On Latin Verses Probably by William Langland ( Piers Plowman C.17.285 A–B )

In baculi forma sit, presul, hec tibi norma; Fer, trahe, punge gregem, seruando per omnia legem. (‘In the shape of the crozier, bishop, may you find your rule: carry your flock, and pull and goad it[,] observing the law in everything’.)1 Among the internally rhymed (‘leonine’) Latin hexameters spliced into Langland’s Piers Plowman are two on a bishop’s responsibilities. Traugott Lawler identifies Langland’s first line as a variant of a known sententia that uses the form of the crozier as a metaphor for pastoral care.2 The second line has resisted source study. Derek Pearsall, citing Hans Walther’s index of Latin proverbs, referred it to ‘three lines copied in B.L. MS Lansdowne 397, f. 9v’, the first of which matches Langland’s first.3 However, Pearsall did not check the manuscript. Walther quotes only the incipit from the three lines in Lansdowne 397 (fourteenth c.).4 Having examined the manuscript, I can report that neither of the other two lines matches Langland’s second. The passage, found among other didactic Latin verse on this page, reads (italics mark my expansions of scribal abbreviations; ‘·’ represents the scribe’s punctus): In baculi forma presul datur hec tibi norma Attrahe per primum · medie rego · punge per ymum Attrahe peccantes · rege iustos punge vagantes. (BL MS Lansdowne 397, fol. 9v)