Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture by Virginia Langum

Author:Virginia Langum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US, New York

Material Envy

Envy also has a material physiology, in the four humors. Envy and sorrow are aligned with the cold and dry melancholic humor in both pastoral and medical texts. Warning the faithful about particular humoral balances that the devil might try to exploit, the compiler of The Book of Vices and Virtues stresses that the melancholic must guard against “enuye and anger of herte” just as Gower warns that the person with “malencolie” must wrestle with “envie.” 55 In his description of melancholic imbalance, Bartholomaeus emphasizes sorrow and its effects on the heart, which “constreyneþ and closiþ” under the influence of sorrow.

As a cure for envy, Rypon prescribes the “moisture of piety” consistent as a contrary to the dryness of melancholia. 56 The sins of envy, wrath, and avarice are particularly associated with dryness and their cures or contrary virtues often manifest qualities thought to be moist in nature.

In Piers Plowman, the poet William Langland (d. c. 1386) captures the material complexity of the sin in the character Envy. The confession of the sins occurs in the fifth passus of the B-text, the version of the text cited throughout this book. The poem exists in several versions, with a complicated manuscript tradition. 57 All versions of the poem include the same description of envy, although some lines are reshuffled to different places in the text.

In the poem, Envy is one of the most physically and physiologically detailed of the seven deadly sins. 58 His cheeks are sunken, his body shriveled, and his lips chewed. Envy suffers from severe indigestion and serious heart problems. Painfully aware of his ailments and their cause, Envy diagnoses his condition and outlines a cure. As might be expected, this material cure is ineffective. Sugar will not alleviate Envy’s internal swelling, nor will the pharmaceutical “diapenidion” relieve his gas. 59 However, the failure of medicine does not simply consist in the inability of a material solution to remedy a spiritual problem. After dismissing these medical cures, Envy suggests the spiritual treatments of “shrift” [confession] or “shame” unless “whoso [someone] shrape [scrape] my mawe [stomach].” 60 This lateral shift back and forth between medical and spiritual treatment suggests something other than the merely symbolic use of medical discourse.

Langland’s Envy also exhibits some of the conventional attributes of envy covered earlier: Envy’s eyes look astray from the altar to focus enviously upon Eleyne’s “new coat,” and he ingests venom. However, Envy is embodied in more medically specific ways. As one example, Langland develops the conventional diet of venom into severe gastro-intestinal distress. By ingesting his own venom, Envy poisons himself with the poison he produces. “Ech a word that he warp [flung out] was of a neddres [adder’s] tonge,” and later we learn that he “myghte noght ete [eat] many yere as a man oughte,/For envye and yvel wil [ill will] is yvel to defie [digest].” Langland’s reference to diapenidion reflects a pharmacological understanding, as the drug was widely prescribed for gas and a defective appetite, two conditions from which Envy suffers.

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