Chapter 1: The Poem in Its Commercial Context

1.ii. Commerce and Christianity

Informing the commercial vision of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are two related but distinct phenomena. First is the role of commercial discourse in Christianity. Beginning with Scripture itself, commercium is a crucial concept, generating a nearly inexhaustible supply of imagery for the relationships between God and man. The theology of redemption suggests itself as one obvious source of such imagery (Lyonnet and Sabourin 1970:46-224). The verb redimere means `to buy back,' and the New Testament abounds in significant examples of the term and its implications. Hence, for example, Mark 10. 45: "For the Son of Man also is not come to be ministered unto; but to minister and to give his life a redemption for many." Or, again, I Corinthians 6. 20: "For you are bought with a great price"; then, too, I Peter 2. 9: "But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people." Related to the latter verse and of great importance to the Gawain-poet's other major work, Pearl (see 892-94), is Apocalypse 14. 3: "And they sang as it were a new canticle, before the throne and before the four living creatures and the ancients; and no man could say the canticle, but those hundred forty-four thousand, who were purchased from the earth." This is only a small sample which centers on just one term. To both could be added such passages as Colossians 2. 2-3: "That their hearts may be comforted, being instructed in charity and unto all riches of fullness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus: In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." These tropes are more than just ways of speaking: they are insights into the humanity of exchange and the exchanges of humanity. Perhaps the best measure of the importance of exchange in Scripture is the very idea of covenant itself. A covenant is in fact a commercial contract (OED C:1101). And in the later Middle Ages, this idea, expressed usually by the term pactum (Courtenay 1971: 96-102; Hamm 1977 :407-10), assumes extraordinary importance for English poetry. It is at the core of Langland's insistence on redde quod debes, Gower's passion for the comune profit (Peck 1978:xxi), and Chaucer's fascination with marriage. Equally important in Scripture and for Middle English poetry is the concept of debt which is explicit, of course, in the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6. 12) and in the Church's teaching following St. Paul on the marriage debt (I Cor. 7. 3).

The Fathers of the Church continue Scripture's practice as they draw from the world of commerce for their meditations on the ex- {9/10} changes between God and man. Augustine writes, for example, "egit enim in cruce grande commercium (Upon the cross, he has completed the great exchange)."7 Or, less terse though no less compelling,

Attendite omnes homines, utrum ad aliud sint in hoc saeculo, quam nasci, laborare et mori. Haec sunt mercimonia regionis nostrae, ista hic abundant. Ad tales merces Mercator ille descendit. Et quoniam omnis mercator dat et accipit; dat quod habet et accipit, quod non habet; quando aliquid comparat, dat pecuniam, et accipit quod emit; etiam Christus in ista mercatura dedit et accipit. Sed quid accepit? Quod hic abundat, nasci, laborare, et mori. Et quid dedit? Renasci, resurgere et in aeternum regnare. O bone Mercator, eme nos. Quid dicam, eme nos, cum gratias agere debeamus, quia emisti nos! 8
Mark this question everyone: whether there is anything else in this world other than to be born, to labor, to die. These make up the merchandise of our world, these things abound here. For such pay did that Merchant descend. And since every merchant gives and receives--that is, gives what he has and receives what he does not have, as, for example, when he buys something, he gives money and receives in exchange what he buys--just so, Christ in this negotiation gives and receives. But what does he receive? What but the things that here abound--to be born, to labor, to die? What did He give? To be reborn, to arise, and to reign throughout eternity. O good Merchant, buy us. What am I saying, buy us? when we ought rather to give thanks, that you have bought us.

Or again, perhaps even more explicit:

Dignatus est assumere formam servi, et in ea nos vestire se: qui non est dedignatus assumere nos in se, non est dedignatus transfigurare nos in se, et loqui verbis nostris, ut et nos loqueremur verbis ipsius. Haec enim mira commutatio facta est, et divina sunt peracta commercia, mutatio rerum celebrata in hoc mundo a negotiatore caelesti: venit accipere contumelias, dare honores, venit haurire dolorem, dare salutem, venit subire mortem, dare vitam.9
He thought it worthy to assume the form of a servant, and in that form to clothe us himself--He who did not think it unwor- {10/11} thy to take us up into Himself, who did not think it unworthy to transfigure us in Himself, and to speak our very words, so that we might also speak His words. For this marvelous exchange was made, these divine transactions accomplished, this alteration of affairs in our world consummated, all by the heavenly Merchant: He came to receive reproaches, to give honors; he came to drink grief and sickness, to give health and salvation; he came to undergo death, to give life.

To these examples numerous others from Augustine's works could be added and from the works of other Fathers as well.10 But of more use here, perhaps, is an example from the very end of the Middle Ages. Gabriel Biel, the fifteenth-century nominalist theologian, argues Oberman 1967:59) that "cum itaque terreno cesari debetur sensualis denarius sua imagine signatus et nomine circumscriptus . . . quanto magis reddendum est quod debemus deo, animam scilicet nostram sua imagine signatam, sanguine mundatam, virtutibus donis et sacramentorum characteribus circumscriptam (Since, therefore, to the earthly Caesar the sensual coin is owed, being stamped with his image and circumscribed with his name . . . how much more must we pay what we owe to God, namely our soul, stamped with His image, cleansed by His blood, circumscribed with the virtues and powers of his gifts and the marks and characters of his sacraments)." Numerous examples from the intervening 1,000 years could be adduced, 11 but these will suffice to demonstrate that Sir Gawain is well within the Christian tradition when it figures the exchanges between God and man as an economy of mediation.