Piers Plowman, Vision 5

Vision 5 – Passus XV-XVII


Passus XV – Anima’s lecture on evangelism

Yawn. Will wanders around in the world for a while actually totally awake, and is regarded as an idiot by everyone around him because the further he progresses in spiritual understanding, the farther away he is from following the ways of the world – in ignoring the world, the citizens of the world assume he’s mad. He starts raving, and Reason sends him to dream again. He meets Anima, who appears to him to be ghostlike. Because he’s now dealing with Anima, who is the soul and the spirit (and a billion other things) and memory and whatnot, the text is signaling that the spiritual journey Will is undertaking has left the surface of intellectual endeavor, and has instead now delved into deeper forms of understanding. Will demands to know everything there is to know under the sun (a demand that strikes me as really Faustian, even if that’s a bit anachronistic). He is promptly rebuked for his pride.

At this point Anima launches a lecture that spans the rest of the passus and gets extraordinarily boring to read, though my displeasure in reading it doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t some good points. At this point though, it’s getting repetitive. Educated people often know too much to be saved, and their learning works against them, because the more they know the better they need to be inwardly to be saved. There is then a rant about how terrible the clergy are because the clergy know so much and yet won’t help the poor who need it. Instead, they help the rich and those who can endow them with more money. The more money they get, the more money goes to people who don’t need it instead of the poor, who desperately do. The clergymen worship the crosses imprinted on the money, rather than the True Cross. Nice confusion in people between money and God – another sort of moment where money is shown to be evil, or distracting from good.

Will takes the hint and asks about Charity. Anima says Charity is childlike, meaning that has a will that is free, meaning generous. Apparently adulthood sorta sucks the good stuff out of one. Charity is a good, hardworking person who follows good works, has no real property, works to aid the poor and prisoners, and occasionally “goes to the laundry” as it were to clean his own soul. To get to Charity, one needs to know Piers Plowman, because Piers understands the deeper motives of men’s souls. Piers at this point turns into a reference to Peter, and therefore almost as a sort of Christ figure, or a true Pope – one can know Charity only through The Will, which only Piers really knows. Charity can be known through bad manners, in a failure to bother with all of the mannerisms of the world while instead looking for the end of life to rest.

Next comes a lengthy meditation on true anchorites, hermits, and saints, and how they were fed by birds and ate of spiritual food, of which God made sure they never lacked. At this point Anima bounces back into Charity and giving property out to those who deserve it, rather than those who already have lots of property, like monasteries. This links into what amounts to a prediction of the dissolution of the monasteries, which Anima looks to as a good thing because money and benefices have been a curse on the goodness of those in the church.

Anima gives a huge and bizarre explanation for how Mohammed tricked Muslims into believing in Islam, saying that he trained a dove to eat grain out of his ear, and while he was feeding the dove he would wander around so that people could see him, and then tell everyone that the dove was a messenger from God. (Rushdie has nothing on this guy.) Then Anima jumps onto an even lengthier discussion of evangelism, and why converting people to Christianity is wholly necessary, especially since Christ did so much to convert people to Christianity (i.e., by dying for us). Eventually it comes out that converting Jews and Muslims shouldn’t be too difficult, since they already believe in one of the three points of the Trinity – everyone believes in God the Father; it’s just that the other two religions need a bit of guidance to believe in the Son and the Holy Spirit as well.


Passus XIV – Piers and the Trinity Tree

Passus XIV starts out with a discussion of Charity. Charity is this time the fruit of a tree called Patience. The tree Patience grows in the garden called Heart, and all the caretaking is given to Free Will under the care of Piers Plowman. At this point Will gets hugely excited and promptly passes out again in the midst of his own dream.

The new Dream within a Dream now involves a really important allegorical discussion of the Tree. There are three props supporting the tree – the props are the Trinity. They keep the tree from falling. The first prop is “God the Father” which keeps greed from nibbling fruit off the tree. The second is “the Wisdom of God the Father” which is, he explains, the Passion of Jesus and thus the Son. This keeps sex away. I’m not quite sure how that follows. Then occasionally the devil will show up to get ahold of the tree’s branches, but Free Choice, Piers’ assistant, can keep Satan away. The third Prop, if the Devil gets too close to stealing the fruit, is the grace of the Holy Spirit. In this way the tree signifies the Trinity. Then Piers gets into an explanation of the levels of fruit on the tree and how they signify different levels of perfection – lower on the tree are married “fruits,” then higher up are widows, and the highest of all are virgins.

Will, in his insatiable quest for knowledge, now asks Piers to pluck some fruit from the tree so that he can examine it. As Piers acquiesces, the fruit screams, and then the Devil runs in and steals the fruit. Piers grabs the Second Prop – the Son – to try and get the fruit back. It doesn’t work now, but sets into motion the annunciation. From there we get the story of Jesus’ birth, life, training (as a knight in a relatively courtly tradition, which I absolutely adored), miracles, and more miracles with final position as Physician of Life. He rips down the Temple, is betrayed by Judas with a kiss – then Jesus is arrested on Thursday, crucified on Friday and dies, and on the cross Christ does battle with Death and wins.

Abraham then appears and names himself Faith. Then there’s a lecture on the Trinity as a family. Then Abraham foretells the coming of the Messiah, and explains that he has lepers with him in his cloak who all have faith. The lepers are people who are covered with sin, and all are prisoners of the Devil. Abraham explains that they cannot leave the Devil until Christ has come for them. This finally hits home to Will the depth and meaning of the sacrifice Jesus makes for humanity on the Cross, and he finally breaks down in sobbing, repentant tears.


Passus XVII – Hope and the Samaritan.

Hope shows up as Will is sobbing and tells him that all will be well as long as he Loves God and His Neighbor. Will gets frustrated because this doesn’t tally with the account of the trinity he’s just received from Faith, and he’s not sure who to trust. Finally a Samaritan wanders by and all take up with him – they come across a man lying in the road who’s half dead. Faith and Hope both stop far away and refuse to help him, but the Samaritan walks over, checks the man out, brings him to a local inn and gives the innkeeper money for the man’s room, board and healthcare. The meaning of this episode is that faith and hope can only take a person so far, but that after a while, mercy is all that can save one. The Samaritan describes the Trinity as a hand – the fist is the power of God, the fingers are the means and the Son, and the palm is the Holy Spirit and the bond of all. One can always be granted mercy as long as one does not sin against the Holy Spirit, because by doing that one injures the palm of the hand and thus the way that the hand is able to manipulate itself and work. The only way to sin against the Holy Spirit is to be uncharitable or unkind.

There are three things that the Samaritan mentions can drive a man from his house (aka the church, his soul/body whatever): a shrewish wife, which is our recalcitrant flesh; rain while we try to sleep, which is the sadness and grief that occasionally falls into life; the third is smoke that burns one’s eyes, which is greed.