforte wiþoutyn, as it were for recreacion of body & of spirite. Or elles, ȝif þei falle not in þis, elles þei deserue—for goostly blyndnes & for fleschly chaufyng of þeire compleccion in þeire bodily brestis in þe tyme of þis feinid beestly & not goostly worchyng—for to haue þeire brestes ouþer enflaumid wiþ an vnkyndely hete of compleccion, causid of misrewlyng of þeire bodies or of þis feinid worching, or elles þei conceyue a fals hete wrouȝt by þe feende, þeire goostly enmye, causid of þeire pride & of þeire fleschlines & þeire coriouste of wit. 73

  Here the author shows how mistaking the metaphorical or spiritual for the material or bodily leads to the dissolution of the body, the breaking down of the rational power, so that a person becomes an animal. Paradoxically, that which begins with the uniquely human sin of pride in the rational power dissolves into the beastly. Furthermore, the novices’ pride and presumption are enflamed by an unnaturally hot complexion. Acting on their hermeneutic presumption causes a “misreuling” of the body, leaving them open to physical corruption and manipulation by the devil.

  In turn, after misinterpreting the metaphorical as material, the novices mistake the material for the metaphorical. The Cloud-author continues with an account of how contemplatives mistake “þe fiir of loue” which they feel in themselves as arising from a spiritual rather than a material cause:& ȝit, paruenture, þei wene it be þe fiir of loue, getyn & kyndelid by þe grace & þe goodness of þe Holy Goost. Truely of þis disceite, & of þe braunches þerof, spryngyn many mescheues: moche ypocrisie; moche heresye, & moche errour. For as fast after soche a fals felyng comeþ a fals knowyng in þe feendes scole, riȝt as after a trewe feling comeþ a trewe knowing in Gods scole. For I telle þee trewly þat þe deuil haþ his contemplatyues, as God haþ his. Þis disseite of fals felyng, & of fals knowyng folowyng þeron, haþ diuerse & wonderful variacions, after þe dyuerste of states & þe sotyl condicions of hem þat ben disceyuid; as haþ þe trewe felyng & knowing of hem þat ben sauid. 74

  The ability to distinguish between the spiritual and material is critical to the Cloud-author’s project of understanding the mystical life, which involves both a profound self-awareness and control of the flesh, qualities inhibited by presumption and pride. The excesses of fasting are further explored in relation to gluttony’s cure and indiscreet abstinence in the penultimate chapter of this book.

  The intersections of pride with medicine represent significant contemporary issues: general social concerns such as dress, issues affecting particular religious communities, such as excessive fasting, and the phenomenon which impacted everyone in some way: the Black Death. Yet in a period confronted daily with death, health itself also could remind the faithful of their sinfulness and mortality.

  Notes

  1.Donald R. Howard, The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 43.

  2.On the medieval lifecycle, see Mary Dove, The Perfect Age of Man’s Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: a Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

  3.On the tradition of divisions or offshoots of the seven deadly sins, see Spencer E. Young, “The Subsidiary Sins as Guides to Early Dominican Pastoral Care and Moral Reformation in Stephen of Bourbon’s Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus,” Mediaeval Studies 76 (2014): 169–215. For a list of Stephen’s species of pride compared to those of Peraldus, Gregory and some others, see, p. 203.

  4.See Young, p. 171.

  5.A recent study of ambition suggests that ambition was not treated separately from avarice until the early modern period. In Ambition: a History from Vice to Virtue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), William Casey King asserts that concepts of ambition did not appear in English until Reginald Pecock in the fifteenth century (p. 19). However, ambition surfaces as a species of pride in some of the treatises on vices and virtues, both here in The Book of Vices and Virtues and at least by 1340 in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, also as a species of pride. Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt: or, Remorse of Conscience, ed. Pamela Gradon, EETS o.s. 23 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 17.

  6. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 12 ff.

  7.Ibid., pp. 13–14. Heresy and hypocrisy are also variable species of pride. Walter Hilton, for example, includes heresy and hypocrisy as types of pride in The Scale of Perfection. In contrast with “bodili pride,” which is of “fleischli lyvynge men,” “goostli pride is of ypocrites and heretikes.” The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas Bestul (Kalamazoo, Mich: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), p. 95.

  8. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 12.

  9. Middle English Sermons, edited from British Museum MS. Royal 18.B.xxiii, ed. Woodburn O. Ross, EETS o.s. 209 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 68. This mid-fifteenth-century manuscript contains some Latin sermons, extracts from Mirk’s Festial and other miscellaneous texts edited as Middle English Sermons. For a description, see Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons, pp. 1381–2.

  10.Aquinas, Summa Theologica II–II, q. 162, art. 2.

  11. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 14. Similarly, when comparing the diseases and conditions healed by Jesus, Robert Rypon aligns the proud metaphorically with both demoniacs and lunatics. Rypon, ed. Johnson.

  12.In Mirour de l’Homme, the poet Gower compares pride to frenzy, which completely deprives a person of reason; similarly, in a sermon correlating the seven sins with diseases, the biblical Nebuchadnezzar is an exemplum for the frenzy of pride. Gower, Mirour de l’Homme, p. 38. The sermon is found in London, MS. Harley 2391, in a version of Mirk’s Festial. See Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons, p. 1340.

  13.On the medical and cultural history of epilepsy, see Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness: a History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1945).

  14.The biblical passage with which Bartholomaeus opens his passage De epilencia is Mark 9:19: “being thrown down upon the ground, he rolled about foaming,” and the medical authority is Constantine. On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1, p.
352.

  15. Middle English Sermons, p. 69.

  16. Ancrene Wisse in Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, ed. Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson (Mawhwah, N. J.: Paulist Press, 1991), p. 113.

  17.For example, in Ayenbite of Inwit, pride blinds man such that he cannot see himself. Ayenbite of Inwit, p. 16.

  18. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 11. In a similar vein, the pastoral Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen also describes the intoxicating delusions of grandeur offered by the devil’s wine of pride, a pleasant tipple that develops into an incurable sickness. A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: a Prose Version of the Speculum vitae, ed. from BL MS. Harley 45, ed. Venetia Nelson (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), p. 104. Although this version survives in only four fifteenth-century manuscripts, it is a prose version of the more popular Speculum Vitae, which exists in 38 manuscripts, most of which date from the fifteenth century.

  19.“And notice that pride must be despised because it harms the eyes of the soul, as smoke harms the eyes of the body. It is fittingly likened to smoke because as smoke condenses near the ground and evaporates when it rises up, so the proud person is great in his own estimation, but in the future he comes to nothing; the Psalmist declares: ‘I have seen the wicked highly exalted;’ and further ‘They shall come to nothing, like smoke.’ Similarly, smoke is born of fire but does not inherit light, likewise pride is born from a good substance, just as a moth from clothing, a worm from fruit, and tarnish from gold, and yet it spoils and consumes what it is born of. Similarly, the higher smoke rises, the swifter it will fall.” Fasciculus Morum, p. 59. Peter of Limoges, The Moral Treatise on the Eye, ed. Richard Newhauser (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012). There are hundreds of manuscripts of this text; see Newhauser for its manuscript history. It was also cited by several homilists. See, for example, Wenzel on the integration of this text in English sermons. Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections, pp. 327–8.

  20.Metaphorical descriptions of swelling pride also occur in medical texts. As in modern English, “proud flesh” refers to an excess of tissue or blood vessels formed as part of the healing process. When Lanfranc enumerates the types of ulcers, he describes “the hori elde wounde þat haþ summe greete crustis, or ellis a wroting, sum gret proud fleisch to hiȝe.” Lanfranc, Science of Chirurgie, p. 78.

  21.See, for example, Augustine’s sermons 9, 123, 142 and 380 cited in Robert J. Connell’s Soundings in St. Augustine’s Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), pp. 165, 261, 277; Augustine, Two Books On Genesis Against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, ed. Roland J. Teske (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), p. 99; Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job, XXIII.6.13.

  22.Chaucer, “Parson’s Tale,” X.397.

  23.Ibid., X.422.

  24.Lanfranc describes this condition a “maner passioun þat haþ manie diuers names, for summen clepen it cancrum, & summen lupum. & men of fraunce clepen it malum nostre domine. And lumbardis clepen it fier of seint antony, & summen clepen it herisipulam.” Lanfranc, Science of Chirurgie, p. 208.

  25. English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Anne Hudson, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1996), p. 289.

  26.In the Middle English verse adaptation of Grosseteste’s Templum dei, for example, pride is a “bolneynge & dropsy.” “Templum domini,” line 590. Edition found in Roberta D. Cornelius, The Figurative Castle: A Study in the Mediæval Allegory of the Edifice with Especial Reference to Religious Writings (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1930), pp. 91–112.

  27.London, Lambeth Palace MS. 392, f. 172r. The sermon comes from an early fifteenth-century translation of the sermons of Nicholas Aquavilla. For a description of the manuscript, see Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons, pp. 1533–4.

  28.The sermon from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lat. th. d. 1, fols. 171r–173r is outlined and transcribed in Holly Johnson, “A Fifteenth-Century Sermon Enacts the Seven Deadly Sins,” in Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, eds. Newhauser and Ridyard, pp. 107–131 (pp. 120–1).

  29.Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, p. 126.

  30.Cassian, John, Collationum, PL 49 and trans. by Boniface Ramsey, The Conferences (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). All translations taken from the Ramsey edition. XXIV.15–6.

  31.Ibid., V.7.

  32.Martin J. Tracey, “The Moral Thought of Albert the Great,” in A Companion to Albert the Great: Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, ed. Irven Resnick (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 347–380 (p. 375).

  33.In Alexander’s Summa Theologica; this and other examples of similar schemata found in Wenzel, “The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research,” pp. 7–8. See also Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth, p. 43.

  34.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II, qu. 162, art. 1.

  35.Ibid. II.II, qu. 162, art. 3. See Lombardo, The Logic of Desire, p. 192.

  36.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II, qu. 162, art. 3.

  37.Lombardo, The Logic of Desire, p. 94.

  38.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II, qu. 162, art. 5.

  39.Lyric “Of the Seven Ages” from British Library MS. Addit. 37049, cited in Sue Niebrzydowski, “ ‘Becoming bene-straw:’ the Middle-Aged Woman in the Middle Ages,” in Middle-Aged Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Sue Niebrzydowski (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), pp. 1–14 (pp. 4–5).

  40.Shulamith Shahar, Growing Old in the Middle Ages: “Winter Clothes Us in Shadow and Pain” (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 70. Although Bartholomaeus does not mention pride among the advantages of age—“it deluyereþ vs out of þe power of myȝti men and tirauntis, and makeþ end of lust, and brekeþ of fleischelich likinge.” (On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1, p. 293), for further references to the heat of pride, see Ziegler, Medicine and Religion, p. 189.

  41.Original found in John Gower, The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899–1902), vol. 1. ll. 14,713–14,724 [p. 171]; trans. by William Burton Wilson in Mirour de l’Omme (The Mirror of Mankind), (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1992), p. 201.

  42.The female body was believed to reach perfection around the age of 12 at which point her heat began to fail her, beginning with menstruation. See Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 27; Kim M. Phillips, “Maidenhood as the Perfect Age of Woman’s Life,” in Young Medieval Women, eds. Katherine J. Lewis, Noel James Menuge, and Kim. M. Phillips (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 1–24 (pp. 1–2).

  43.On the perfection of middle age, see John Burrow, “Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and the Three Ages of Man,” in Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 91–108.

  44.For example, Fasciculus Morum, pp. 48–53.

  45.Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, p. 128.

  46.Samuel K. Cohn, Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 14. See also a summary of the discussion, in Paul Slack,

  Plague: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 35–52.

  47.William Zouche, “Intercessionary Processions I,” in The Black Death, ed. Horrox, pp. 111–2 (p. 111).

  48.London, BL MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 93b, cited in Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: a Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters & of the English People (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), p. 464.

  49. Macaronic Sermon Collection, p. 192.

  50. A Late Fifteenth-Century Dominical Sermon Cycle, Vol. 1, p. 92.

  51. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 110.

  52.“John of Burgundy: Treatises on Plague,” ed. Lester M. Matheson, in Sex, Aging & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College, Cambridge MS. R.14.52, Its Texts, Language and Scribe, ed. M. Teresa Tavormina, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: Ari
zona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), Vol. 1, pp. 569–602 (p. 584).

  53.“A Translation of the ‘Canutus’ Plague Treatise,” ed. Joseph P. Pickett, in Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England, ed. Lester M. Matheson (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994), pp. 263–82 (p. 274).