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

by Virginia Langum

  54.“The Report of the Paris Medical Faculty, October 1348,” in The Black Death, ed. Horrox, pp. 158–63 (p. 160).

  55.John of Burgundy, “Treatises on Plague,” p. 579.

  56.“‘Canutus’ Plague Treatise,” p. 272.

  57.William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Dent, 1995), V.13–15.

  58.Sermon from Thomas Brinton, edited by Horrox as “The Sins of the English,” in The Black Death, pp. 145. For the original, see The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, ed. Mary Aquinas Devlin, 2. Vols. (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1954).

  59.Thomas Brinton’s sermons, in The Black Death, ed. Horrox, pp. 146–7.

  60. Dives and Pauper, ed. Priscilla Heath Barnum, EETS o.s. 275, 323 (London: Oxford University Press, 1976, 1980), p. 121.

  61.See Barnum’s discussion in Dives and Pauper, p. 43 n.120/47–73.

  62.Siegfried Wenzel remarks that in late medieval literature there are “surprisingly few references to the plague, and the few which do occur are usually remarks made in passing.” “Pestilence and Middle English Literature: Friar John Grimestone’s Poems on Death,” in The Black Death: the Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague, ed. Daniel Williman (Binghampton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 131–59 (p. 130).

  63. The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, ed. Wiesje F. Nijenhuis (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Catholic University of Nijmegen, 1990), p. 109, lines 23–4.

  64.Ibid., p. 109, lines 7–11.

  65.See Richard Newhauser, “Pride, the Prince, and the Prelate: Hamartiology and Restraints on Power in William Peraldus’ Summa de vitiis,” in La pathologie du pouvoir: vices, crimes et délits des gouvernants: antiquité, moyen âge, époque moderne, ed. Patrick Gilli (Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 238–62 and Nicole D. Smith, Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).

  66. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 19.

  67. Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime, p. 82.

  68. Fasciculus Morum, p. 83.

  69. Quattuor Sermones, ed. N. F. Blake (Heidelberg: Winter, 1975), pp. 50–1.

  70.Giles Constable, “Moderation and Restraint in Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages,” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought: Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, ed. Haijo J. Westra (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 315–27.

  71. Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime, pp. 276–77.

  72. The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1982), p. 58.

  73.Ibid., p. 47.

  74.Ibid., pp. 47–8.

  © The Author(s) 2016

  Virginia LangumMedicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and CultureThe New Middle Ages10.1057/978-1-137-44990-0_4

  4. Envy

  Virginia Langum1

  (1)Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

  Perhaps even more than some other of the seven deadly sins, envy needs to be set in its medieval context. Chaucer’s Parson paraphrases the consensus of medieval theologians that, “for wel unnethe [hardly] is ther any sinne that it ne hath some delit in itself, save oonly Envye, that evere hath in itself angwissh and sorwe.” 1 Yet also citing Augustine, he distills the sin as “sorwe of oother mannes wele [happiness], and joye of othere mennes harm.” 2 This paradoxical anguish and joy emphasize the disordered emotions of the envious. 3 As the author of the fourteenth-century Fasciculus Morum states, sharing emotions such as joy and sorrow “humanum est” [is human] so envy is unnatural or inhuman. 4 By converting “someone else’s good into an evil for himself,” the envious person “does more harm to [him]self than anyone else.” 5

  Is envy of the body or the soul? In the groupings of spiritus, anima, and corpus found in, for example, Alexander of Hales and Fasciculus Morum, envy often shares a space with pride under spiritus. Aquinas holds that the sin of envy, like that of pride, can be committed by non-corporeal beings, such as demons, and the devil’s envy is a familiar trope in pastoral writing. Aquinas understands envy as a perversion of the passion of sorrow, as we will see in more detail later, but clarifies that although demons can experience envy, they cannot experience sorrow as a passion in its proper sense, as passions reside in the sensitive appetite in the corporeal body. Passions presume bodies. However, when sorrow is defined more broadly as an act of will, “the resistance of the will to what is, or to what is not,” demons can experience the sorrow of envy. 6 Indeed, demons fulfill this definition, wishing “many things not to be, which are, and others to be, which are not: for, out of envy, they would wish others to be damned, who are saved.” 7 Yet even more consistently than pride, theologians, pastoral writers, and poets depict envy in terms of its metonymic and material relationships to the body via the passions and the humors.

  As for the species of envy, Gregory lists odium [hatred], susurratio [grumbling], detractio [slander], exultatio in aduersis proximi [delight in a neighbor’s adversities], and afflictio in prosperis [proximi] [affliction at a neighbor’s prosperity]. 8 The English Fasciculus Morum offers a more pared down list: grumbling and backbiting, lying, and flattery. Walter Hilton actually includes “malencolie” as a distinct branch of envy. Envy is deeply embedded in the humoral physiology of melancholy, as we shall see. 9

  Metaphorical Envy

  Envy’s physicality has a long history. 10 For example, Ovid emphasizes her generally diseased state in Metamorphoses. The “most dyscolourd fygure of the world,” Envy also has “stynkyng breth” due to her diet of snakes and venom. 11 She lives in a cold and dark place, reflected in her pale form and appearance of “maladye.” However, Envy is both personified in bodily terms and shown to wreak havoc in the bodies of those she infects. She fills her victim’s “corage and al her entraylles with venym and chaunged her manere in suche wyse and condicion as she was herself.” 12 Ovid’s Envy was well known in the Middle Ages from the Ovide Moralisé, which circulated in medieval England in French and was translated by Caxton in the late fifteenth century. 13 The evil eye represents another classical association of the body and envy. Influenced by the etymology of the Latin name for the sin invidia from invidere or “to look maliciously upon,” the concept of the evil eye shifts attention to the victim of envy, and envy is often listed as causing various kinds of damage by provoking anger and violence. 14

  The Bible also presents envy in physical terms. Envy is destructive to the body in general, as per Ecclesiasticus’ warning that “envy and anger shorten a man’s days.” 15 Elsewhere, envy is a “rottenness of the bones.” 16 In the same tradition as the Roman and Mediterranean evil eye, the Bible often describes the evil eyes and skewed vision of the envious: “the eye of the envious is wicked: and he turneth away his face, and despiseth his own soul.” 17 The parable of the vineyard asks, “is thy eye evil because I am good?” 18 Furthermore, Saul envies David for the people’s praise, and “did not look upon him with a good eye from that day forward.” 19 Peter of Limoges cites this passage, explaining that “the eye of the envious person, like the eye of someone who squints, does not correctly see the person whom it envies.” 20

  Embodied envy is also a part of Christian theology. Gregory focuses attention on the body of the envious person. Glossing Job 5:2 (“and envy slayeth the little one”) in his Morals on the Book of Job, Gregory interprets “the little one” as the envier, meaning that envy destroys not merely the object of envy but the subject of envy. 21 Drawing on this biblical and patristic tradition, pastoral and poetic texts in the later Middle Ages associate envy with deviant or diseased vision. For example, the early thirteenth-century anchoritic devotional manual Ancrene Wisse describes envious eyes that cannot look straight. “If anyone says well or does well, they can in no way look in that direction with the right eye of a good heart, but they shut their eye on that side, and look on the left to see
if there is anything to criticize; or they scowl hideously in that direction with both.” 22

  Although moralists present all the seven deadly sins as to some extent destructive of the sinner, they deem envy particularly antithetical to nature and the body. Envy produces a dramatic physiological impact. As John Gower writes in his long allegorical French poem Mirror of Man, “envy is the most unnatural of all evils, for if you should give everything—body and wealth altogether—to the envious, he will reward you in the end with evil.” 23 Gower further elaborates on the unnaturalness of envy in Confessio Amantis. Whereas every vice has a root “whereof it groweth,” no one knows the root of envy. The sin of envy is not stimulated by any instinctual prompting or urging in nature, yet causes great destruction to human beings. The poet writes, “so mai ther be no kinde plesed;/for ay the mor that he envieth,/The more agein himself he plieth [strives].” 24

  As something antagonistic to nature, envy is often described as a poison or illness. According to the author of Ancrene Wisse, “if you are envious of the good of others, you are poisoning yourself with a medicine, and wounding yourself with a remedy.” 25 And Confessio Amantis describes envy as an illness: the afflicted is “sek of [sick because of] another mannes hele [health].” 26 As for envy’s relationship with more specific illnesses and bodily conditions, one of the most common symbolic correspondences is between envy and venom, following the tradition of Ovid’s Envy. In “Templum Domini,” “Envy þat is so full of galle/Es venyme & feueres.” 27 Sometimes the heart is the seat of this venom, which might have material resonance if pastoral writers knew about the workings of the passions.

  However, such knowledge is not explicit in The Book of Vices and Virtues that describes envy generally as “þe addre þat al enuenimeþ.” 28 Yet more specifically, in relation to the souls and metaphorical bodies of the envious, the text indicates that “þe herte of þe enuyous is so enuenymed and so mys-turned þat he ne may see no good do to a-noþer þat it ne greueþ hym & forþinkeþ him in his herte, & demeþ þer-of euele.” 29 That which the envious person hears and sees “he takeþ euer-more in euel vnderstondyng; and of al þat he doþ hymself harme & his owne herte.” 30 The passage draws on the long associations of envy with the snake in the garden, who is envious of humankind’s privilege. The linguistic proximity of “enuyous” and “enuenymed” creates a closed circle: the envious person both poisons and is poisoned, an effective image of the self-consumption of the envious, which another writer describes as “a gritter [greater] gnawer þan ffelone [carbuncle] or gowte [gout].” 31 These two medical conditions eat away at the body from the inside.

  The heart occurs frequently in symbolic descriptions of envy. In his anatomy of sin, Walter Hilton locates envy in the heart, and a lyricist claims that it “brenne the brest withyn and withowt.” 32 John Gower specifically describes the effects of envy on the heart. In Mirror of Man, envy is likened to consumption, which, as medical texts explain, dries the body’s natural moisture. 33 Due to lesions and tumors in the lungs, hot air cannot be filtered from the heart, so heat continues to grow and the body wastes away through dryness. 34 However, the experience of envy can also be physiologically difficult for the heart, as described in medical texts and taken up by some pastoral writers.

  The disease of jaundice has a symbolic resonance with envy, with which it is widely associated in pastoral texts such as the early fourteenth-century verse confessional manual Handlyng Synne by Robert Mannyng and the anonymous fifteenth-century “Treatise of Ghostly Battle,” derived from the popular Pore Caitiff. 35 Handlyng Synne links the tradition of envious eyes with jaundice, which is a “pyne/þat men ow se yn mennys yne.” 36 In Fasciculus Morum, “envy can be compared to a sickness called jaundice which arises from the disordered heat of the liver.” The moralist further associates the disease with the sin by quoting Horace on the wasting away that is symptomatic of jaundice: “the envious shrink in weight as their neighbors grow fat in riches.” 37 However, the thinning associated with jaundice is also a material symptom of a melancholic imbalance, and jaundice itself has a potentially material etiology in envy, as explored toward the end of this chapter.

  Finally, envy is metaphorically aligned with palsy. Although liberally attributed to a number of sins, such as sloth and wrath, when used to represent envy, palsy signifies the envious sinner’s paralysis of charity towards his or her neighbors. 38

  Metonymic Envy

  Some texts consider envy to be a distinct passion, while others argue that it is motivated by other passions, such as sadness. Bartholomaeus Anglicus lists “enuye” with other passions, such as wrath. 39 The passion of envy intrigued the fifteenth-century bishop Reginald Pecock (d. ca. 1461), who in several of his vernacular works engages with the distinction between vice and passion, and the particular problem that envy presents. Pecock provides a systematic account of the distinction between passion and sin that is consistent with contemporary accounts. He defines passions as “suffryngis of þe wil” rather than “actijf or wirching [working] deedis of oure wil.” 40 Stirred by sense impressions—that which is seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted—passions are themselves not ethical; they are neither virtues nor vices. Pecock explicitly distinguishes between envy the passion and envy the vice. Envy as a passion belongs to the lower sense appetite whereas envy as a vice is a free action actively chosen. Due to their root in the humors and complexions, passions cannot be eradicated. However, they can be controlled by balancing the humors, which is accomplished through diet and the other non-naturals. This process requires careful assessment by both the individual himself and professionals. For example, envy the passion can be controlled by manipulating the melancholic humor. 41 However, if a passion repeatedly develops into a sin, that sin can become habitual. As Pecock writes, when a “disposicioun” develops into a “degre of stabilnes and of vnremouabilness, þanne it is clepid an ‘habite.’” 42

  Aquinas considers envy [invidia] one species of the passion sorrow [tristitia]; the others are pity [misericordia], anxiety [anxietas or angustia], and torpor [acedia]. Sorrow the passion can be useful and even ennobling when experienced well; that is, under the direction of reason. 43 When the mind is focused, reason moderates sorrow, allowing the mind to seek more knowledge as to its cause, and as a result, thereby aiding contemplation. For example, reason directs a person to apprehend sorrow when evil is nearby, enabling him or her to avoid the evil. 44 Therefore, sorrow consequently helps us not only to feel remorse after sin, prompting penance but also to avoid the sin itself. 45

  However, when reason is overpowered, sorrow is the most harmful of all the passions to the body and to the soul. 46 Excess sorrow consumes the soul and destroys the body. Some passions, such as joy, desire and love, effect bodily changes in directing the movement of the vital spirit, from the heart to other parts of the body. In some cases, an excess of movement may harm the body. However, sorrow causes a contraction or flight in the body, consistent with the standard medical view of the body’s response to sorrow and fear. This contraction is not simply a result of being out of measure; it is directed against the natural movement of the body, that is, from the outlying parts of the body to the heart. 47

  Whereas sorrow may be positive or negative, envy is always sinful, according to Aquinas. Defined as “sorrow for another’s good,” envy makes us “grieve over what should make us rejoice.” 48 Envy is the inverse of charity, which prompts joy in one’s neighbor’s well-being. However, envy is not always a mortal sin. Envy may exist as “imperfect movements in the sensuality” in creatures without reason, such as infants. To support this point, Aquinas cites Augustine’s description in the Confessions of infants who grow pale with envy when looking at their nursing siblings. 49

  Under the heading of metonymy, we should also consider the relationship between envy and wrath. While medical texts generally associate envious dispositions with melancholy and wrathful ones with choler, religious texts often correlate the two vices, leading some writers to
postulate a medical relationship. Robert Rypon (d. c. 1419), a Benedictine monk from Durham who died in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, charts in one of his sermons the relationship between the humors, the stages of the lifecycle and the disposition toward certain behaviors and actions. 50 Rypon associates both anger and envy with the “fifth age,” 28–50 years old, and the choleric humor. Choleric complexions are hot and dry, disposing a person to wrath and envy, respectively: “abundant heat excites and disturbs the spirit and because moisture is lacking as well as coldness which restrains. So such choleric people are easily angered. And envy is born from the same causes.” 51 Rypon goes on to provide a medical account of anger as an “open hatred” and envy a “hidden hatred.” “When an angry or envious person sees a person at whom he is angry or whom he envies, at once excessive heat is inflamed around his heart. Because, as the scientists say, anger is a fire inflamed around the heart.” 52

  The visualization of envy and wrath as manifested from the inside out is found elsewhere in pastoral literature and poetry. However, internal swelling is witnessed externally in some pastoral accounts of envy. In Prick of Conscience, souls in purgatory “for envy sal haf in þair lyms/Als kylles [boils] and felouns and apostyms [sores].” 53 “Felouns” were sores that caused swelling in the body. In the verse confessional manual Handlyng Synne, a priest blessed with superior moral discernment from God can see the sins of his confessants on their bodies and faces. “Sum were sweolle [sweollen], þe vyseges [faces] stout,/As þoʒ [though] here [their] yʒen [eyes] shulde [would] burble [burst] out.” The text later explains that those “with swolle vysage,/Þey [they] are enuyous.” This description of external rather than internal swelling may reflect a simple conflation, a medical misunderstanding, or the deliberate choice to transform the internal into the external to offer a clearer conception of envy. In other words, the body and soul are turned inside out. The swelling of the interior organs is thus witnessed on the surface of the body. 54