‘Lesyng of Tyme’: Perceptions of Idleness and Usury in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Then came Sloth, all be-slobbered, with two slimy eyes. ‘I must sit down to be shriven,’ quoth he, ‘or else I shall fall asleep. I can’t stand or prop myself up, or kneel without a hassock. If I were put to bed, no amount of bell-ringing would get me up until I was ready for dinner – well, not unless I had to relieve myself This is Langland’s description of Sloth inPiers Plowman. Originally a monastic vice, meaning boredom with the cell, sloth, oraccidia, came to be applied to spiritual duties generally. By the time Langland wrote, it had also come to mean physical laziness or idleness, that is ‘lesyng’ or misspending of time. This paper investigates some ideas about idleness and its consequences as they emerge from the spiritual and didactic literature of late medieval England. They are linked with ideas about the most detested idlers, the usurers, the money-lenders. Usurers violated time in a double sense, for not only did they misspend it, but they also made a profit from selling it. Equally vilified as idle were the clergy. The poet John Gower sourly observed that ‘Slouthe kepeth the librarie’ of the corrupt English clergy. They will feature here only incidentally, although it is perhaps worth pointing out that some ecclesiastics profited from lending money. In the late thirteenth century a council held at Exeter had to decree the suspension from both office and benefice of usurious clergy. In the mid-fourteenth century no less a person than Archbishop Melton of York profited from lending money.

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