Faux Semblants: Antifraternalism Reconsidered in Jean de Meun and Chaucer

G Geltner. Studies in Philology. Chapel Hill: Fall 2004.Vol. 101, Iss. 4;  pg. 357, 24 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Geltner discusses the apparent perseverance of antifraternal sentiments in Chaucer's John Friar in the Summoner's Tale and Jean de Meun's Faus Semblant in the Roman de la Rose. Both authors have been dubbed antifraternals on the basis of these characters, which illustrate the fallen state of mendicancy that their authors wished to bemoan.

Full Text (9583   words)

Copyright University of North Carolina Press Fall 2004

FAUSTUS was hardly pleased. Having sealed his pact with the Devil, and having waited long hours for his promised assistant and guide, he was left thoroughly unimpressed by the external appearance of Mephistopheles once the latter finally arrived:

[Faustus:] I Charge thee to return and change thy shape;

Thou art too ugly to attend me.

Go, and return an old Franciscan friar;

That holy shape becomes a devil best.1

Faustus's ingenious solution seems to invoke a celebrated tradition. From Rutebeuf to Rabelais, from Cecco Angiolieri to Boccaccio, from Chaucer to Marlowe, the apparent perseverance of antifraternal sentiment from medieval to early modern literature has helped perpetuate the notion of a Devil-serving friar as a popular, if disturbing, representation of medieval mendicants. Although the presence of mendicants, or friars, in fiction has won a certain amount of scholarly attention, so far the few attempts to deal comprehensively with the topic have yielded questionable generic statements which define such fiction as one form or another of "antifraternal literature." This branding, however, obscures the true diversity of friar-characters and their functions within their respective fictional contexts.

Chaucer's Friar John in the Summoner's Tale is a case in point, as is Jean de Meun's Faus Semblant in the Roman de la Rose. Both authors have been dubbed antifraternal largely on the basis of these characters which, scholars have traditionally argued, illustrate the fallen state of mendicancy that their authors wished to bemoan. Yet not only are these characters multivalent rather than partisan, manuscript evidence for the reception of Faus Semblant's speech reveals that his allegedly anti-fraternal confession was ambivalent enough in the eyes of contemporaries to prompt the interpolation of a sizable chapter articulating objections to the mendicants' privileges in unambiguous terms. Chaucer, in turn, familiar with an amended version of the Roman, also created a multi-faceted friar-character, whose actions and interactions do not convey a strictly negative appraisal of mendicancy.

In 1923, Joseph Spencer Kennard published a series of studies about key depictions of friars in medieval and early modern fiction in England, Germany, and Italy.2 One striking feature of his essays is an explicit insistence on the correlation between fiction and reality inherent in these characters; the friar's image as deceitful and immoral, Kennard is "obliged to conclude," "represent[s] the typical friar as found in real life during those centuries."3 This is one instance in which antifraternal literature is cast as an authentic response to the friars' ubiquitous moral plummet.

Were it not for its continuing legacy in modern scholarship, Kennard's Coultonian approach could have been dismissed as simply oldfashioned, perhaps eccentric, and certainly impaired methodologically. A fairly recent account of medieval antifraternal literature, however, has no qualms about firmly placing Chaucer (and others) in the tradition of English antifraternalism: "Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Dunbar, Henryson all wrote against the friars, mainly in longer poems that depict, sometimes comically, sometimes somberly, the decay of human society near the end of an era."4 Yet branding Chaucer with a brazen antifraternalism, one, moreover, that offers a direct representation of reality, is an inappropriate evaluation; it reduces the art of Chaucer's verisimilitudes to simple partisanship, quite in contrast to a growing appreciation among Chaucerians of his refusal to commit to any particular point of view.5

The mislabeling of Chaucer also rests on a similar and prevalent misapprehension regarding the work of Jean de Meun, whom Szittya identifies as Chaucer's antifraternal forerunner in the French tradition.6 While their affinities cannot be mistaken, it is not the case that the tradition itself is relentlessly antifraternal. Even Jean de Meun's borrowing from the work of Guillaume de Saint Amour -long considered the ecclesiological fountain of antifraternal literature -and from Rutebeuf's poetry was not carried out with an eye towards targeting the friars exclusively.71 wish to argue, on the contrary, that Faus Semblant, the Roman de la Rose's hypocrite friar, is a personification of hypocrisy, not a direct depiction or a caricature of a real (or aggregate) friar. Its allegorical power rests on a binary of corruption and saintliness, not on an appeal to a common appreciation of religious mendicancy's fallen state. And it was this ambivalence, rather than one-sidedness, that was taken up by Geoffrey Chaucer in the century that followed.

Who is Faus Semblant, and how, if at all, is he a representative of fraternal hypocrisy? Clad in unspecified monastic garb,8 Faus Semblant issues forth the chief "antifraternal" exhortation in the Roman, stretching, with few interruptions, for over one thousand lines. Hypocrisy characterizes his behavior from the outset:

Je mains avec les orguilleus,

Les veziez, les artilleus,

Qui mondaines eneurs couveitent

E les granz besoignes espleitent,

E vont traçant les granz pittances

E pourchaçant les acointances

Des poissanz ornes e les sivent;

E se font povre, e il se vivent

Des bons morseaus delicieus

E beivent les vins precieus;

E la povreté vous preeschent,

E les granz richeces peeschent

Aus saïmes e aus tramaus.

(11037-49)9

[I dwell among the proud, / the devious, the cunning, / who covet worldly honors and pursue great enterprises / and seek great rewards, / and strive for the acquaintance / of powerful men and follow them. / And they are poor, and they nourish themselves / with luxurious foods / and drink precious wines. / And they preach poverty to you, / and they gather great wealth / with their nets and trammels.]

The coexistence of want and sumptuousness and of the preaching of poverty and lavish living are not conveyed through concessive conjunctures. It is simultaneous and as such constitutes a state of affairs that, though perfectly coherent to Faus Semblant, seems paradoxical to his audience: instead of empowering the poor, he flatters the rich; his compulsory poverty gives way to lavish feasting among the worldly. These initial verses signal what is to come: a narrative elaborating on a basic theme of action contrasted with declared intent, interior corruption with exterior piety, verbal expression with intended will. Faus Semblant argues against himself, in confession form, in an attempt to persuade the God of Love and his baronial entourage to admit him into their company, then on the verge of storming Jealousy's castle. (The confessional itself is also paradoxical: a friar, master of all confessors-a theme that will later become crucial to our understanding of the matter-utters a public confession to, of all allegorical figures, the God of Love!) In any case, the history of his treachery and deceit wins him the desired trust of the barons. After marveling at his enduring corruption, they welcome him into the host.

That these verses are not a concerted attack on friars (or on ascetic religion in general)10 is indicated by several facets of Faus Semblant's character, not least of which is his dress. Faus Semblant's ultimate choice of a friar's garb can perhaps be viewed as tactical, considering his lay audience of "confessors." Yet at base it is the paradox of the incorruptible-and-deceptive-in-one that offers the greatest momentum to the character's speech. Indeed, there are no limits to Faus Semblant's capacity to adapt, cutting across borders of social class, clerical status, religion, geography, age, gender, and language:

Or sui chevaliers, or sui moines,

Or sui prelaz, or sui chanoines,

Or sui clers, autre eure sui prestres,

Or sui deciples, or sui maistres,

Or chastelains, or forestiers.

(11189-93)

[Now I'm a knight, now a monk; / now a prelate, now a canon; / now a cleric, at another time a priest; / now a disciple, now a master; / now a castellan, now a forester.]

Or resui princes, or sui pages,

E sai par cueur trestouz langages,

Autre eure sui veauz e chenuz,

Or resui jennes devenuz;

Or sui Roberz, or sui Robins,

Or cordeliers, or jacobins.

(11195-200)

[Now I am a prince, now a page- / I know by heart many languages. / At one time I'm old and white, / then I become young again; / now I am Robert, now Robin, / now a Cordelier, now a Jacobin.]

Autre eure vest robe de fame:

Or sui dameisele, or sui dame,

Autre eure sui religieuse,

Or sui rendue, or sui prieuse,

Or sui none, or sui abaesse.

(11207-11)

[At other times I wear a woman's garb: / now I am a maiden, now a lady; / at another time I'm religious: / now a devotee, now a prioress, / now a nun, now an abbess.]

Through rhythmic repetition these verses reinforce the notion that Faus Semblant's extraordinary talent of disguise is surpassed only by the diversity of his costumes, from prince to dame, from monk to forester, from prioress to mendicant. Once the choice of disguise is made, the warning that "S'est la celee plus seüre / Souz la plus umble vesteüre [it is the safest disguise, / under the humblest guise]" (11013-14) does not detract from his exposure of hypocrisy in the Church (11035-162), society at large (10976-83, 11177-78), the Capetian court,11 and of course, the mendicant orders themselves (11007-10).

This explicit appeal to vast and various segments of society underscores a penetrating social critique that can hardly be said to target the mendicants exclusively. It is exemplified once again through the depiction of a universal attitude towards the poor:

Trestuit seur les povres genz cueurent,

N'est nus qui despoillier nes vueille,

Tuit s'afublent de leur despueille,

Trestuit de leur sustance humant,

Senz eschauder touz vis les plument.

Li plus forz le plus feible robe.

(11544-49)

[All men want to trample over the poor, / there is no one who does not wish to despoil them; / everyone covers themselves with their spoil / trampling over their human substance. / Without scalding everyone plucks them. / The more powerful rob the feeblest.]

"But I," continues Faus Semblant, "who wear my simple robe, dupe the dupers and the duped, rob the robbers and the robbed" (11550-52). There is no exclusivity, only a general partaking in the universal disgrace.

Jean de Meun's antifraternal partisanship may, however, rest on the narrator's valorizing allusions to Guillaume de St. Amour and his struggle against the mendicant masters in Paris (ca. 1253-57). Furthermore, the very name of the character invokes the memory of St. Amour's Parisian partisan, the popular poet Rutebeuf, who developed his figure of Hypocrisy in the Du Pharisien and gave it the name of Faus Semblant in De Maistre Guillaume de Saint Amour.12 It is possible that the association of de Meun and St. Amour was strong enough in certain circles to have led some scribes to attribute parts of the Roman to St. Amour, occasionally at the expense of Jean de Meun himself. On the other hand, it is possible that the very attribution was intended to eliminate ambiguity in favor of partisanship, by replacing a poet with a theologian.13

What is continuously overlooked in indicating this association is that the theological debates over poverty in Paris had a much wider context than religious mendicancy. For social historians the controversy is an illuminating moment of contemporary attitudes towards poverty, far beyond any in-house debate.14 The most comprehensive modern study of the university quarrels (which did not end with St. Amour's exile in 1257, but continued into the late 12603) concludes that St. Amour "attaque à la fois une règle d'une excessive sévérité et contraire au droit commun traditionnel, d'une part, et d'autre part les pratiques inverses des frères."15 Thus, even if de Meun were simply siding with St. Amour, in the context of the quarrels of the 12503 this would have been indicative of concerns quite beyond the university halls and any anti-mendicant faction therein.

The lamentable social conditions underscored by Jean de Meun through prevalent attitudes toward poverty assume eschatological significance by being interpreted as tokens of the approach of Judgment Day. Through the image of Faus Semblant all religious hypocrites, not merely friars, are numbered among the children of the Antichrist,

Des larrons don il est escrit

Qu'il ont abit de sainteé

E vivent en tel fainteé.

(11714-17)

[About whom it is written / that they dress in a habit of sanctity / and live in such pretence.]

This proliferation of allegations must not detract from an even more basic fact about Faus Semblant, namely that he is the living image of the Cretan liar's dilemma, a moving field of deceit. His frankness is compromised by his very name, allowing for the existence of two diametrically opposed narratives at every step. This tension only increases towards the moment in which he invokes the fond memory of Guillaume de St. Amour, his celebrated historical and literary antagonist, and vows to carry his message forward even at the cost of his own life (11501-8). It is the second time that Faus Semblant vows to surrender his life for the sake of a "nobler" cause. The first instance was prompted by his desire to satisfy the God of Love's command to hear the truth about hypocrisy (10999-11002). At his insistence Faus Semblant swiftly changes his position from explicit opposition to total surrender. With such self-service acting as the dominant guideline, it is impossible and indeed futile to identify Faus Semblant's affinities beyond himself.

In sum, this ambiguous environment prohibits us from identifying a partisan authorial voice at one side or the other of a defined political border. The very attempt, I believe, is inherently wrong if we wish to understand the Roman in terms of its allegorical art rather than its alleged historical veracity. Faus Semblant does not depict anyone; he typifies hypocrisy. The character is a personification and an allegory, created by Jean de Meun to represent the nature of all liars, not all friars. Jean de Meun crafted a protagonist who turns against himself, in defiance of any particular perspective. If doubts still linger, the narrator's insistence in a major satellite of the confession that "ne fu m'entencion / De paler contre ome vivant / Sainte religion sivant . . . Mais pour quenoistre . . . Les desleiaus genz, les maudites, / Que Jesus apele ypocrites" [it was not my intention / to rebuke a person living / according to holy religion . . . but to identify . . . the debased people, the evildoers / whom Jesus calls hypocrites] (15252-64) again undermines any categorizing of the attack as simply antifraternal.

Manuscript evidence (surveyed fully in the appendix) reveals that contemporaries did not overlook the ambivalence of Faus Semblant's confession. I have suggested that the occasional attribution of parts of the work to Guillaume de St. Amour might have been an attempt to secure a partisan reading of the speech in lieu of a clear antifraternal statement. A more prevalent method, however, was resorting to fabrication. A later interpolation containing a vehement attack on mendicant privileges is widely found in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Roman manuscripts.16 Usually inserted between lines 11222 and 11223, but occasionally affixed to the end of the poem, it has come to be known as "the apocryphal chapter on the friars' privileges" and frequently consists of some one hundred and fifty lines.17

One thing is quite clear about this interpolation: it is hardly ambiguous. These verses offer a brazen attack on the fraternal orders' rights of confession, secured in 1282 by the pope's intervention after long years of struggle with the secular clergy. The text diverges from its contiguous narrative in tone and content by its lucid political targeting. Faus Semblant, now "really" a friar, boasts his privileged authority to confess and absolve

Toutes genz ou que je les truisse.

Ne sai prelat nul qui ce puisse,

Fors l'apostoile seulement,

Qui fist cest establissement

Tout en la faveur de nostre ordre.

(v-viii1)18

[All men or those whom I deceive. / No prelate may have such power, / save only the Apostle, / who established these [privileges] / entirely in favor of our order.]

The direct mention of the ecclesiastical forces at play -the prelate, a mendicant order, and the pope-offers for the first time a skewed political picture.

As noted above, the text was in all probability added in the aftermath of Pope Martin IV's bull Adfructus uberes which, among other provisions, stripped local parish priests of their exclusive monopoly over hearing confessions. Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which obliged every Christian to make at least one annual confession to his or her parish priest, resonates from "chascuns chascuns an a son prestre / Une foiz [each person to his own priest / once]" (x-xi). Yet thanks to Martin IV, the probable referent of the interpolation's "l'apostoile," the decree could be suspended by the friars: "Car nous avons un priviliege / Qui de pluseurs fais les aliege" [we have a privilege / which relieves us from many burdens] (xiii-xiv). The local clergy were desolated by the threatening implications of the privilege, as the token speech given by a parishioner reveals. He is no longer dependent on his priest for his salvation, since

. . . cil a cui je fui confès

M'a deschargié de tout mon fais;

Assolu m'a de mes pechiez.

(xvii-xix)

[he to whom I have confessed / discharged me from all my deeds, / absolved me from all my sins.]

Consequently, he asserts, "Ne je n'ai pas entencion / De faire autre confession" [I have no intention / to make another confession] (xxi-xxii). Prelate and curate have lost their hold on their flocks, which no longer seek double absolution since that would require a double confession. The parishioner continues:

Je ne dout prelat ne curé

Qui de confessier me constraigne

Autrement que je ne m'en plaigne;

Car je m'en ai bien a cui plaindre.

Vous ne me pouez pas constraindre

Ne faire force ne troubler

Pour ma confession doubler,

Ne si n'ai pas affeccion

D'avoir double assolucion.

(xxviii-xxxvi)

[I fear no prelate or curate, / who will constrain me to confess / beyond my will; / for I have one to whom I can very well complain about this. / You can oblige me no more, / neither force me nor trouble, / to make my confession double; / nor am I inclined / to receive double absolution.]

From the clergy's perspective, the loss of confessional monopoly meant a significant reduction in their ability to monitor the morality of their parish members and posed a serious threat to the social and religious cohesiveness of their communities. It also meant a serious reduction in income for any parish church, whose role as the basic local religious unit was, in a sense, no longer guaranteed.

The privileges were protected by papal authority and supported by the French monarchy, thus rendering futile any attempt to curb the friars' reinforced powers. The parishioner clarifies this point by assuring his priest:

Je voir juges imperï'aus,

Rois, prelaz ne oficï'aus

Pour moi ne tendra jugement,

(xlv-xlvii)

[I shall be safe from imperial judges, / kings, prelates, and officials, / [for] no judgment will be held for me.]

The tone and message are straightforward. As all relevant contemporary institutions are named and aligned, from pope to king, the underscored theme becomes one of power and its abuse, not hypocrisy. Moreover, Faus Semblant is no longer the focus of the narrative. After relinquishing his place to the parishioner, he is distanced from the scene even further by the introduction of the ruthless and power-thirsty

. . . frere Leus,19 qui tout deveure,

Combien que devant le gent eure.

Et cil, jurer l'os et plevir,

Se savroit bien de vous chevir;

Car si vous savra atraper

Que ne li pourrez eschaper

Senz honte et senz diffamement,

S'il n'a dou vostre largement;

Qu'il n'est si fous ne si entules

Qu'il n'ait bien de Rome des bules,

S'il li plaist, a vous touz semondre,

Pour vous travaillier et confondre

Assez plus loin de deus journees.

(Ivi1-lviii9)

[. . . Friar Wolf, who devours all, / however lucky men were before. / These [men] he dares to judge and swear. / He knows well how to protect himself from you. / For he could trap you / so that you could not escape / without shame and dishonor / if he does not receive from you generously; / for he is not so mad nor such a fool / not to obtain from Rome some bulls / (if it so pleases him) to summon you all / in order to exert and confound you, / in a little more than a two days' journey]

The secular clergy's ultimate danger lies within two days' journey from Paris, but Friar Wolf is everywhere, posing a threat to each and every individual's dignity and purse. He shames and dishonors; he takes, "devours," "traps," "exerts," and "confounds" all. The presence of this friar is necessary to polemicize an otherwise ambiguous text.

Finally, even Faus Semblant's confession of partiality towards the rich (lxxxi-xc) leads not, as we would expect, to furthering his image as a hypocrite, but rather reinforces the theme of his political dominance over the prelates. This time he threatens direct violence on prelates who dare grumble at the loss of their confessional privileges:

Teus cos leur dorrai seur les testes

Que lever i ferai teus boces

Qu'il en perdront mitre et croces.

(xciv-xcvi)

[For this I shall beat them over the head / and cause them such bruises, / that they will lose their miters and crosses.]

"Thus I deceive them all," he concludes, "so formidable are my privileges" (xcvii-xcviii).

In sum, the interpolation offers a direct, partisan harangue about the friars' abuse of power. It stands well apart from the deep ambiguity of the uninterpolated speech, yet in preceding it, the interpolation efficiently sets the tone of the entire confession; it seems to bring out of the confession an antifraternal voice that had no central place in it to begin with. But does the interpolation's presence in dozens of Roman MSS, or the occasional attributions of parts of the Roman to Guillaume de St. Amour, indicate an enduring consensus over the speech's original ambivalence? The evidence surveyed in the appendix lays itself open to many possible interpretations: was the speech not antifraternal, or not antifraternal enough? What can one make, for instance, of Chantilly, Museum Condeé MS 686, which originally omitted nearly the entire speech, but where later, and on separate occasions, both the speech and the interpolation were added? Can this be said to have been motivated by antifraternalism, or merely by a desire to obtain what was believed to be the authentic text? These questions and others, however, can and should only be answered in terms of particular cases. One such recorded case is the interpretation and appropriation of Faus Semblant in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Roman de la Rose was hardly Chaucer's sole encounter with literary, theological, or social antifraternal sentiment. One can find such expressions, whether in polemical treatises, poems, or real events, in Chaucer's more immediate surroundings.20 Even if the original context of the struggle at the University of Paris was entirely lost to Chaucer's contemporary audience, it was supplanted by distinctly similar circumstances in fourteenth-century England: although there were fewer friars in mid-fourteenth-century England than in mid-thirteenth-century France, English friars were never as numerous as in the 13505, and their popular appeal was never stronger, as evidence from local wills continues to inform us.21 However, London and other urban centers witnessed a swell of antimendicant sentiment generated by lay and clerical responses to the friars' growing privileges and material wealth.22 In the first decades of the fourteenth century, quarrels resembling those in Paris between secular masters and friars were waged at both Oxford and Cambridge,23 and the high mortality rate among mendicant convents during the Black Death, a calamity commonly interpreted as divine retribution, could have easily validated a perception of the friars' fall from grace.24 All this can be augmented by the often-violent suppression of the so-called Spiritualist wing of the Franciscan Order by Pope John XXII, an event that, for many, underscored the order's actual departure from its original path.25 In this context an allusion to the events of the 1250s would have been a powerful and bitter reminder of the friars' perceived threat.

How does Chaucer utilize this seemingly convenient context? A consistency in certain objections to friars-their ubiquitous presence ("serchen every lond and every streem, / As thikke as motes in the sonne-beem"),26 especially at universities-can be gleaned from Chaucer's character of the humble friar who "had in scole that honour" of being called "maister" (Summoner's Tale [hereafter ST], 2185-86). The words can serve as a sharp reminder of ensuing dissatisfaction with the friars' settlement in academic centers, quite in contrast (at least in the Franciscans' case) to their ethos of a life of preaching and begging by the wayside. The Canterbury Tales' (CT) "antifraternal" tale is told by the friars' bitter ecclesiastical enemy, the summoner-a contemporary political tension that is further reflected by the dramatic juxtaposition of friar Huberd and the summoner as outspoken antagonists within the CT's economy. In this antagonistic equation the summoner seems to have won a privileged position. Scholars' appreciation of Chaucer's deep familiarity with mendicant theology and practice only transformed the summoner's critique from antifraternalism to Chaucer's antifraternalism, earning him a secure place in the antifraternal Hall of Fame, alongside St. Amour, Rutebeuf, and Jean de Meun.27 But what should be the market value for a censure of a drunk, lecherous summoner, who "speke and crie as he were wood" (General Prologue [GP], 636)? Can an identifiable authorial voice be ascribed to "a gentil harlot and a kynde [. . . who] wolde suffre for a quart of wyn / a good felawe to have his concubyn" (GP, 647-50)?

The validity of the summoner's statements is questionable at best. Rather than in antifraternal partisanship, the affinities between the CT and the Roman can be located in the realm of ambiguity. Both works emphasize the tension between the form and the content of a pilgrimage. For Amant, the Roman's chief protagonist, a journey with a defined emotional, if not spiritual end unfolds in remarkably different terms, climaxing in a ridiculous penetration, the "plucking" of the Rose. As for the English pilgrims, their joint travels, as well as their individual verbal wanderings, that is, their errores, recapitulate those of Amant and his cohort. While Amant is driven by his cupidity, the pilgrims' stories originate in the merry innkeeper's suggestion of a tale-telling contest. Yet the ascent in either cases bears little resemblance to that delineated, for instance, in St. Bonaventure's Rinerarium.

To be sure, these affinities cannot be reduced to a simple set of mirror images. An intricate web connects many of the characters of the Roman and the CT without positing a single complementary image for Faus Semblant. Rather, through Chaucer's brilliant appropriation emerges a variegated resonance of the character's two distinct voices -the partisan and the ambiguous.

This process of appropriation may have been instigated by the translation of the French work into the Middle English Romaunt. One does not have to accept the extant Fragment C of the Romaunt as Chaucer's in order to claim that its contents, or indeed the poem as a whole, exerted a significant influence on him.28 We can simply assume that Chaucer either (a) translated the work at some point, as he himself testifies,29 or (b) was otherwise well acquainted with it. The widespread recognition that the Roman "probably exerted on Chaucer a more lasting and more important influence than any other work in the vernacular literature of either France or England" furnishes a solid a fortiori argument for either of these assumptions.30

Still, there is good reason to believe that the Romaunt, specifically in its extant (or highly similar) form, was known to Chaucer either as a reader and quite possibly as a translator. Fragment C contains Faus Semblant's speech in its entirety, including a unique version of the apocryphal chapter on the friars' privileges.31 The translation of the work provided an opportunity to iron out some stylistic peculiarities in the French interpolation and to render them less obvious. One would like to think that the translator's intimacy with the text enabled him in this case to recognize and address the idiosyncrasy of these lines.

Departing from its French source, the Middle English translation sets up a situation similar to the basic plot of the ST. Within the space of six lines in the Romaunt, the interpolation's original "Touz li monde" and "Chascuns chascun" (viii13, x) are rendered respectively into "husbonde and wyf" and "man and wyf" (Romaunt, 6379,6383). This variation lends a particularist quality to the text, so that a specific couple (rather than all mankind) falls prey to the friar's manipulations. The couple tends to the friar's needs following his sermon and is finally urged to confess. At this point in the interpolation Faus Semblant puts into the parishioner's mouth the argument against double confession to be flung at the priest (6390-440) and then moves to reclaim his own privileged status over that of the secular clergy.32

It is a small leap to see how the basic plot in the ST is an exact inversion of the translated interpolation, the retaliation, as it were, of the Romaunt's deceived couple. Following his sermon at the local church, Friar John jarringly announces himself at the couple's door: "Deus hid" (1770). It is yet another mission to extort money from the affluent Thomas and food and sexual indulgence from his wife -a plot that dissolves nastily into un-thin air. His attempt to solicit a confession (2093) is swiftly rebutted by Thomas, in words that echo the Romaunt: "I have be shryven this day at my curat" (2095). The shamed friar leaves with empty ears, hands, and stomach, and with the unsettling mathematical problem of dividing Thomas's "gift" equally among his brethren (2149). Something of a happy end, especially considering its century-old antithesis.

Yet the plot-driven inversion does not maintain the straightforward partisanship of the interpolation. Despite John's evident immorality - he is a self-indulging glutton: tipped staf, marble tables and all, whose straying from his order's path is manifest-both Thomas and his wife (as well as the people who sustain him along lines 1744-60) are held equally responsible for the situation. Behind the wife's gullibility lies a Strong desire to manipulate Friar John. Her passiveness at his sexual advances (1802-5), and her uncensored exposés, offering him a bedside view of her conjugal life (1826-31), reveal a character calculated to promote a highly personal agenda. This is also evident from her attempts to exploit the friar as a spiritual medium for news regarding the celestial whereabouts of her recently deceased child. Although these attempts result in Friar John's shameless monologue (1851-68), they at least attest to the scarcely less hypocritical nature of the wife's piety.

Sluggish Thomas, laying "Bedrede upon a couch lowe" (1769), is hardly a more inspiring figure, although it is his wit that ultimately prevails over Friar John's. His routine handouts to the friars do not go unnoticed, nor does a questionable attitude towards charity that emerges from the gambling-like strategy of his offerings (1951). Yet unlike Jean de Meun's barons at the end of Faus Semblant's speech, Thomas, though driven more by economic considerations than by moral righteousness, thwarts John's plan.

The assaulting baronial host had embraced Faus Semblant in order to gain his support for their expedition; likewise the ST's couple appears to have been repeatedly reliant upon the friar's "religious" services as mediator and supernatural intercessor. Complicity and cooperation were necessary in both narratives to perpetuate corruption, and in both cases the authors delegated responsibility over moral decline among all parties involved.

Chaucer's continuous appropriation of Faus Semblant goes beyond the translation of the Roman and the composition of the ST. It has long been noted, for instance, that in the Pardoner's Prologue and in the Wife of Bath's Prologue he drew on the confessional form and ironic tone of Faus Semblant's confession. The instances explored above, however, illustrate Chaucer's understanding specifically of Faus Semblant's ambiguous character and his employment of its distilled form.33 The other facet of Faus Semblant's character, its (interpolated) partisan antifraternalism, is isolated in the brief Summoner's Prologue (SP): in his vision the hell-bound friar breaths a sigh of relief at the sight of a mendicant-free cavern. His accompanying angel soon corrects the picture. As they approach Satan, the angel exclaims:

"Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas!" quod he;

"Shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se

Where is the nest of freres in this place!"

And ere that half a furlong wey of space,

Right so as bees out of a swarmen from a hyve,

Out of the develed ers ther gone dryve

Twenty thousand freres on a route,

And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute,

And comen again as faste as they may gon,

And in his ers they crepten everychon.

(1689-98)

The gruesome depiction of numerous friars under Satan's tail in hell appears to be antifraternalism in its pristine form. Yet the scene still inherits the stamp of Jean de Meun's ambiguity, for, on one hand, the summoner's antagonist along the pilgrimage is, by the summoner's own reckoning, a "false Frere" (1670) who is "neither a 'typical friar' nor a 'character' of any kind, but . . . the abstraction 'Faus Semblant' as he appears in the habit of a friar";34 on the other hand, the summoner himself, as we have seen, is no less guilty of treachery and greediness. In other words, the two characters and their respective tales are one and the same.35 Together they typify hypocrisy, not real men or their respective affiliate social categories.

In contrast to the SP's graphic imagery and brutality, the ST offers a nuanced critique, which, very much in the spirit of Faus Semblant's original speech, points fingers in all social directions through an unflattering portrayal of all the characters involved. Chaucer was able to overcome the straightforward partisanship of the interpolation and in this way avoid the constraints of a political or social affiliation.

In fine, Chaucer grasped and emulated the multivalent nature of Faus Semblant. Familiar with an amended textual tradition and perhaps aware of the interpolation that it contained, he allocated for each of its contrasting voices-the partisan and the ambiguous-a distinct place in the CT. To each of these he added the touch of his own genius. In the ST he managed to maintain a wider sense of social critique despite employing the partisan voice associated with the interpolation, by delegating responsibility not only to Friar John's illicit motives, but also to the calculated hypocrisy of the people he encounters. In the Pardoner's Prologue and the Wife of Bath's Prologue he retained the superb form of ambiguous confession that characterizes Faus Semblant's original speech. Even in the coarse humor of the SP Chaucer avoided categorical anti-fraternalism, stressing a critique of both those who have already fallen and those who are in danger of doing so: hypocrites.

It is not the case then that Chaucer wrote exclusively against friars. It was in this respect-and not in his so-called "antifraternalism" - that he may be said to have followed in the footsteps of Jean de Meun. Both authors chose quintessentially hypocritical characters to broaden, rather than limit, their respective social critiques, while exploring the expressive potential inherent in a well-developed character of a Cretan liar.36 That this choice, at least in the case of the Roman, discomfited certain contemporaries seeking a more straightforward antifraternal rhetoric is borne out by a careful survey of the reception of Faus Semblant's confession. By balancing historical context, MS evidence, and a close reading of the various ("original" and interpolated) texts, I hope to have offered a methodologically sound approach to explore the complex and shifting "horizons of expectations" of Jean de Meun's readers. Chaucer was merely one among many attentive readers, as were, for instance, Dante and Boccaccio. The latter, like the interpolators of Faus Semblant's confession and the attributors of some Roman segments to Guillaume de St. Amour, saw through the false seeming of a friar's garb.37

Princeton University