Neal Stephenson has a post The Wrongs of Thomas More (Wrong 5) that begins:
In my previous post I talked about spelunking through the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “wrong” to see how the usage of that word had developed down through the ages.
Embedded in that definition was a citation that caught my eye. But first I need to point out that “wrong” has many shades of meaning. The particular one to which the following quote applies is: “Not in consonance with facts or truth; incorrect, false, mistaken.” And one of the oldest, and certainly pithiest, examples of this usage is cited as follows:
1528 MORE Dyaloge III. Wks 210/1 Our hart euer thinketh the judgement wrong, that wringeth us to the worse.
Now, that one’s a beauty because it has one foot in the more ancient meaning of the word, and one in the modern. “Wringeth us to the worse” goes to the older, bending or twisting sense of the word, and means turning or wrenching us off course into a less desirable outcome. “The judgement wrong” refers to an error, a bad call. How do we discern between a right and wrong judgment? Our heart does it (the author, writing in 1528, doesn’t draw modern distinctions between the heart and the brain). Evaluating a particular judgment, our heart thinks that it’s wrong if its result is that our fate is turned or wrung in a bad direction.
The author is clearly engaging in wordplay here; he knows the etymology of this word. He’s amusing himself, and perhaps his more erudite readers, with the neat turn of phrase. Thanks to the OED, we less erudite moderns can get the joke too.
I was so curious about the context of this passage that I began tracking it down in the expectation that it might make for an interesting footnote. Instead I fell into a substantial rabbit hole.
The rabbit hole involves the purchase, “for a cool $150,” of a copy of A Dyaloge Wherin be Treatyd Dyvers Maters and the (very demanding) reading thereof, from which he concludes “it makes Thomas More look like a terrible human being.” You can see an image of the facsimile edition, where I note that immediately before the quoted bit there’s an occurrence of “theym ſelfe” (i.e., themself). I recommend also reading the preceding post, linked in the first sentence, which describes the semantic development of wrong. And from the OED entry I pluck this twisty quote from the Ayenbite of Inwyt: “Yef þe onderstondingge is wrong, oþer yef he tuysteþ oþer wyþwent.., al þe inwyt ssel by þiestre and þe hieap of uirtues.” I presume “wyþwent” is a form of obsolete withgo “To go against, act in opposition to, oppose; in past participle opposed (to),” but I can’t say I understand it.
Thanks, Trevor!
I certainly don’t begrudge the man the right to pay $150 for a facsimile edition with the old-timey spelling and typeface if he wants to. But the notion that this scandalous work is almost impossible to find because so embarrassing to More’s reputation is contradicted by the fact than you can just pay $20.95 for a modern-spelling paperback edition (with blurb claiming that the recently-discussed-here C.S. Lewis thought it “perhaps the best dialogue written in English”) put out by a Catholic-market-focused publisher that apparently doesn’t feel the least bit embarrassed about making More’s views accessible to a modern readership. https://scepterpublishers.org/products/dialogue-concerning-heresies
EEBO has the original for free
DNB felt the Dyalog was good, Tyndale’s response less so, and More’s counter still worse.
The DNB mollymooly linked to says the Dyalog was published in June 1529. Sources vary as to whether the Rev’d Thos. Hitton was burned at the stake in 1529 or 1530 but they all agree it was February, almost certainly meaning it was what we would think of as Feb. 1530 but what was thought of contemporaneously as still 1529 because of the old English practice of not changing the number of the year on January 1 but waiting until March 25. I’m not sure whether or not that fits Stephenson’s assumed timeline.
You might pay almost $150 for a used copy of the scholarly modern edition of the Dyalog published 1981 by Yale Univ. Press as vol. 6 of their _Complete Works_ of More, but Stephenson could have also consulted an online version of that (apparently uploaded in 2020) for free and just used control-F to find the “wringeth” passage. https://thomasmorestudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/DialogueConcerningHeresies2015-etext.pdf
The full sentence from the Agenbite is
And yef þe onderstondigge is wrong, oþer yef huy tuysteþ oþer wyþwent ayen, ase deþ þe quarteus, al þe inwyt ssel by þiestre and þe hieap of uirtues.
the wythwent agen is clarified by the simile of the hoop (quarteus is taken to be a typo for cerceaus, the same figure “went agen ase deth the cerceaus” is used elsewhere in the text). So the idea is of a twisted or bent (in a circle?) understanding. Note this sentence in “the seventh step of righteousness” is part of an exegesis of a Gospel text quoted in the text as approximately ” If thine eye is simple and clean, all thy body shall be clear and bright. And if thine eye is wicked and dim, all thy body shall be dark [ þiestre] and dim”; the quoted sentence follows a contrasting one where the understanding is clean and simple and the “hyap of workes” is true and clear and pleasing to God.
Thanks, now I understand!
Fascinating post, much appreciate becoming aware of these two works.
Wikipedia seems very good on the Agenbite, and explains the author’s use of calques (presumably invented by him): agenbite=remorse, inwit=conscience, etc. Wikipedia also remarks on archaic aspects of the language. It has me wondering whether the author was consciously archaizing, given that he has a penchant for playing with language (the calques).
Those remind me of a language I have forgotten the name of which is supposed to be English if the Norman Conquest had never happened.
Yola?
Anglish?
Alternese, aka “Allo-Saxon” and “English from Unfamiliar Angles”, is probably not what you meant, but probably it’s better.
If anyone is interested, the Bible verses the Agenbyte quotes before the cite appear to be
Matthew 6.22-6.23
Vulgate
Lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus. Si oculus tuus fuerit simplex, totum corpus tuum lucidum erit.
Si autem oculus tuus fuerit nequam, totum corpus tuum tenebrosum erit. Si ergo lumen, quod in te est, tenebrae sunt: ipsae tenebrae quantae erunt?
KJV
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Maybe also relevantly to the Agenbite, a pre-KJV take on that passage: “The lanterne of thi bodi is thin iye; if thin iye be symple, al thi bodi shal be liytful; but if thin iye be weiward, al thi bodi shal be derk. If thanne the liyt that is in thee be derknessis, how grete schulen thilk derknessis be?”
What is the deal with Matthew 6:22–23 anyway? It seems out of place, with little to nothing to do with the more famous pericopes before and after. To interpret it as being about “the eye as the window on the soul,” would put it into in conflict with the admonishments not to show one’s piety in any fashion. However, as pure metaphor, it seems empty. (“Taking the eye as a metaphor for the soul, if the eye is metaphorically alight, the soul will likewise be metaphorically alight.”)
I don’t even understand the colliding metaphors that make it possible that light is darkness.
Wikipedia actually has a whole article on it, with a veritable smorgasbord of suggested interpretations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_6:22
I don’t even understand the colliding metaphors that make it possible that light is darkness.
Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement. [R]
@David Eddyshaw: Yes, I read that before commenting. The exegeses were not very enlightening. They tend to either restate the metaphor or use it as a jumping off point for a separate riff. However, given its confusing message and placement and its association with the Sermon on the Mount, that pair of verses might well be an authentic excerpt from Jesus’s homily.
I have some vague memory that there was a suggestion to use Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός as the motto of the newfangled arriviste Royal* College of Ophthalmologists when it was set up; in the event, they went with the distinctly meh Ut omnes videant.
* At that point, it was in fact a mere “College.” The eventual royal patron was Prince Andrew, a connection which has unaccountably disappeared from College documents and websites.
His vision was so bad, he couldn’t even—
Was the College of Dermatology already—
Never mind. He’s not even worth the joke.
No sweat, Brett.
I don’t even understand the colliding metaphors that make it possible that light is darkness.
To paraphrase boringly: “If you have darkness in you where light is expected, how double-dark that darkness is.” I think.
Deep thoughts.
The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become.
I suppose he meant that he tans easily.
That’s why they call him Shine.
Again, if anyone is interested, I have been looking at the Middle French text (“Somme le roi”) that the Agenbyte is based on. This has taken me awhile, because
(a) digital versions I can find are scanned and, though delightful in their beauty, do not allow text search or even Ascii rendering of scribal handwriting
(b) my feel for Middle French is almost completely nonexistent…
—
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84478782/f193.item
Folio 91v-92r
De cestui dit nre [nostre] sires en levangele ‘si tes euz est simples et de bon avys et purs, touz tes cors sera luisanz et clers et se [si] tes euz est hors et [dicis?] touz tes cors sera tenebreous et [obdus?]’, cest adire se [si] lentendon dou cuer est vere et pure et simple et veit droite voie cyme ligne permi touz ces degrez que nos avons nominez, toute la masse de ces oevres et de ces virtuz sera bele et clere et plezants a deu et se [si] lentendons est torte que elle forche ou ele reploie ariere cyme fait li quartaus, toute la conscience sera tenebreouse et la masse des virtuz […] sanz droite entendons aumoine devient pecheez et virtuz vices.
—
1. where I have put […] the scan or original appears to be corrupt.
2. where I have put [dicis] I think the best fit is from decire (DMF:”Lacérer (une partie du corps), écorcher”)
3. where I have put [obdus] I think the best fit is from obtus (DMF: “Au fig. “Émoussé”, the later F. development is as in Eng “obtuse”)
2. Quartaus could be the word that DMF lists as quartaut with variant quartus (if so, dunno why they don’t list the spelling here as variant) meaning “Baril contenant un quart de muid,” However DMF has carcan (variant carcau) = “Cerceau en bois qui consolide un assemblage” which matches the definition hoop given by the Middle English compendium for quarteus/cerceaus in the Agenbyte, so the two words could have been confused by a copyist. Again the variant spelling quarcaus is not given in DMF.
Wow, that must have been a lot of work — thanks! Here’s a link to Folio 91v, where the passage starts.
My transcription:
The word in the manuscript is certainly quariaus, i.e. carreau; but I can’t make any sense of that.
@SR
Thanks!
Entencion–doh, sorry
Quariaus, did you look also at the 2nd instance on Folio 92r?
Quariaus, did you look also at the 2nd instance on Folio 92r?
I hadn’t!
That looks like quareaus. (Not quarcaus: c has a flat top, not the curved top stroke of e.)
I’m none the wiser.
elle forche ou ele reploie ariere [com]me fait li quariaus
Like a quarrel, or crossbow bolt head? (As here, but these examples are from much later than our text—if they are even authentic.) Imagery involving the carreau d’arbalète is apparently found elsewhere in Laurent’s text. I have to go to bed now, but I hope someone else can follow up.