After Everyman begins his penance, Good Deeds and Knowledge are able to summon some of Everyman’s other companions, including Discretion, Strength, Beauty, and the Five-Wits (or the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight). Arguing for the importance of priests and church sacraments (rites and ceremonies considered highly spiritually significant in Christianity), Five-Wits uses a metaphor that compares sacraments to medicine:
There is no emperor, king, duke, ne baron,
That of God hath commission,
As hath the least priest in the world being;
For of the blessed sacraments pure and benign,
He beareth the keys and thereof hath the cure
For man’s redemption, it is ever sure;
Which God for our soul’s medicine
Gave us out of his heart with great pine;
Here in this transitory life, for thee and me
The blessed sacraments seven there be,
Baptism, confirmation, with priesthood good,
And the sacrament of God’s precious flesh and blood,
Marriage, the holy extreme unction, and penance.
First, Five-Wits argues that even important political leaders such as emperors and kings hold less spiritual authority than “the least priest,” and then he notes that the “blessed sacraments” of the Catholic Church are “cure” for “man’s redemption”—they are the “soul’s medicine.” These medical metaphors imagine sin as a form of illness that can only be cured by active participation in the Church’s sacraments.
Everyman falls into a state of deep despair after he is rejected by his friends and family, turning instead to Good-Deeds who, despite her weakness, introduces Everyman to her sister, Knowledge. After Knowledge urges Everyman to confess his sins to a priest, Everyman uses a metaphor that compares the Catholic practice of confession to a “glorious fountain”:
O glorious fountain that all uncleanness doth clarify,
Wash from me the spots of vices unclean,
That on me no sin may be seen;
I come with Knowledge for my redemption,
Repent with hearty and full contrition;
For I am commanded a pilgrimage to take,
And great accounts before God to make.
Now, I pray you, Shrift, mother of salvation,
Help my good deeds for my piteous exclamation.
In Catholic belief, an individual might be absolved of their sins by confessing them to a priest, typically in a confession booth that conceals the identity of the confessor. Everyman is enthusiastic about Knowledge’s idea, describing confession as a “glorious fountain” that washes away all “uncleanness” of the soul. In this metaphor, sins are imagined as bits of dirt or “spots” that show visibly on the skin. These spots, however, can be washed away by the waters from the “fountain” of confession, leaving the confessor spiritually purified.
