Lost sheep: Metaphor and simony in John Gower’s Latin poetry

ABSTRACT

Almost all of John Gower’s very last writings are in Latin verse and politically inflected. Lost sheep and negligent shepherds (pastores) wander through a remarkable number of these poems. Drawing on biblical imagery and on his own earlier poetic treatment of pastoral misdirection in Vox clamantis, Gower found in lost sheep an enabling metaphor for his moral, satirical, and self-reflexive poetic project. In particular, Gower systematically associates the metaphor of lost sheep with simony (the selling of church privileges) and the hypocrisy of the secular clergy. This essay traces this figure of thought through Vox clamantis, De lucis scrutinio, Presul ovile regis, and Cultor in ecclesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecclesiastical history
• John Gower
• Latin poetry
• poetics
• simony

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This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ One of the only substantive discussions of De lucis scrutinio is Echard (2016: 298–300).

² Except where noted, quotations of Gower’s minor Latin poetry are from Yeager (2005), with a tabbed space or ‘|’ to represent the caesura between the halves of an internally rhymed (‘leonine’) verse. Translation mine.

³ In contrast to some prior translators, and at the prompting of the anonymous reader for Studia Neophilologica, I construe absque sophia as subject following mundus not predicate following tegit. A third possibility advanced by the anonymous reader, that absque sophia follows Presulis, seems a much more difficult syntactic construal, though logically consonant with the translation given: the world is ‘without wisdom’ because the prelacy is wicked.

⁴ While Gower’s use of qui creates ambiguity between positive and negative behavior here, the one enacting the behavior is in, or ought to be in, a position of moral authority. He is the shepherd in biblical-metaphorical terms. Translating qui simply as ‘he who’ or ‘anyone who’ would elide the explicit clerical context of the passage.

⁵ Psalm 118[119] is a motivating force for the last quarter of De lucis scrutinio. See Yeager (2005: nn. to De lucis scrutinio 74–78, 79–80, 88, 92, 96, 98).

⁶ Quotations of Vox clamantis are from Macaulay (1899–1902), with the pentameter constituents of hexameter + pentameter (‘elegiac’) couplets indented. Translation mine.

⁷ For the date of O deus immense, cf. Yeager (2005: 7, 69) (1398–1400); Carlson (2021: 172–174) (1399–1400). To Vox clamantis 6.498 and De lucis scrutinio 11–12, heads and limbs, cf. Vox clamantis 6.549 and O deus immense 85.

⁸ Langland implicates himself in his own criticisms from the start by dressing his avatar Will ‘as [he] a shep were’: Piers Plowman C.Prol.2b. Quoted from Russell & Kane (1997). Cf. Matthew 7:14–15. Langland, unlike Gower, is thought to have been a cleric himself.

⁹ In Mirour de l’omme 22873–22968, the figure of King David spans the metaphorical domains of tending sheep, harping, and poetry. See Fisher (1964: 96, 182).

¹⁰ For the date of Ecce patet tensus, cf. Fisher (1964: 130) (early work); Yeager (2005: 72) (c. 1398, tentatively); Carlson (2021: 175–176) (before the late 1390s).

¹¹ Quoted from Macaulay (1899–1902). Translation mine.

¹² Other self-borrowed or remodeled hemistichs are ‘Cultor in ecclesia’ (Cultor in ecclesia 1; cf. Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia 93); ‘sine crimine puram’ (Cultor in ecclesia 9; cf. Arundel epistola 41); ‘quas Cristo raro reducit’ (Cultor in ecclesia 12; cf. O deus immense 40). Each of these transpositions preserves the metrical placement of the hemistich in the line.

¹³ In its restless and downbeat conclusion, Cultor in ecclesia resembles Ecce patet tensus, which may, however, be incomplete as transmitted in its sole manuscript witness. See Macaulay (1899–1902: 4:418); Fisher (1964: 130); Yeager (2005: 72); Sobecki (2019: 57, n. 148). On the basis of the poem’s concluding note, I would question the tentative suggestion of Carlson (2021: 174–175) that Gower intended Cultor in ecclesia for archbishop Arundel.

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Notes on contributors

Eric Weiskott

Eric Weiskott is Professor of English at Boston College.