O admirabile commercium:New Year's Day is the day of the `admirable commerce' through which the Maker of man exchanged his deity for his creature's body. On the day when the Church celebrates the saving commerce of the Deus-Homo, the Green Knight prices Gawain commercially.
Creator generis humani, animatum corpus sumens,
De Virgine nasci dignatus est:
{19/20} Et procedens homo sine semine,
Largitus est nobis suam deitatem.7O wonderful exchange, wonderful trade:
The Creator of human kind, assuming an inspirited body,
Deigned to be born of a Virgin;
And coming forth as a man without admixture of seed,
He bestowed upon us his godhead.
Commentary on this antiphon begins at least as early as Amalarius of Metz and remains remarkably consistent down through William Durandus's Rationale Divinorum Officiorum.8 In glossing commercium, Amalarius (1948:507) notes that "quando dicit: commercium, ostendit aliud dari, et aliud accipi. Dedit Christus suam deitatem, et accepit nostram humanitatem. Quod dedit colimus in nativitate eius, et quod accepit, in octavis (when the antiphon says `commerce,' it shows that something is given and something received. Christ gave His deity and received our humanity. What He gave we celebrate during the feast of His nativity, and what He received, during that of the octave)." Just so, on New Year's Day, the Octave of Christmas, at the Green Chapel, Gawain accepit nostram humanitatem: he bleeds (2314). 1 am not suggesting that Gawain is a Christ figure; the poem does not ask to be read that way. But the poem is about a Christian knight and about one whose cowarddyse and couetyse had blinded him to his humanity and original culpability. To these the Green Knight opens his eyes again. Having become proud of þe prys that Bertilak's Lady `put on him,' Gawain fell victim to that superbia vitae (John 2. 16; Howard 1966:232-35) because of which he lufed [his] lyf (2368) and therefore lewté wonted (2366). The Green Knight blames him the less (2368) because he loved his life but blames him still. For had Gawain, knight of the Virgin Mary that he is (645-50), previously followed Christ without reservation, he would have accepted nostram humanitatem, as did Christ, unto the death (Phil. 2. 5-8). But there's the rub: it is difficult for a mere man to follow Christ without reservation.
Of particular relevance here is an often repeated remark that originates with Amalarius (1948: 57): "Christi adventum ad homines colimus in die nativitatis ejus: hominum adventum ad Christum colimus {20/21} in octavis eius (The advent of Christ to men we celebrate in the day of his nativity: the advent of man to Christ we celebrate on its octave, eight days later)." Extending and clarifying this formula, Sicard of Cremona adds: "ipse autem venit ad nos, ut iremus ad eum, et hoc ex antiphonis manifeste dignoscitur (He Himself came to us that we might go to Him, and this is clearly taught in the octave)" (PL 213:226; emphasis added). On the Feast of the Circumcision the Church celebrates the advent of man to Christ--"Largitus est nobis suam deitatem"--which is possible because of the advent of Christ to man--"animatum corpus sumens, / De Virgine nasci dignatus est." Christ bought our humanity and paid his deity for it: this was the exchange--"egit enim in cruce grande commercium" (see chap. 1 at n. 7). The order of events is important here. Man becomes God only because God became man; man comes to Christ only because Christ came to man--"ipse autem venit ad nos, ut iremus ad eum." Or, as St. Augustine, whom Amalarius (1948:506) quotes, puts it (De Doctrina Christiana, CCSL 32:12):
Non enim ad eum, qui ubique praesens est, locis movetur, sed bono studio bonisque moribus. Quod non possumus, nisi ipsa sapientia tantae etiam nostrae infirmitati congruere dignaretur, ut vivendi nobis praeberet exemplum. Non enim aliter, quam in homine, quoniam et nos homines sumus.Had not Christ become the Son of Man, men could not become the sons of God. Full acceptance of nostram humanitatem, therefore, in the manner of Christ, is necessary to receiving the largesse of deity ("largitus est nobis suam deitatem").9 The error of Gawain, however, is to have refused nostram humanitatem where Christ fully accepted it, unto death. Gawain will not, as every man eventually must, lay his life down. Who of us can blame him? He accepts the green girdle to save his life. So would we. But in doing so, he exchanges his prys for his life; he pays for his life with his prys. But, as he soon learns, without his prys his life is precisely worthless. Gawain's refusal of nostram hu- {21/22} manitatem, his fear of death or his belief that he must live at all costs, finally surprises and disheartens him more than anyone else. He should have known better:For to Him who is everywhere present there is no approach through places but through good endeavor and good customs. Such approaches we cannot make unless Wisdom Himself deigns to participate in so many of our ills and weaknesses that He might offer an example to us living men. For such an example is not otherwise available to us than in a man since we too are men.
"Corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe!And it surprises and disheartens him so because he has been long deceived about his own humanity. A member of Arthur's court, where the king himself is childgered (86) and wylde of brayn (89), Gawain--like his king, Hushed with youth, "for al watz þis fayre folk in her first age" (54)--had taken it for granted that he was the ideal knight, just as Arthur's was the ideal court (cf. Blenkner 77:379-80; Burrow 1965:50-51). He had presumed upon a nurture as yet untested, untried. Because of that presumption and because of that untried nurture, Gawain did not really know, however easily he might have been able to name, what his kynde was. ignorant and inexperienced, he had assumed, so his behavior suggests, that larges and lewté would follow naturally upon being a knight. But it is not so simple as that, he finally learns. A man and his kynde are not necessarily one, especially when his kynde is larges and lewté. Both terms are crucial but larges has pride of place and for good reason if we think of the antiphon. For larges is the kynde--"largitus est nobis suam deitatem"--of the truest miles or Christ.10 And Gawain could never have lived up to this kynde. He could never have been so generous as to lay down his life, as did the miles Christ. And this because he is human. Both he and Arthur had ignored, as youths inevitably do, that they are only human. Gawain had ignored the flesh and the flesh's weakness--"þe faute and þe fayntyse of þe flesche crabbed, / How tender hit is to entyse teches of fylþe'" (2435-56)--and this is why his flesh overwhelms him with the love of life when the Lady presents him with the girdle. Gawain had not really thought about death yet, even though he had been taking thought for it ever since setting out from Arthur's court.{22/23}
In yow is vylany and vyse þat vertue disstryez."
þenne he ka3t to þe knot, and þe kest lawsez,
Brayde broþely þe belt to þe burne seluen;
`Lo! þer þe falssyng, foule mot hit falle,
For care of þy knokke cowardyse me ta3t
To acorde me with couetyse, my kynde to forsake,
þat is larges and lewté þat longez to kny3tez.
Now am I fawty and falce, and ferde haf ben euer
Of trecherye and vntrawþe.'(2374-83)
To pursue the same line of reasoning further: having resisted the Lady's previous sexual advances, Gawain has, by the time she shows him the girdle, triumphed heroically over the flesh. If he has experienced the weakness of the flesh, he has also overcome it. And in the wake of this triumph must come--it is hard to imagine it otherwise--pride in its achievement (superbia vitae). And this self-congratulatory pride--the pride of, so to say, "Yes, I am an honorable knight"--undermines Gawain's defenses when the Lady tempts him at last not with sexual desire but with the far more powerful, instinctual, and uncontrollable desire to live. Gregory the Great (PI. 76:453; emphasis added) very aptly describes Gawain's predicament in his discussion, not inappropriately, of circumcision:
Alia est luxuria carnis qua castitatem corrumpimus, alia vero luxuria cordis est qua de castitate gloriamur. Dicitur ergo [God to Job] "Accinge sicut vir lumbos tuos" [Job 38.3], ut qui prius luxuriam corruptionis vicerat, nunc luxuriam restringat elationis, ne de patientia vel castitate superbiens, tanto pejus intus ante Dei oculos luxuriosus existeret, quanto magis ante oculos hominum et patiens et castus appareret. Unde bene per Moysen dicitur: "Circumcidite praeputia cordis vestri" (Deut. 10. 16), id est, postquam luxuriam a carne exstinguitis, etiam superflua cogitationum resecate.Although Gawain has, in fact, achieved a brilliant appearance of patience and chastity before the Lady--and thus, at least as he sees it, before the world, too--he is not as yet circumcised in heart. And so, de patientia vel castitate superbiens, he accepts the girdle which, as a syngne of surfet, suggests that, in part at least, his error has been one, in Gregory's words, of superflua cogitationum. Moreover, in accepting the girdle, his superflua cogitationum extend to an oath of secrecy and thus to {23/24} treachery. Hence Gawain's triumph over the flesh, his very idealism of chivalric duty, weakens his resistance to the flesh and its many temptations. And so it is that the Green Knight finally leaves Gawain with not only knowledge of the weight of the flesh but also with the humility to acknowledge his own foolish pride. Gawain declares:There is one kind of lust, namely of the flesh, by which we corrupt chastity, another, however, namely of the heart, by which we glory in our chastity. Hence God says to Job: "Gird up your loins like a man" [Job 38. 3], so that whoever first conquers the lust of corruption may now restrain the lust of glorying, lest becoming proud of his patience and chastity, he live so much the worse lustful within, before the eyes of God, as he appears the more both patient and chaste, before the eyes of man. Hence well is it said by Moses: `Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts' (Deut. 10.16), that is, after you douse the lust arising from the flesh, cut off also the excesses of thought and imagination.
`Bot in syngne of my surfet I schal se hit ofte,
When I ride in renoun, remorde to myseluen
þe faut and þe fayntyse of þe flesche crabbed,
How tender hit is to entyse teches of fylþe;
And þus, quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes,
þe loke to þis luf-lace schal leþe my hert.'(lines 2433-38: emphasis added)
When the Green Knight prices Gawain--when he comparat militem Arthuri 11--on this day of admirabile commercium, he reminds Gawain of that exchange, that commerce, between Deus and Homo, between deity and humanity, between spirit and flesh, which in his youthful idealism he had ignored. Although Gawain is a superior man, he is still a man, not yet a deity, and therefore he is still subject to the market-place of this world where the commerce between deity and humanity goes on. When Gawain looks hereafter to the syngne of surfet, he will see the weight of the flesh and thus also that concupiscence which is the reatus of original sin.12 He will never again be so proud as to forget that he is only human.
Now the consequences of the Green Knight's circumcision of Gawain justify this claim: "`I halde þe polysed of þat ply3t, and pured as clene / As þou hadez neuer forfeted syþen þou watz fyrst borne'" (2393-94). Restoration of Gawain to the innocence (albeit self-conscious) of infancy is just what we should expect from the circumcision because it is a rite precisely of canceling the debt of peccatum originale. As a Feast of the Octave, or Eighth Day, the Feast of the Circumcision, according to Sicard of Cremona (PL 213:227), celebrates renovation and regeneration:
Est demum omnium octavarum ratio generalis, quod octava redit ad caput.... Idem quoque dies primus est et octavus, id est Dominicus. Ideoque resurrectio Domini dicitur facta in octava, id est in die Dominica. Idcirco igitur observatur celebritas octavarum, ut revertamur ad primum innocentiae statum; in cujus innocentiae recordatione, in octava die Circumcisio agebatur, ut mens circumcisa fieret ab omni carnali contagione.{24/25}Circumcising Gawain by the nick on the neck, the Green Knight ultimately renews in him the effects of baptism: "Circumcisio carnis, lege praecepta est; qua non posset melius significari, per Christum regenerationis auctorem tolli originale peccatum (Circumcision of the flesh is a precept of the Law; this precept signifies nothing so clearly as the taking away of original sin [i.e., baptism] by Christ, the author of regeneration)" (St. Augustine, PL 45:1173). Circumcision, like baptism, tollit originale peccatum. Hence the precision of the poem's words: "`as þou hadez neuer forfeted syþen þou watz fyrst borne'" (emphasis added). Gawain was first born of the flesh from his mother's womb. He was born again, a second birth, of the waters of baptism, when the coin of his soul was stamped with the character of the sacrament that removes original sin.13In fact, the general explanation of every octave is this, that it returns to the beginning.... The first day and the eighth day are exactly the same--that is, Sunday. Thus the resurrection of the Lord is said to have taken place on the octave' that is, on the day of the Lord, Sunday. On this account, therefore, the celebration of the octave is observed, that we might return to the first state of innocence; and in commemoration of this innocence, on the eighth day, circumcision was performed, so that the mind might be circumcised or cut off from all carnal contamination.
A pause is necessary here to quarrel with the T-G-D edition which glosses forfet as `transgress'. This is in error. If forfet meant `transgress,' the Green Knight would be saying, "as though you had never transgressed or sinned from the time of your first birth." No Christian sacrament has this effect. Rather, baptism, like circumcision, can only take away the penalty, the fine, the punishment--the forfeiture (or guilt)--for original sin.14 Neither baptism nor circumcision can take away the effects of original sin, namely concupiscence and ignorance.15 Concupiscence and ignorance remain, and, because they remain, men continue to sin. The Green Knight, therefore, has no authority to say that Gawain has never sinned. But he does have the authority to say precisely, "as though you had never paid the fine or the forfeiture from the time of your first birth," because circumcision, like baptism, remits the penalty of original sin retroactively from the moment of carnal birth and ever thereafter. Hence Gawain will continue to sin, as all men do because of þe faut and þe fayntyse of þe flesche crabbed, but the Green Knight has renewed, or celebrated again, Gawain's redemption from the debt or fine of his sin--which of course has been debited to the account of Christ, agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi. The doctrinal {25/26} precision of the poem's commercial imagery is no mean part of its extraordinary beauty.
Equally impressive is the extent of the emphasis on regeneration and renovation in the poem. When Gawain first flinches from the ax, the Green Knight exclaims, "`þou art not Gawayn'" (2270) as if he would un-name Arthur's knight. But after Gawain has accepted nostram humanitatem by shedding his blood in the circumcision, the Green Knight renames him:
`and sothly me þynkkezAlthough the name is the same, in the second impositio--which is commercial and comparative, fully mediatory--it is nonetheless new. As in fact it should be, according to Sicard (PL 213:227), following as it does the rite of circumcision:
On þe fautlest freke þat euer on fote 3ede;
As perle bi pe quite pese is of prys more,
So is Gawayn, in god fayth, bi oþer gay kny3tez.'(2362-65)
De circumcisione et nominis impositione sermo succedat, et merito in octavo die circumcisionis, et nominis, quod est Jesus, impositionis solemnitas celebratur.The Feast of the Circumcision is also the celebration of the imposition of the name Jesus which, as commentators emphasize, is the novum nomen. 16 Similarly, though he may not receive literally a new name, Gawain receives his name anew; and in this sense, his name is new--gratuitously imposed and not achieved, a gift he could not have earned by any knightly deed. And Gawain accepts his name, for the first time, even as he accepts nostram humanitatem for the first time. Gawain is renewed in the admirabile commercium that the Feast of the Circumcision celebrates.Concerning the circumcision and the imposition of the name, the discourse continues; and rightly on the eighth day is celebrated the rite of the circumcision and of the imposition of the name, which is Jesus.
If Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is doctrinally precise, it is not, of course' precisely doctrinal. It is a poem' not a treatise, and is accordingly not restricted to expository logic. Hence, for example, the significance of the Feast of the Circumcision figures within the larger context {26/27} of the sacrament of penitence that is fundamental to the poem's structure. In "þe corsedest kyrk þat euer [he] com inne'" (2196), Gawain meets a confessor of sorts who shrives and absolves him (Burrow 1965:127-33). The poem adds circumcision to penitence, to draw imagery from them both, because, in part, as its relation to baptism suggests, circumcision is a kind of penitence for original sin: it is a satisfaction in and of the flesh, a payment by the body, of the fine Adam incurred. Moreover, circumcision, like penitence, is an ascesis of the senses. Numerous exegetes agree with Honorius Augustodunensis that "circumcisio Domini ideo agitur, ut et nos spiritualiter circumcidamur quinque sensibus nostris (Circumcision of the Lord is thus celebrated, so that we too will be circumcised spiritually in our five senses)."17 The circumcision or ascesis of the five senses is an image of considerable importance to Sir Gawain since, first of all, one of the five points of the pentangle signifies that Gawain watz funden fautlez in his fyue wyttez (640) and since, second, when Gawain first arrives at the corsed kyrk, he complains, "`Now I fele hit is þe fende in my fyue wyttez, / þat hatz stoken me þis steuen to strye me here'" (2193-94). Supposedly faultless in his five senses, Gawain in fact suffers deceit because of and through them: it is through his fyue wyttez, especially the wyt of hearing, that Bertilak's Lady persuades him to break his covenant with his host; and the same wyttez suggest to him, quite erroneously, that it is the fiend who had lured him to the Green Chapel. Obviously, then, Gawain's senses are in need of the circumcision that they eventually receive at the hands of the Green Knight. Circumcised and purified at last, they will enable him, in his repentance, to remember and celebrate what he should never have forgotten, the admirabile commercium of the Deus-Homo.