By Preeve which that is Demonstratif (12)
The same issues appear in the concluding part of the D-Group, "The
Summoner's Tale", told at the expense of the Friar, as the Friar had told
his tale at the expense of the Summoner. Much is made in this tale of the
Friar's pretentions to learning:
"No maister, sire," quod he, "but servitour,
Thogh I have had in scole that honour.
God liketh nat that 'Raby' men us call . . ." (2185-7)
This scholarly Friar gives a sick man, called (no doubt, coincidentally,
Thomas), a long-winded sermon, making full use of all the Auctoritees he
knows. In return, the sick man proves himself a worthy successor to the
Angelic Doctor, for he sets the Friar the most impossibly abstract
scholastic quaestio of all time: how do divide a fart equally into thirteen
distinctiones.
No magister had ever discussed such a quaestio. It seems impossible:
The Lord sat still as he were in a traunce,
And in his herte he rolled up and doun,
"How hadde this cherl ymaginacioun
To shewe swich a probleme to the frere?"
- To the Friar, of all people, the Friar who has earned the degree of Master
in the schools.
"Nevere erst er now herde I of swich mateere.
I trow the devel put it in his mynde.
In ars-metrike shal there no man fynde
Biforn this day, of swich a question.
Who sholde make a demonstracion
That every man shold have yliche his part
As of the soun or savour of a fart? (2216-2226)
The problem is impossible, incapable of solution:
The rumblynge of a fart, and every soun,
Nis but of eir reverbaeracioun,
And evere it wasteth litel and litel awey.
There is no man kan deeme, by my fey,
If that it were departed equally. (2233-2237)
And yet a solution is at hand . . .
Doctor Elasticus
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