Piers Plowman - Vision I (long)

Piers Plowman Prologue-Passus IV

Prologue – a little too thorough – set up in fourteenth century

Will – the protagonist, a semi-allegorical figure who symbolizes each person’s individual will – has a dream in May because it’s nice out and the stream sounds pretty. He dreams of a tower on a small hill, which signifies heaven, a hallow in the ground with a terrifying dungeon – hell – and a wide, fair field of folk, which is basically all of us here on Earth. He then describes what people do in general, giving a great daily picture of life in the late fourteenth century in England. First, he mentions plowmen and how they seem to almost never stop working in the field. Then he covers some sinners, then merchants who seem to be prosperous, and then beggars. Langland seems overall to have some very sincere concern for the poor throughout the text, but not at this point – the beggars he describes are not sincerely poor, but faking or taking way more than their share of the charity. He then smacks most of the clerical orders, blaming them for everything from liking their clothes too much neglecting their country parish charges in favor of making more money in London. He notes God won’t take this particularly well.

He then passes on to the Pope and how God created the papal see out of his love for devotion to the four cardinal virtues (faith, hope, charity and love). As with Julian, the idea of divine love is paramount, and the picture of God that we are given in this part of the text is not the angry sort of God, but rather a God who can only be understood through love, and whose basis is love, and who created us out of love. Langland sets up an ideal sort of government that is headed by a King and ruled together by King guided by Kynde Wit and the commons (kynde – kind – means natural in Middle English (ME)). The plowman is noted as being established by the Commons for the good of everyone, and again the industriousness of the plowman is commended. This general scene is set out with the precept that the King should rule by just law tempered with mercy – and that all people should keep in mind that they should judge for themselves on Earth to mimic the way they’d like to be judged by God after death (sorry for the tortured sentence).

At this point the text seems to run into a brief aside, where a group of mice and rats (commons and nobles) discuss a cat (John of Gaunt) that is irritating them – they plot to put a bell on the cat’s neck so that they’ll be alerted to his activities, but find that they lack courage to force the bell onto the cat’s neck (seeing Piggers jump all over a piece of paper is making me understand why…) – finally, a mouse pipes up, decides it isn’t in his interest to provoke the cat or the kitten it takes care of (the 10 year old and newly crowned Richard II), and that said mouse refuses to help pay for the bell/collar. This all relates to a discussion of whether or not the people should be trying to put constitutional limitations on monarchical power, and they decide overwhelmingly in the negative… but it’s interesting to see that this sort of question of monarchical power, so huge 250 years later in the brouhaha over Charles I and the English Civil War, is already something discussed even in a text whose entire purpose is to debate the true purpose of the soul. Langland at this point lumps together a huge group of people engaged in typical forms of legitimate labor – brewing, baking and the like – and then claims no knowledge as to what the dream might mean.


Passus I – lecture by Holichirche
Holy Church comes out of the tower (note that the church is actually based in Heaven in this scheme, rather than on Earth – this gives the Church a huge level of divine authority). Holichirche (as it is in the ME) explains a lot to the poor, confused Will. The general gist of things is that the tower is where Truth lives, Truth is basically God, that Truth wills that all people have the three things that they need on Earth – clothing, food, and drink – in order to survive, and that people should be especially wary in the case of drink to make sure they practice moderation, though one could see, given Langland’s vitriol against well-dressed friars in the Prologue, that this applies to all three. Drink is bad in particular because being drunk can lead to all kinds of run ins with the Seven Deadlies, a few of which are mentioned here.

Money comes up, and Holichirche gives out the typical ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…’ response, and that one should always make sure to give generously to the poor. To live well is to live by one’s Reason – Reason will always steer one to live in line with God’s will. Will then asks about Hell – he’s told what it is and that it is the habitat of Wrong (Satan)(aka Lucifer). He asks for direction from Holichirche to learn how to save his soul – he makes it clear that worldly gain is of no interest to him. She first explains that he must remember that God is Love. And then that Truth is God’s gift to the world, and that everyone who knows Truth should protect it. And then by explaining how Wrong got to Hell and how he is so puffed up with pride that he will never get out. Truth is important because it teaches you to Love God more than you love yourself, and never to commit a mortal sin, even if failure to commit the sin means death. Anyone who truly believes in Love will not be able to sin. Love’s source is from God, and it comes from the human heart. Finally, Holichirche rants about the condition of the poor, and how they learn by example rather than learning – and that the horrible example of the friars and priests that the poor learn from has got them all backward on what is good and bad, especially with regards to greed (Langland is fully in the anti-clerical tradition, and his biggest problem seems to be at this point that clerical greed means that clerics are lining their pockets rather than giving money to the poor, who need it).

Passus II-IV – fun with Mede

II- We are introduced to Mede, a truly wonderful and fascinating character. In ME, ‘mede’ means reward. As an allegorical character, Mede is wonderful here. She means pretty much nothing on her own, as a reward can have a billion meanings, but the actual meaning of the term “reward” is completely situation dependent. Mede is in the process of being married to Falsehede, at which point ‘mede’ would signify something like a bribe. The marriage is forwarded by Liar and Deceit and happily ratified by Civil Law and Simony – meaning it has both a secular and a clerical stamp of approval. The marriage proclamation is hysterical – it works to help dump any meaning or any good connotations from her figure. There’s lots of carousing, sex and gluttony at the wedding party, and then Theology gets wind of everything and throws a fit. Mede’s theological meaning is that she’s the daughter of Amends, meaning that in the theological sense mede is the just reward of heaven one gets for truly repenting of one’s sins. Conscience then steps in and forces a trial in front of the King. All of the vice figures listed above (everyone except for Theology and Conscience) ride off on the clergy, who have been fitted up as horses.

Falsehede gets support in his case from Deceit and Guile, who bribe everyone to take his side in the marriage suit. The King requires that everyone be brought to him, so that he can make judgment on the matter – everyone disappears. Guile joins the merchants and helps them sell more; Liar becomes a Pardoner, and then moves on through a variety of occupations, ending up as a friar. Mede, meanwhile, is stuck and captured – she seems completely incapable to do anything (and thus mean anything) on her own.

III- Mede promises rewards to anyone willing to help her – the rewards are material wealth for greedy people, advancement for ambitious people, etc., but never anything particularly good for someone in the spiritual sense. A confessor who is a good friend of Falsehede confesses Mede so that she won’t feel bad in front of conscience – she confesses but means and feels nothing, so the confession is rendered ineffectual it seems (though the text only implies this). She pays with money and then offers more in the form of benefactors to the confessor’s cloister. Mede proceeds to bribe everyone at court to take her side. The King offers to marry Mede to Conscience, but Conscience can’t stand her and explains at length how she’s an easy whore. The King says she should be banished. She defends herself by explaining exactly what mede is – she completely takes meaning from the word, and explains herself as being everything from the spoils of war to Papal gifts to wages earned for work. Conscience will have none of this – mede has two meanings to him. First is the divine meaning of a mercy from God at the time of death to a repentant soul. The second meaning is wordly reward, which most people set their hearts on and which is thus all the reward they can expect to receive – they will gain none in death. As an editorial note to all the wealth-chasing megachurches out there, Calvinism in that form makes no sense, and controverts half the Bible. So quit being so excited to have money and just be a bit nicer to people… Anyway, Conscience also points out flaws in Mede’s argument, in that people getting paid for work constitutes wage labor rather than some sort of reward, and to get over herself, and that commerce is ‘exchange’ rather than ‘reward.’ Conscience decrees that Reason will rule the kingdom until Real Love arrives with Conscience, and the two make everyone engage in legitimate forms of labor. Truth will then hold the only court. Mede starts to complain; Conscience points out that she hasn’t bothered reading enough Scripture to know what good is and to shut up.

IV – King tells Conscience to kiss Mede and make up. Conscience refuses unless reason tells him to. Reason is fetched by Conscience, waylaid by Witty and Clevercraft – pragmatic figures – shakes them off, and eventually arrives at the King’s court. There is an interjection at this point of Peace, who has been wronged by Wrong, who has been raping and pillaging at will. Mede and Witty pay bonds for Wrong to get Wrong off the hook by making financial reparations (*don’t forget that Wrong is Satan!!) – Peace is fine with this and everyone seems quite happy to allow money to take the place of justice. Reason throws a fit and won’t allow it, or any sort of financial reparation until the day that everyone lives nobly in their heart, people follow the jobs they have or the lifestyles they’ve chosen, and no one engages in international money trading unless they’re merchants. (It might be worth remembering at this point that money is also Mammon, a devil – yay anticapitalism!!!... though Langland doesn’t talk about this at this point.) Reason will allow no mercy unless the payment for mercy or the inducement to be merciful is humility of the wrongdoer. People react – the humble poor are the ones who largely act and think in the correct way. Eventually, Reason, Conscience and the King set up an ideal: the idea set up for government on Earth is the King making Just judgments based on the counsel of Reason and Conscience.