Piers Plowman - Vision 4

Vision IV – Passus XIII – XIV

Passus XIII – Feast/Intro to Haukin

The feast is fantastic. Conscience throws the feast – if this is the same Conscience as in the first few passus, then he is a knight and here seems to be fulfilling feudal obligations. He has a theologian, Clergy, Will and Patience, a pilgrim, to dinner. They are seated in hierarchical order – the theologian and Clergy are at one table; Will shares a table with Patience, which seems to signify that Will is relatively low-ranking in society. Will and Patience eat sour bread and drink water, and mostly feast on spiritual food, which Patience keeps commending as wonderful and tasty and filling. The theologian and Clergy – especially the theologian – feast on every type of yummy medieval food one could imagine and drink WAYYYYYY too much wine. This establishes the theologian – a learned doctor of divinity (thinking Gilbert and Sullivan here…) as a glutton and a hypocrite. This hacks Will off. Patience urges Will to wait until the theologian starts babbling before letting out his anger – when the theologian mentions something about the trinity, Will finally asks him about Do-Well and comrades. The theologian’s beautifully messed up answer is that Do-Well is to do what one is told to by the clergy, Do-Better is to learn and teach actively what one has learned, and Do-Best is to actually do what one says others should do. He sees no problem in practicing other than he preaches, which further establishes him as the sort of hypocritical friar that the text has been warning about the whole time. Clergy is asked the same question – he mentions something about his seven sons (the liberal arts) and then claims that he’s not sure what anything is anymore because Piers has told him that the only study that matters is that of love. Patience then gives a lengthy speech, the upshot of which is to love your enemies and remember the love that Christ shows us – the power of which love is most easily signified or remembered by the Pascal moon – aka – remember Easter. Patience then affirms that if one just believes in this, then one can get anything one wishes for from anyone. I think the underlying theme is that if one believes truly in God’s love and will, then one will get anything one wishes because one’s wishes will be in accordance with God’s. The theologian doesn’t deal well with this, and gets very confused – he seems to think that Patience is referring to Courtly/Romantic love, rather than loving worship…

Conscience takes off with Patience and the two go on a pilgrimage to find Do-Well. Will seems to join them. They run into a minstrel, Haukin. Haukin is presented as a typical person. He’s active and professes not to like idlers, and boasts quite a bit about his bread production and how much everyone loves it. He aligns himself with Piers in being of the active working class by mentioning that they both get the same blessing on Sundays, even if no one pays attention to them the rest of the time. He mentions the 1370 famine.
While he’s talking, Conscience and Will are examining his clothing. He is wearing a robe that used to be pure white – the baptismal garment that shows him to be Christian, and which is pure white at the moment of baptism signifying cleanness from stains/sin. The garment as he owns it now is filthy. As they examine it, Will mentions finding proof of Haukin’s having committed all seven deadlies, which Haukin agrees to but mentions that he’s never really found it in himself to repent exactly the way he’s supposed to, even though he tries from time to time. He can’t even get through a paternoster without getting mentally sidetracked by money worries, something that they average working class person can probably relate to easily…

The text at this point breaks into an explanation of the different types of minstrels there are in the world – there are flatterers and liars and gameplayers who are in the pay of the higher clergy and the aristocracy, but who won’t help one at death – and then there are the minstrels of God, the poor people who really need the money and who, at death, could attest to the willingness of a particular person to help those in need.

Haukin is the important thing here. He symbolizes every regular person in his attempts to be good that are constantly sidetracked, his wallowing in sin without always realizing it or knowing what to do about it, his activity, his general demeanor – Haukin is anyone, and thus paints a sobering picture of what normal people are like. They sin without meaning anything by it, don’t always realize how bad they are, and only occasionally try to fix themselves and rid themselves of sin at moments of intense illness. Haukin is flawed but engagingly drawn, which makes him sympathetic. Which might be good, given the primacy the text places on mercy – if one can forgive Haukin, maybe one could think a bit more about forgiving one’s enemies (and self).


Passus XIV – Lengthy ‘poverty is great’ lecture by Patience

This passus begins with Haukin doling out excuses for why he can’t follow the life of Christ – he is married, busy, all the things people usually tell themselves about why giving up everything they own and following Christ is, if nothing else, one of those things that daily life simply won’t accept. Haukin even mentions that every time he does take his coat (soul) to the cleaners, it’s stained within minutes by something stupid and sinful that he does. He feels completely at a loss as to how he might be a good person.

Conscience explains that he needs to feel sorrow for what he does, then confess his sins – Do Well – and then repentance and satisfaction fully done and meant are Do Better. At this point, Do Best will keep the coat clean. If Haukin does this, his life will be better and he will be held in high esteem.

Patience steps in at this point. Patience promises to feed Haukin anything he needs and provide all the grain he needs for the bread he sells. The nourishment is the line from the paternoster “thy will be done.” Patience proceeds (as Haukin doubts him openly) to explain that with patience one can accept God’s will and have all needs fulfilled – that it is only because of human excess that some people starve (as a Marxist aside – one could put this today on a macro level, that people here in this country only do as well as we do because half the world is starving to death while making our shoes and whatnot for pathetically low wages…). Anyway, moderation leads to faith, and contrition, faith and conscience make up Do-Well. This keeps people from mortal sins and makes them venial sins. Oral confession destroys sins altogether, and restitution/satisfaction actually vuries the evidence.

Haukin then asks about Charity, though he’s never heard of anyone who’s ever met Charity in all his travels. Charity is explained as being Humility, Honesty and Self-Control. Haukin then asks if the Lord is happier with one who bears poverty patiently, or with one who has wealth and yet doles it out well to those who are in need of it. This sends Patience off on a several page rant about how evil rich people are, how rich people will never make it into Heaven because they’re too wasteful and too quick to enjoy Heaven on Earth, etc. Compassionate rich people, if they actually exist, get a double reward fro God because they can enjoy life here and yet still be good enough to get into Heaven. Patience implies that such people don’t actually exist. Poor people are treated miserably here, yet get rewarded in Heaven. Patience even comments that had God wished it, all people could be equal in intelligence and wealth here on earth, but that God hasn’t wished that to happen. Patience accepts this. This can be compared to Will’s questioning of Reason earlier – Will is unable at the moment to accept that people are treated differently on Earth and that that is actually okay, whereas Patience notices there is a difference and hopes that paupers are rewarded in Heaven, but doesn’t actually question the fairness of it all or if God had screwed up or anything to that effect. Then there’s lots and lots about humility being necessary. Patience then explains at length how the seven deadlies have no power over poverty, which makes poverty a blessing. Poverty becomes the greatest virtue anyone could ever have. Then he lectures at length as to why poverty is so beneficial to the body and soul – it keeps people anxiety free (hahahahahahaha) in that they don’t have to worry about being robbed, etc. This eventually guilts Haukin into feeling terrible about his life, lamenting that he’d ever owned anything or ever had control over another person – at this point he sobs and sobs and sobs and begs for mercy – obvious contrition, which is good as there’s lots of literature that asks people to make their contrition obvious to the world. Haukin does a good job. Haukin wails so loudly that it wakes Will up out of the dream and back into reality.