Preprint: New Evidence for the Date and Intellectual Milieu of the Early Middle English

Vices and Virtues

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11061-014-9397-1

In 1888, Ferdinand Holthausen published for the first time the text of an incomplete early Middle

English religious dialogue surviving uniquely in London, British Library, MS Stowe 34 (olim

240), usually dated to the first quarter of the thirteenth century (as, e.g., in Kurath et al. 1954–

2001; Laing 1993).1 The extant portion of the work begins in the middle of a penitent soul’s

detailed confession of a number of conventional sins. There follows a reply from Reason (Ratio

in Latin, Scadwisnesse in English), whose instruction regarding the various Christian virtues is

punctuated by reactions and responses from the unnamed penitent’s soul and body. Given the

manuscript’s content and its present acephaly, one can hardly invent a better title for the work

than Holthausen’s: Vices and Virtues. By the time Holthausen’s notes and glossary to the text

appeared in 1921, three doctoral dissertations had been completed on various aspects of the

language of the manuscript (Schmidt 1899; Philipssen 1911; Meyerhoff 1913),2 and Joseph Hall

had published an important philological analysis (1920). Perhaps the thoroughness of these

works convinced Holthausen that his planned introduction to the edition, which presumably

would have treated issues of the text’s dialect and date, was no longer necessary. In any case, the

introduction never appeared, and Holthausen does not seem to have returned to the work during

the rest of his long career.

In his analysis of the Stowe Vices and Virtues, Schmidt (1899, pp. 67, 69) ultimately

concurred with a brief assessment given a few years earlier by Lorenz Morsbach (1896, p. 10)

that the work in its present form was written around 1200 in a Southeastern dialect influenced by

Kentish. Philipssen and Meyerhoff did not dispute these conclusions, though Philipssen (1911,

pp. 3–7) disagreed with Schmidt (1899, pp. 7–10) on the extent of the work’s reliance on texts

1 Sample images of the text and binding are now available through the British Library’s online catalogues at

(respectively) http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6508&CollID=21&NStart=34

and http://special-1.bl.uk/bindingsdiscovery/ui/LargeImage.aspx?RecordId=020-

000016466&ImageId=ImageId=55776&Copyright=BL (accessed Feb 8, 2014). The new catalogue entries are

useful, although both apply to the manuscript the old and misleading designation of “homilies,” found also in the

volume’s modern title and in earlier catalogues (Crawford 1986, p. v; Catalogue 1895–96, I, no. 34).

2 Crawford notes that Philipssen and Meyerhoff were “students working in Holthausen’s department at Kiel” (1986,

p. i). In fact, Holthausen supervised both of their dissertations.

1

from the Old English period. Hall made no absolute claims as to the date of Vices and Virtues,

stating only his belief that Stowe 34 was copied from its exemplar “after a considerable interval”

and that, “as a consequence, the language of VV is older than that current at the time when the

copy was made” (1920, II, pp. 443–44). He agreed with earlier scholars that the manuscript was

Southeastern, but believed that the scribe had adapted into his own language “a composition in

the dialect of the Middle or Western South” (Hall 1920, II, p. 444). Almost all later studies have

considered the work to be an original product of Essex or an immediately adjacent area (see

Utley 1972, p. 866). Judith Crawford, whose unpublished edition includes the best treatment of

the language of the Stowe Vices and Virtues since Hall, concludes that the work was originally

composed between 1150 and 1200 in western Essex, Middlesex, or London (1986, pp. xxxii–

xxxv).

The linguistic character of Vices and Virtues has received more scholarly attention than

the content of its instruction. In the relatively few studies devoted to the text, the question of the

degree of its dependence on Old English traditions, already a point of dispute in the dissertations

of Schmidt and Philipssen, has continued to loom large. An exaggerated view of the dialogue’s

continuity with Anglo-Saxon religious literature prevailed in the work of some earlier scholars,

finding a place in Bruce Dickins and R. M. Wilson’s influential anthology of early Middle

English texts (1951, p. 86; see also Wilson 1968, pp. 172–73).3 The conservative flavor of the

work is undeniable, and the author was probably familiar to some extent with the works of older

writers like Ælfric and Wulfstan (e.g., Holthausen 1888–1921, I, p. 27/25–27; II, p. 166).

Although identifiable textual borrowings have proved elusive, certain elements of the prose style

of Vices and Virtues are strongly reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon authors, especially Wulfstan.

Compare, for instance, the characteristically (though not exclusively) Wulfstanian rhetorical tag

“gyme se ðe wille” (see, e.g., Bethurum 1957, pp. 214/99, 218/188, 242/16, 254/84, 276/10) with

Vices and Virtues: “Nime ȝieme se ðe wile” (Holthausen 1888–1921, I, p. 11/19; cf. I, p. 5/4–5).4

Similar traces of Wulfstan’s stylistic influence in the early Middle English period have been

detected in the Orrmulum and Laȝamon’s Brut (Morrison 1995; Kleinman 2013).

3 A more measured treatment of the work’s place in the tradition of English prose can be found in Zeeman 1956.

4 A particularly relevant non-Wulfstanian example occurs in a text on the dates of movable feasts in Cambridge,

Corpus Christi College, MS 422: “þis is soð, gyme se ðe wylle” (Henel 1934, p. 46). Compare Vices and Virtues:

“Ðis is soð, neme ȝeme se ðe wile!” (Holthausen 1888–1921, I, p. 5/4–5). Citations of the text in this article will be

from Holthausen’s edition.

2

Really, however, the notion advanced in 1951 by Dickins and Wilson that Vices and

Virtues “might ... be the modernization of a work composed originally during the OE period” had

already been excluded by some of the parallels uncovered by Holthausen (1888–1921, II, pp.

169, 177 et passim) and Hall (1920, II, p. 444), which include works by Bernard of Clairvaux

and Hugh of St. Victor. Furthermore, the author is known to have made use of the influential

pseudo-Augustinian treatise De uera et falsa poenitentia, composed around 1100 (see Gunn

2012, p. 74). Such connections place Vices and Virtues firmly in a twelfth-century theological

context. Cate Gunn’s recent chapter—the first significant, published study of the text in over half

a century—fruitfully examines Vices and Virtues as a product of its time.5 In addition to

discussing the author’s adaptation of the traditional Cassianic list of eight cardinal sins, Gunn

demonstrates that the work shares a number of concerns with the late twelfth-century English

homilies surviving in London, Lambeth Palace, MS 487 and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.

14. 52, which also lie at the traditional boundary between Old and Middle English (2012, pp. 67–

70). One such concern, which likely motivated the work’s composition in the first place, is the

growing importance attributed to frequent sacramental confession, which gradually increased

during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 made

annual confession obligatory for all Christians (Gunn 2012, pp. 68–69 et passim; cf. Millett

2007, pp. 48–50, 55, 63). Gunn (2012, pp. 75–76) also notes the author’s interest in the emergent

doctrine of purgatory, which Jacques Le Goff (1981) famously claimed was born in the twelfth

century.6 The Vices and Virtues author’s use of contemporary sources and his concern with

twelfth-century theological issues effectively rule out antiquarianism as a motive for the work’s

composition. As Gunn concludes, “This was a book intended, not for show, but to be used”

(2012, p. 84). As is the case also with the Lambeth and Trinity Homilies, the occasional

borrowings from or imitations of Old English prose show not that the author was unoriginal or

old-fashioned, but rather that both older and newer works were considered potentially valuable

for pastoral care in the milieu in which Vices and Virtues was composed.7

5 I am grateful to George Younge for alerting me to the existence of Gunn’s article.

6 See the criticisms of this argument with reference to medieval English religious literature in Kabir 2001; Forbes

2010. On purgatory in Vices and Virtues see also Pelle 2012, pp. 69–70 and n. 87.

7 Several authors have recently argued for the continuing vitality of English homiletic prose in this period. See, for

instance, the works of Mark Faulkner (2011; 2012), Bella Millett (esp. 2005; 2007), Mary Swan (e.g., 2007a;

2007b), and Elaine Treharne (most recently 2012).

3

Many details about this milieu, however, remain unclear. The book’s author alerts readers

to the compositional eclecticism8 of his work when he says in his conclusion that he has taken

material “of maniȝes haliȝes mannes ȝeswinkes” (“the efforts of many holy men”)9 (Holthausen

1888–1921, I, p. 151/17), but he only occasionally cites these sources. Holthausen’s notes, later

augmented by Crawford, are detailed and reliable, but many passages evidently rely on Latin

texts that neither editor was able to identify. In the remainder of this article I shall suggest

probable sources (or close analogues) for three of these passages. The identification of these

texts will not only provide important internal evidence for the dating of Vices and Virtues (dated

on linguistic and paleographical grounds to the period 1150–1200), but also give a better picture

of the intellectual environment in which the author worked and of the sources to which he had

access.

Self-will as God’s crown

Towards the end of its confession and following a section on impatience, the penitent soul of the

Stowe Vices and Virtues admits to exercising self-will, for which the author, as usual, gives both

the English and Latin terms: “Ðurh ðessere senne ic, unȝesali saule, fel in to an oðer senne, ðe is

icleped propria voluntas, þat is, auȝen-wille” (“Through this sin [impatience], I, wretched soul,

fell into another sin, which is called propria uoluntas, that is, self-will”) (Holthausen 1888–1921,

I, p. 13/29–30). No rational creature, the soul explains, should follow his or her own will over

against that of God or his ministers (emphasis mine):

Non scafte ðe is scadwis, al swo bieð angles and menn, ne aȝeð te hauen here

aȝen-will, forðan hie ne bieð, ne ne muȝen bien næure, riht-wise ne gode, bute hie

folȝin godes wille on alle wisen. Forðan we findeð on hali write: “Se mann ðe

wile folȝin his aȝen wille, he is aȝeanes gode, alswa is ðe mann ðe is aȝeanes ðe

kinge and wile his curune him benemen” (Holthausen 1888–1921, I, p. 15/2–8).

(No creature that is rational, as are angels and men, should have their own self-

will, because they are not and can never be righteous or good unless they follow

God’s will in all things. Therefore we find in holy scripture: “The man who

wishes to follow his own will, he is against God, just as a man who is against

the king and wishes to deprive him of his crown.”)

8 On this method in medieval Insular homiletics, see Tristram 1995, pp. 4–9, 16.

9 Translations appearing in this article are mine. Holthausen’s edition of Vices and Virtues contains a translation, but

it is marred by frequent flaws (often admitted and corrected in his notes).

4

The first sentence of this explanation does not appeal to any particular authority, and the idea

that no one can be holy without submitting to the will of God is so essential a tenet of

Christianity that one would search in vain for a specific source. On the other hand, the

subsequent comparison of self-will with depriving a king of his crown is a striking analogy, and

the author’s citation of “hali write” suggests that he is knowingly borrowing it from some other

text. The mind of the modern reader, seeing “holy scripture” cited as a source, naturally runs to

the Bible, but both Latin scriptura and Old/Middle English hali(g) (ge)writ could encompass a

much larger range of religious writings in the Middle Ages.10 Holthausen admits, “This is

certainly not a biblical quotation, but I am unable to say what is meant by the ‘hali write’”

(1888–1921, II, p. 158). Crawford was similarly unable to trace the reference (1986, 83).

The ultimate source of the crown analogy can be found in the Liber Anselmi

archiepiscopi de humanis moribus per similitudines, generally abbreviated De humanis moribus

or simply De moribus. “This treatise,” its editors say, “can best be described as a systematic

treatment of virtues and vices within the context of the religious life” (Southern & Schmitt 1969,

p. 4), and thus it is natural that the author of a work like the Stowe Vices and Virtues might look

there for inspiration. It is unclear whether the book is essentially the work of Anselm of

Canterbury himself (perhaps augmented or corrected by others after his death) or the work of a

reporter or reporters who collected and compiled the archbishop’s sayings on relevant issues, but

there is general scholarly agreement that the content of De moribus is genuinely Anselmian

(Southern & Schmitt 1969, pp. 6–8; Biffi et al. 2008, pp. 2–11). An enlarged text of the De

moribus, usually called De similitudinibus (PL 159, cols. 605A–708D), was edited to include

Anselmian material from other works and quickly eclipsed its source in popularity (Southern &

Schmitt 1969, pp. 12–15, 17–18). The De moribus was likely published around the time of

Anselm’s death in 1109, and its earliest extant manuscripts were written about 1130. Strangely,

these come from western England, and there is little evidence for the work’s circulation outside

of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. The longer revision (De similitudinibus), however, which

was made sometime before 1130, achieved a much wider circulation, including eastern England

(Southern & Schmitt 1969, pp. 11–13). If, therefore, the author of the Stowe Vices and Virtues,

10 On the broad definition of “holy writings” in Old English homilies see especially Thompson 2002. A Latin

example can be found in Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis Christiane fidei (discussed in more detail below),

where Hugh quotes as “scriptura” a proverbial expression on foolish vows, perhaps taken from Sedulius Scottus

(Berndt 2008, p. 476/17).

5

who lived in or near Essex, had direct access to the work, it was probably in the somewhat later

form represented by the De similitudinibus.

Anselm often discusses propria uoluntas in De moribus/De similitudinibus. In chapter

six, he gives his definition of the term: “Propria quippe voluntas est, quae dei voluntatem sibi

advocatam habere non potest, ut si requiratur cur hoc vel illud velit, respondere veraciter non

valet quia et deus vult ut hoc velit” (“Self-will is a will that cannot have the will of God as an

advocate for itself, since, in response to the question of why it wants this thing or that, it cannot

honestly respond that God also wishes that it should want this”) (Southern & Schmitt 1969, p.

40/20–23; cf. PL 159, col. 607A).11 This definition is followed closely by an argument that self-

will (apparently in a rather more neutral sense) is a privilege reserved for God alone; it is here

that we find the apparent source of the Vices and Virtues crown analogy:

8. Quod propria voluntas soli deo conveniat

Solus enim Deus, quidquid vult, debet velle propria voluntate, ita ut aliam, quam

sequatur, non habeat supra se. Cum igitur homo vult aliquid per propriam

voluntatem, deo aufert quasi suam coronam. Sicut enim corona soli regi

competit, sic propria voluntas deo soli. Et sicut regem aliquem inhonoraret,

qui suam coronam ei coronato [De similitudinibus coronato om.] auferret, sic

homo inhonorat deum, qui aufert ei propriae voluntatis privilegium, habendo

quod ille debet habere solum. Sed sicut propria voluntas dei fons est et origo

totius boni, ita propria voluntas hominis totius est exordium mali (Southern &

Schmitt 1969, p. 41/1–10; PL 159, col. 607B–C).

(8. Self-will is appropriate for God alone

For God alone ought to want whatever he wants with self-will, such that he has no

will to follow above his own. When, therefore, a man wants anything with

self-will, it is as if he deprives God of his crown, for just as the crown belongs

to the king alone, so does self-will belong to God alone. And just as someone

who would take away a crown from the king [once he had been crowned]

would dishonor him, so the man dishonors God who takes from him the

privilege of self-will, in taking possession of that which he alone ought to

possess. Moreover, just as God’s self-will is the fount and origin of all good,

man’s self-will is the beginning of all evil.)12

The Vices and Virtues author’s version of the analogy is more compact, and he avoids the

concepts of dishonor and privilege invoked by Anselm in favor of the simpler language of direct

11 The two edited versions are basically the same in the sections relevant to the present article.

12 For an Italian translation of the same passage see Biffi et al. 2008, p. 19.

6

opposition (“he is aȝeanes gode, alswa is ðe mann ðe is aȝeanes ðe kinge”), but the structure and

overall meaning of the two passages are similar enough to make obvious the existence of a

relationship between them. This analogy appears nowhere else to my knowledge, and, given the

esteem in which Anselm was held in England and the particular popularity that De

similitudinibus enjoyed, the most probable explanation for this similarity is that De

similitudinibus (or, less likely, its rarer source tract De moribus) was the “hali write” on which

the Vices and Virtues author depended here. This hypothesis is further strengthened by its

consistency with emerging trends in other English works of similar date and genre, several of

which—including Sawles Warde, Vespasian Homily 2 (whose opening is adapted from De

moribus/De similitudinibus), and Trinity Homily 29—also draw on Anselmian or pseudo-

Anselmian texts (Becker 1980, 1984; Hall 1920, II, p. 284; Millett 2010, p. 229; Pelle 2012, pp.

167–68).

Generosity of alms cannot atone for personal immorality

Reason begins her discourse on the virtues with discussions of faith, hope, and charity. In

accordance with I Cor 13: 13, the most space is accorded to charity. The author of Vices and

Virtues, however, is concerned that his audience not mistake the New Testament emphasis on the

importance of caritas as tacit license to give themselves over to luxury and lust, provided they

remain charitable towards others. To that end, he makes the following clarification:

... al swo sanctus Iohannes seið: Qui manet in karitate, in deo manet, et deus in

eo, “Se ðe wuneð on karite, he wuneð on gode, and godd on him.” Sume mis-

understondet (hier) ðis hali writt, weneð, ȝif he ȝifð bleðeliche to eten and to

drinken, and of his oðer eihte doþ for godes luue bleðeliche, and him self lið on

sume heaued-senne, ne ðo ne wile læten, ac hopeð te bien iboreȝen ðurh ðat he

dieð swa michel for godes luue. Hier aȝean seið god him self: Si recte offers, et

non recte diuidis, peccasti, “Gif ðu riht offrest and noht riht ne sciftst,13 ðu

senegest mare ðan ðu god do.” Ðu ȝifst ðine eihte gode, and ðe seluen ðe

dieule. Þat nis naht riht iscift; for ðan betere is an god saule, ðan all ðe

woreld mid all hire eihte (Holthausen 1888–1921, I, p. 37/11–23).

(... as St. John says: Qui manet in caritate, in deo manet, et deus in eo, “He who

dwells in charity dwells in God, and God in him” (I Io 4: 16). Some

misunderstand here the holy scripture and expect that if they gladly give to eat

and to drink, and give away their other property gladly for God’s love, while they

themselves lie in some cardinal sin and will not give it up, but they hope to be

13 Crawford’s edition (1986, 18) has scifst.

7

saved because they give so much for God’s love.14 Against this God himself

says: Si recte offers, et non recte diuidis, peccasti, “If you offer rightly and do

not divide rightly, you sin more than you do good” (Gn 4: 7).15 You give your

possessions to God and yourself to the devil. That is not rightly divided, since

one good soul is better than all the world with all its possessions.)

Holthausen (1888–1921, II, p. 171) and Crawford (1986, p. 92) both suggest that the final

sentence is an allusion to the first part of Mt 16: 26 (“quid enim prodest homini si mundum

uniuersum lucretur animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur” [≈ Mc 8:36/Lc 9:25]), and they are

probably right to some extent. However, as I shall demonstrate, other elements of this warning

against over-reliance on charity and almsgiving are drawn ultimately from Jerome, likely

through the mediation of a more contemporary Latin work.

Jerome’s Letter 66 (Ad Pammachium de dormitione Paulinae) is an attempt to console

and exhort the Roman nobleman-turned-monk Pammachius after his daughter’s death.

Pammachius earns praise from Jerome for his almsgiving and charitable works, but, like the

author of Vices and Virtues, Jerome cautions that these external works must be accompanied by

internal conversion: “Haec moneo, frater carissime, pietate, qua te diligo, ut non solum

pecuniam, sed te ipsum Christo offeras” (“I admonish you, beloved brother, through the affection

in which I hold you, not to offer money alone, but also yourself to Christ”) (Hilberg 1996, p.

662/12–13). The conclusion of this admonition is the ultimate source of the section of Vices and

Virtues highlighted above:

si offeramus Christo opes cum anima nostra, libenter suscipit; si autem, quae foris

sunt, deo, quae intus, diabolo demus, non est aequa partitio et dicitur nobis:

nonne, si recte offeras et non recte diuidas, peccasti? (Hilberg 1996, p. 663/11–

15).

(If we offer Christ our wealth along with our souls, he receives it gladly. If,

however, we give what is outside to God and what is within to the devil, this is

not an equitable division, and we are told, “Have you not sinned if you offer

rightly and do not divide rightly?”)

The English is somewhat differently ordered than the Latin, but the existence of some

relationship between the passages is evident from their citation of the same verse from Genesis

14 In translating this rather unwieldy sentence I have endeavored to be as clear as possible while retaining the

anacoluthon of the Middle English.

15 The reading, as Holthausen notes (1888–1921, II, pp. 170–71), is from the Vetus Latina. See Fischer 1951–54, pp.

82–83.

8

(in the Vetus Latina form) and from various other verbal and syntactic similarities (e.g., “Þat nis

naht riht iscift” / “non est aequa partitio”). This relationship, however, was likely indirect, since,

as we shall see, the relevant passage from Jerome was repeatedly borrowed and altered by

theologians closer in date to the probably composition of Vices and Virtues.

Jerome’s warning in Letter 66 seems to have enjoyed a particular currency among some

of the authors of the Augustinian abbey and school of St. Victor in Paris. The most distinguished

product of that school, Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), borrowed from Jerome’s letter in the second

book of his important work on sacramental theology, De sacramentis Christiane fidei, written in

or shortly after 1133 (Girolimon 1994; cf. Ehlers 1991). Hugh explains that, depending on the

situation, most vows and promises can be repaid (commutata) in terms other than those

originally stipulated; if one vows a pilgrimage, for instance, but circumstances subsequently

make travel difficult or impossible, one can fulfil the vow with alms instead (Berndt 2008, p.

478/23–28). A promise to the Lord of one’s soul, however, admits no commutatio:

Si uoues animam tuam.ʹ redde animam tuam. Noli putare quod reddere possis pro

anima tua pecuniam tuam. Hoc enim esset plus uouere. et minus reddere. et non

esset equa recompensatio. Si tua das deo. te ipsum zabulo. non est equa

particio. Nonne si recte offeras. et non recte diuidas peccasti? Plus [enim add.

var.] ualet anima. et minus pecunia (II.xii.5: Berndt 2008, p. 478/6–10; PL 176,

col. 523A).

(If you vow your soul, pay your soul. Do not think that you can pay your money

in exchange for your soul, for this would be to vow more and pay less, and it

would not be an equitable exchange. If you give what is yours to God and

yourself to the devil, it is not an equitable division. “Have you not sinned if

you offer rightly and do not divide rightly?” [For] the soul is worth more,

and money less.)

Hugh’s borrowing from Jerome was borrowed in turn by Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) for two

of his Sermones centum (24 [PL 177, col. 947B] and 53 [PL 177, col. 1056C]) and his Liber

exceptionum (Châtillon 1958, p. 424/38–39).16 Richard’s adaptations are abbreviated and omit

the important citation of Gn 4: 7, and are thus not likely sources for the Stowe Vices and Virtues.

Hugh’s version, however, is a good candidate, as it contains verbal similarities to the English that

are lacking in Jerome. For instance, the English sentence, “Ðu ȝifst ðine eihte gode, and ðe

seluen ðe dieule,” is a much closer match to Hugh (“si tua das deo. te ipsum zabulo...”) than to

16 On the attribution of these works to Richard and the relationship between them, see Châtillon 1948.

9

Jerome (“si autem, quae foris sunt, deo, quae intus, diabolo demus...”). Furthermore, the

concluding English clause, “for ðan betere is an god saule, ðan all ðe woreld mid all hire eihte,”

lacks any parallel in Jerome, but is similar to Hugh’s “Plus [enim] ualet anima. et minus

pecunia” (likely with an ancillary influence from the Gospel verses suggested by Holthausen and

Crawford). Finally, just as several of Anselm’s works were used by writers of early Middle

English religious prose, there is evidence to suggest a growing Victorine influence on the genre

at this time. Mark Faulkner has recently shown that a Victorine sequence sometimes attributed to

Adam of St. Victor (d. 1146) is quoted in two of the Lambeth Homilies,17 and the Vices and

Virtues version of the so-called Four Daughters of God allegory has an important analogue in a

commentary by Hugh (Crawford 1986, p. 118).18 There is thus good reason to conclude that the

author of Vices and Virtues adapted this section of his work from De sacramentis Christiane

fidei or a closely related text.

The danger of exaggerated humility

After the section on charity, the penitent soul entreats Reason to continue her discourse on the

virtues (Holthausen 1888–1921, p. 47). Just as pride holds first place in many lists of vices, a

long discussion of humility precedes the other virtues in this part of the Stowe manuscript. The

end of this discussion cautions both against taking pride in one’s good works and against

affected or false humility. Here we find the following citation of an unidentified source:

It his ȝewriten: Nimi(a) humilitas (est)19 maxima superbia, ðat is, “ȝif ðu latst ðe

seluen oðerliker ðanne oðre gode eadmode menn, and tu ne hafst swa on ðine

herte swa ðu sceawest wiðuten, ðanne wite ðu te soðe ðat ðat is michel

modinesse” (Holthausen 1888–1921, p. 59/8–12).

(It is written: Nimia humilitas est maxima superbia, that is, “If you comport

yourself differently from other good, humble men, and you do not have in your

heart what you show externally, then know truly that that is great pride.”)

17 Faulkner makes this identification in his forthcoming monograph, Ignota lingua: English literatures in the long

twelfth century.

18 Crawford shows that Hugh is not the source of the English version, as Hall suggested (1920, II, p. 444).

19 “est” is apparently an addition. The a in “Nimi(a)” is a correction, but neither Holthausen nor Crawford (1986, p.

29/8) notes the original reading. It is similarly unclear whether these changes were made by the scribe, the

manuscript’s corrector, or its rubricator, all of whom contributed various improvements (see Crawford 1986, p. lv).

10

The author’s interpretation makes some interesting departures from his source quotation, but it is

the Latin sentence itself that I would like to focus on here.

Holthausen (1888–1921, II, p. 179) and Crawford (1986, p. 101) found no possible

source for the Vices and Virtues author’s quotation, “Nimia humilitas est maxima superbia.”

Close parallels, however, do appear in several texts emanating from the Paris schools and their

students in the later twelfth century. The earliest and most significant of these can be found in the

Policraticus of John of Salisbury (d. 1180), the renowned English churchman and philosopher,

who was educated in Paris in the 1130s and 1140s. David Luscombe describes the Policraticus,

completed in 1159, as “at once a work of political theory, a manual of government, a mirror of

princes, a moralizing critique of life at court; and also an encyclopaedia of letters and learning, a

storehouse of exempla and historiae, and a didactic philosophical and ethical treatise” (2004).

The conduct of the prince is the focus of book four, in which there appears the following passage

as a warning against the excess of certain good qualities:

Salomon quoque, noli, inquit, esse nimis iustus (Ecl 7: 17). Quid ergo nimium

prodest, si regina uirtutum in sui nimietate obest? Alibi quoque nimia humilitas

maxima pars superbiae est (IV.ix: Keats-Rohan 1993, p. 263/13–16).

(Solomon also said, “Do not be overly just.” Of what great benefit is it if the

queen of virtues becomes an obstacle through her own excess? Elsewhere also:

“Too much humility is a very great part of pride.”)

The structure of the sentence in which we find this warning against excessive humility suggests

that John believed he was citing a well-known source. Indeed, he quotes the Bible along with

several pagan authors, such as Horace and Cicero, in this chapter of his work.20 The text’s most

recent editor, however, while noting a distant parallel in the Nicomachean Ethics, is forced to

conclude that the sentence on humility draws on a “fons ignota” (Keats-Rohan 1993, p. 263), and

I have also been unable to trace its ultimate origin. It is probable that John learned it from one of

his teachers in Paris (among whom were such luminaries as Abelard, William of Conches,

Gilbert de la Porrée, and Robert Pullen), but we may never be able to identify which one.

In any case, the maxim’s currency in the Paris schools of the later twelfth century is

attested by a number of other sources. These include two of the revised versions of the Parisian

master Peter Cantor’s (d. 1197) Verbum adbreuiatum, a compendium of quotations, exempla,

20 See the apparatus fontium at Keats-Rohan 1993, p. 263.

11

and distinctions on various moral topics directed to the clergy, generally thought to have been

written sometime after 1187 (Manitius 1931, p. 160; Sanford 1943; Peppermüller 1993):

Est enim duplex [humilitas]; prudens et sancta humilitas omnium uirtutum

substratorium; est et subdola que est ypocrite de qua: nimia humilitas cognata

est superbie, sicut nimia simplicitas uicinatur fatuitati (Textus alter, cap. 11:

Boutry 2012b, p. 59/65–68; same passage present with minimal changes in the

Textus conflatus, I.11: Boutry 2004, p. 88/76–79).21

(There are two kinds of humility: a prudent and holy humility, which is the

foundation of all virtues, and also the deceitful humility of the hypocrite, about

which it is said: “Too much humility is akin to pride, just as too much

simplicity approaches stupidity.”)

Another important Paris theologian, Simon of Tournai (d. 1201), used the phrase in the eighth

part of his monumental Institutiones in sacram paginam, composed around 1170–1175. Here,

“nimia humilitas superbia est” functions as a pithy and apt response to the question of “whether

someone should knowingly confess a sin which he did not commit in order to show his humility”

(“an scienter quis confiteri debeat peccatum quod non fecit, ut se humilem exhibeat”)

(Heinzmann 1967, p. 87/237–39). The version used by Simon was familiar enough in England

by the early thirteenth century that Gervase of Melkley cited it in his Ars poetica (1215/1216) as

an example of the rhetorical device of antithetum (Gräbener 1965, p. 166/19; see Hallik 2007,

pp. 342, 349).

Of all the known versions of this maxim in Latin texts, the formulation of John of

Salisbury—“Nimia humilitas maxima pars superbiae est”— is verbally closest to the citation

appearing in Vices and Virtues—“Nimia humilitas est maxima superbia.” This similarity and the

fact that John was an Englishman make it tempting to conclude that the Policraticus was the

source of the English dialogue. This is certainly possible, but the motif’s apparent popularity in

late twelfth-century Paris (demonstrated through its use by Peter Cantor and Simon of Tournai),

combined with the growing number of English churchmen educated in Paris at this time

(Goering 1992, p. 29; Gunn 2012, pp. 68–69), suggests that the Vices and Virtues author might

also have encountered the idea in several other texts or heard it from a teacher or colleague. It

21 The second part of this version of the motif, regarding exaggerated simplicity, appears again in both later

revisions (Boutry 2012b, p. 456/35–36; Boutry 2004, p. 746/1–2), as well as in the Textus prior (Boutry 2012a, p.

617/32–33). Boutry’s apparatus fontium suggests a connection to a passage in Peter of Blois’s (d. ca. 1212)

commentary on Job: “est simplicitas quæ fatuitati cognata est, et est simplicitas quæ in Evangelio commendatur”

(PL 207, col. 797C).

12

remains notable, however, that the first written attestations of the expression eventually used in

the English dialogue date from the later part of the twelfth century, with its earliest known

appearance, in the Policraticus, datable to 1159.

Conclusions

The sources and analogues identified above allow an assessment based on internal evidence of

the usual dating of Vices and Virtues to ca. 1150–1200. The author’s familiarity with the

Anselmian De similitudinibus (composed before 1130) and Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis

Christiane fidei (ca. 1133) prove that he could not have worked much earlier than the traditional

terminus a quo. In fact, there may be grounds for supposing that he worked closer to the end of

the accepted range. The most significant analogues to the author’s Latin quotation on humility in

the works of John of Salisbury, Simon of Tournai, and Peter Cantor can be dated to around 1159,

1175, and 1187, respectively. If the period suggested by these dates accurately represents the

early life of the motif, we might perhaps push forward the probable date of Vices and Virtues to

sometime in the last third of the twelfth century.

More important than the exact year of its composition, however, is the intellectual

background of Vices and Virtues. Here, too, the new evidence presented above is useful. To this

point, little could be said with certainty about the text’s creator, other than that he probably lived

in Eastern or Southeastern England in the later twelfth century; he was familiar with both

patristic and Old English exegesis and homiletics; and he had some knowledge of pastoral texts

composed as late as 1100 (like the pseudo-Augustinian De uera et falsa poenitentia). Now,

however, we can posit a good deal more. The author of the Stowe Vices and Virtues knew the

thought of Anselm on self-will and cited it for his own purposes. He was familiar with at least

one Victorine author, namely Hugh of St. Victor, and skillfully adapted material from one of his

most influential works. If not educated in Paris himself (a distinct possibility for a late twelfth-

century English cleric), his use of a maxim about humility popular among some of the greatest

products of the Paris schools suggests that he moved in the same circles as these men and was

conversant with their works. In short, our author was intelligent, well-educated, and fully versed

in contemporary theology. That a person of such considerable talents would choose to apply

them to the composition of a vernacular dialogue like Vices and Virtues, and that such a work

13

continued to be copied and read well into the thirteenth century, provide further proof of the

vitality and importance of the earliest Middle English religious prose.

14

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