Content: introduction

2 . The Black Death and the Revolt of 1381
Feudal English society was divided into three classes, or “estates”: the knights and gentry at the top, the clergy in the middle, and the peasants at the bottom. Conservative thinkers taught that God ordained society in this way and that everyone should be thankful for his or her given status. In this schema, the knights would be the leaders of society. While it was commonplace to pay lip service to the equality of all humanity before God, manual laborers were not only physically exploited by their lords, but also rhetorically denigrated as the lowest of God’s creatures. The Bible seemed to promote this view. In the story of creation, Adam and Eve’s eldest son, Cain, is identified as the first murderer (of his brother Abel), as well as the first to till the earth. Langland’s decision to make a plowman the ideal figure of his poem is therefore a remarkable one. His exaltation of Piers registered powerfully against an accepted stereotype of the plowman as a cursed figure.
In 1348–49 disaster struck England in the form of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, which arrived from Europe on rat-infested ships. (The disease was carried by black rats and spread by their fleas.) The bubonic plague ravaged England, wiping out a third or more of the population, including half the clergy, and greatly upsetting the feudal system of labor, instigating the transition to a farm rental system. Before the Black Death, laborers worked for one baron on one manor, for the privilege of using land that was not theirs: “The lord gave use of the land—whether a baronry or a few half-acre strips; his ‘man’ responded with customary services which, if he was a bondsman, were often agricultural work (though they could include many other sorts of service, for example the messenger service)” (Baldwin, p. 69). However, on account of the Black Death, the demand for labor increased so dramatically that these peasants gained more power than before in the marketplace. In other words, feudal society was breaking down. The situation led to dramatically higher wages for the laborers and a less stable pool of workers on the manors. To counter these effects, Parliament enacted the Statutes of Laborers between 1349 and 1388, which sought to control prices, to prevent laborers from reneging on their contracts, and to force “the idle” to work.
In response to these statutes and to a series of poll taxes in 1377, 1379, and 1380, a mass of laborers stormed London in June 1381. Joined by artisans and other nonpeasants, the so-called “Peasants’ Revolt” brought mass destruction of property and loss of life: the archbishop of Canterbury and the treasurer of England, both major forces behind young Richard’s reign, were beheaded as the king remained helplessly ensconced in the Tower of London. Leaders of the revolt issued a long list of demands, including the abolition of the poll taxes, of the Statutes of Laborers, of church-held property, and of villeinage. A villein was a feudal tenant of a lord or manor to which he was entirely subject; villienage was the tenure by which he held some of its land. Now the rebels wanted to demolish the entire social structure, in which laborers were wholly subject to a lord. A meeting between King Richard and Wat Tyler, a leader of the rebels, resulted in the death of Tyler and the end of the revolt. But the events of June 1381, in which Piers Plowman played a part, had major social consequences.
To conservative Christian thinkers like Langland, the social instabilities that prompted the revolt of 1381 were inextricably connected to the health of the Church. Langland and others saw signs of spiritual and ecclesiastical discord all around them. As Langland was writing, a major Oxford theologian, John Wyclif (or Wycliffe), offered ideas that seem to have inspired some of the rebels’ thinking in 1381. A call for the distribution of the Church’s property, for instance, was one of his central tenets.
Wyclif instigated a movement that has been called “the premature reformation”: he urged that the Bible be translated into English and made available to all Christians, rather than just to the clergy; he condemned what he deemed features of “idolatry” in the practice of the religion—pilgrimage and the Eucharist; and he questioned the legitimacy of bishops and priests in absolving sin. His ideas quickly spread beyond the ivory towers of Oxford University, becoming the seedbed of a movement called “Lollardy” (an abusive term derived from the Dutch word lollaerd, or “mumbler”) that appealed to individuals of all classes—individuals who often identified with Langland, believing him to be a kindred spirit. Regarding Lollards as a great threat, in 1382 the orthodox Church condemned Wyclif’s doctrines and in 1407 it outlawed ownership of any of his writings—or any vernacular Biblical writing.
Lollardy was only one of a number of Christian “heresies” that flourished in later medieval Europe. Another, close in spirit to the Lollards, flourished among the Hussites in Bohemia in the early fifteenth century.
The orthodox Church also suffered internal strife, which captured the attention of authors like Langland and his contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer. Western Christendom witnessed a major event at precisely the moment that Langland was producing the B text of Piers Plowman: the papacy, which had been centered in Avignon, France, for decades (the so-called “Babylonian Captivity”), returned to Rome.
The decades of exile had developed from a conflict between King Phillip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII in the early fourteenth century. In effect, the French harassed Boniface so much that he had to flee Rome; he died soon thereafter, and in 1309 his successors relocated the papacy to Avignon, close to Philip’s realm. The papacy’s ecclesiastical and political authority waned during its period in Avignon, particularly among lands unfriendly to the French (especially England); because of this, Pope Gregory XI reestablished it in Rome in 1377.
Political antagonisms in 1378 led to a peculiar state of affairs: two popes were elected by different factions. Elected first was Pope Urban VI, and he returned to Rome, whereupon a faction of French cardinals, fearful of Italian influence, declared Urban’s election null; they proceeded to elect Clement VII, the “antipope,” who remained in Avignon. England supported Urban, France supported Clement, and various kingdoms throughout Europe took different sides. Known as the “Great Schism,” this situation of competing popes had disastrous political, spiritual, and psychological effects on Christendom. Langland himself appears to have been despondent over the situation. Passages of the B text express great anger at the papacy—so great, in fact, that some take it as evidence that Langland wrote the B text after 1378.
Lollardy and the Great Schism were perhaps the most urgent, but by no means the only, instances of Christian instability addressed by Langland and his peers. In England itself, the abuses practiced by many mendicant (that is, begging) friars aroused the indignation of Langland and Wyclif, who believed that contemporary friars had fallen far from the ideals espoused by their founder, St. Francis of Assisi. Since friars were answerable only to the Pope and not to local bishops, they could preach and perform sacraments anywhere
3 . The purpose of Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is a form of religious devotion that entails journeying to a holy place. Popular destinations for pious medieval Christians included Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified, or, closer to home, the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham. According to the Church, pilgrimage provided a means for Christians to achieve penance after confessing their sins: this is a process Langland dramatizes in the Second Vision (although Piers the Plowman substitutes plowing the half-acre for pilgrimage). But companionship and sightseeing were, of course, other attractions of pilgrimages. People from all walks of life, from peasants to royalty, undertook these journeys. On the other hand, there were many who rejected the practice. These naysayers faulted the practice as one easily given to abuse, for it tempted Christians to seek earthly things rather than spiritual wholeness. Detractors accused it, as well, of fostering misplaced devotion, for pilgrims sometimes put their faith in the literal shrines rather than in the spiritual truths represented by these physical objects. While this attitude would later become a mainstay of Lollardy, Langland had long been against pilgrimages; Piers himself claims, “I wouldn’t take a farthing’s fee for Saint Thomas’ shrine” (Piers Plowman, 5.558). In the Prologue, pilgrims do not fare well among the “fair field full of folk” (Piers Plowman, Prol. 17):
Pilgrims and palmers [“professional” pilgrims] made pacts
with each other
To seek out Saint James [an important shrine in Spain] and
saints at Rome. They went on their way with many wise stories,
And had leave to lie all their lives after.
I saw some that said they’d sought after saints:
In every tale they told their tongues were tuned to lie
More than to tell the truth—such talk was theirs.