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Piers's Pardon and Langland's Semi-Pelagianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Robert Adams
Robert Adams*
Affiliation:
Sam Houston State University
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Extract

’Hold there!’ said he. ’One must be a theologian to see the point of this question. The difference is so subtle, that it is with some difficulty we can discern it ourselves — you will find it rather too much for your powers of comprehension.

Pascal, The Provincial Letters I.

Virtually all who have written on Piers Plowman B agree that one's interpretation of the pardon in Passus 7 is central to one's understanding of the entire poem. Unfortunately, no similar agreement prevails concerning the details of the scene or its general significance, a fact we might infer from the widely discrepant interpretations of the entire poem's subject and outlook. Nevertheless, most who have written on the subject of the pardon may be grouped into one of two categories, depending on their assessment of the episode's general rhetorical slant.

Type
Articles
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Traditio , Volume 39 , 1983 , pp. 367 - 418
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Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Important versions of the dominant view may be found in Chambers, R. W., ‘Long Will, Dante, and the Righteous Heathen,’ Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 9 (1924) 50–69, and ‘Incoherencies in the A- and B-texts of Piers Plowman and Their Bearing on the Authorship,’ London Mediaeval Studies 1 (1937–1939) 27–39; Nevill Coghill, ‘The Pardon of Piers Plowman,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 30 (1944) 303–57; Frank, Robert, ‘The Pardon Scene in Piers Plowman,’ Speculum 26 (1951) 317–31, and Piers Plowman and the Scheme of Salvation (New Haven 1957) 23–33; John Burrow, ‘The Action of Langland's Second Vision,’ Essays in Criticism 15 (1965) 247–68; and Mary Carruthers, ‘Piers Plowman: The Tearing of the Pardon,’ Philological Quarterly 49 (1970) 8–18. and The Search for St. Truth: A Study of Meaning in Piers Plowman (Evanston 1973) 68–80.Google Scholar

2 Cf. the same phrase applied to his actions in defending the Tree of Charity in 16.86. Also, see Lupack, Allen C., ‘Piers Plowman, B.VII,116,’ Explicator 34.4 (1975) item 31. All quotations from Piers Plowman, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the B-text as edited by George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, Piers Plowman: The B Version (Piers Plowman: The Three Versions 2; London 1975).Google Scholar

3 McNamara, John F., ‘Responses to Ockhamist Theology in the Poetry of the Pearl-Poet, Langland, and Chaucer,’ (diss., Louisiana State University 1968) 94–96, misreads key parts of this passage, seeing no irony in the use of preued (7.174) for the priest's conclusions about the pardon, and thinking that demed (7.175) refers to the priest's judgment of Dowel.Google Scholar

4 Frank, Scheme of Salvation 28–29.Google Scholar

5 Carruthers, ‘Tearing of the Pardon’ 10. Cf. Howard Meroney, ‘The Life and Death of Longe Wille,’ ELH: A Journal of English Literary History 18 (1950) 17–18.Google Scholar

6 Carruthers, St. Truth 77–80.Google Scholar

7 The seeds of this re-evaluation were present as early as Donaldson, E. T., Piers Plowman: The C-Text and Its Poet (New Haven 1949) 161–68, where forceful statements are made on both sides of the issue. Also see Dunning, T. P., Piers Plowman: An Interpretation of the A-Text (Dublin 1937) 145–52. Dunning suggests that the pardon is valid and, paradoxically, that the priest is correct in his objections concerning its form. Proponents of the complete revisionist position include John Lawlor, ‘Piers Plowman: The Pardon Reconsidered,’ Modern Language Review 45 (1950) 449–58, and Piers Plowman: An Essay in Criticism (London 1962) 70–84; Rosemary Woolf, ‘The Tearing of the Pardon,’ in Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches, ed. Hussey, S. S. (London 1969) 50–75; and Denise Baker, ‘From Plowing to Penitence: Piers Plowman and Fourteenth-Century Theology,’ Speculum 55 (1980) 715–25. Interesting efforts to find middle ground have been made by Elizabeth Kirk, The Dream Thought of Piers Plowman (New Haven 1972) 80–100, and Katherine B. Trower, ‘Temporal Tensions in the Visio of Piers Plowman,’ Medieval Studies 35 (1973) 389–412.Google Scholar

8 Only one published study of the pardon has ever attempted any systematic correlation of Langland's viewpoint in Passus 7 with the theological climate of his age, that of Denise Baker (n. 7 supra). However, this article takes little account of the rest of the poem. In addition to Baker, Elizabeth Kirk (n. 7 supra, p. 33 n. 12 and pp. 97–98) offers some useful observations, but without elaboration. Two unpublished studies which came to my attention after this article was finished offer more detailed and sometimes more accurate analyses of the influence of Nominalist categories on Langland's general outlook, viz., McNamara (n. 3 supra) and Janet Coleman, ‘Sublimes et Litterati: The Audience for the Themes of Grace, Justification and Predestination, Traced from the Disputes of the 14th c. Moderni to the Vernacular Piers Plowman,’ (diss., Yale University 1970).Google Scholar

9 This summary is indebted to Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago and London 1971ff.) I 319.Google Scholar

10 Jean Daniélou and Henri Marrou, The Christian Centuries, tr. Vincent Cronin (London 1964) I 407.Google Scholar

11 Technically, Ockham would object to the claim that some are predestined ‘without cause’; for in the case of such individuals as the Virgin (who was predestined ante praevisa merita so that it would be impossible for her to reject grace), though there is no cause in her for her predestination, yet we must believe that there is a reason in the inscrutable will of God. Nevertheless, Ockham's discussion of this problem reveals the same sort of reluctance to embrace a single, monolithic hypothesis for explaining the interaction of grace and free will that characterizes the thought of Cassian. For Ockham's discussion of this issue, see his Ordinatio d. 41, in Opera philosophica et theologica, edd. Etzkorn, G. I. and Kelley, F. E. (St. Bonaventure, N.Y. 1979) IV 605ff.Google Scholar

12 Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967) 345, 369. See also the similar opinion of Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition I 313. Rheinhold Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, tr. Charles Hay (Grand Rapids 1952) I 339, summarizes Augustine's earlier position: ‘But although grace here produces the will (to do good), yet… “God would not have mercy … unless the will had preceded,” and … the reason why God has mercy upon some and rejects others lies “in the most hidden merits” of the former since God is not unrighteous’ (Liber de 83 quaestionibus 68.5). The treatise from which this passage is cited is also known as De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII. See PL 40.73 for the passage paraphrased by Seeberg.

13 See chapters 7 and 8 of De praedestinatione sanctorum (PL 44.964–66) for this confession.Google Scholar

14 Textbook I 374.Google Scholar

15 The Christian Tradition III 80.Google Scholar

16 For Augustine's occasional references to ‘those predestinated to death,’ see Seeberg, Textbook I 352 n. 1.Google Scholar

17 Rather, says Augustine, Paul meant here that God will have all sorts of men to be saved ! See his De correptione et gratia [xiv] 44 (PL 44.943).Google Scholar

18 The very indeterminacy emphasized by Langland's Christ in Passus 18 regarding the number who will be saved is alien to Augustine's thought, since it appears to open the door to the possibility of resisting grace. Cf. De correptione et gratia [xiv] ch. 45 (PL 44.943): ‘Non est itaque dubitandum, voluntati Dei, qui in coelo et in terra omnia quaecumque voluit fecit, et qui etiam illa quae futura sunt fecit, humanas voluntates non posse resistere, quominus faciat ipse quod vult: quando quidem etiam de ipsis hominum voluntatibus, quod vult, cum vult, facit.’Google Scholar

19 The difficulties of Bradwardine are particularly instructive in this regard. Despite Oberman's attempt to defend him from the charge of rendering ethics superfluous (Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine: A Fourteenth-Century Augustinian [Utrecht 1957] 80–81), the Archbishop's own statements about the need for man's cooperation are hardly convincing. The question is whether these rhetorically necessary formulae may be logically reconciled with Bradwardine's emphasis on God as omni-causal. As Oberman himself shows (cf. De causa Dei 2.30.578 and 2.32.613d), Bradwardine insists so rigidly on God as ‘naturally antecedent cause’ of each human choice that God ends up not only giving His grace but receiving it on our behalf.Google Scholar

Despite Bradwardine's reputation for having exaggerated Augustine's doctrine of free will, the only significant difference between them appears in the disciple's greater specificity and lack of tact. The most that the Master himself is ever concerned to defend is the notion of apparent psychological spontaneity, not true metaphysical freedom. Hence Enchiridion 30 (PL 40.247): ‘Liberaliter enim servit, qui sui domini voluntatem libenter facit. Ac per hoc ad peccandum liber est, qui peccati servus est.’ Cf. De gratia et libero arbitrio [xv] 31 (PL 44.889). Peter Brown (Augustine of Hippo 374) aptly summarizes Augustine's paradoxical view of freedom: ‘freedom must involve the transcendence of a sense of choice. For a sense of choice is a symptom of the disintegration of the will … any other alternative would be inconceivable.’

20 Textbook of the History of Doctrines I 382. Also see Jean Daniélou and Henri Marrou, The Christian Centuries I 406–7.Google Scholar

21 Oberman, Bradwardine 96, calls attention to the ambiguities in the language of the concluding decree of the Second Council of Orange: ‘Hoc etiam secundum fidem catholicam credimus, quod accepta per baptismum gratia omnes baptizati, Christo auxiliante & cooperante, quae ad salutem animae pertinent possint & debeant, si fideliter laborare voluerint, adimplere. Aliquos vero ad malum divina potestate praedestinatos esse non solum non credimus, sed etiam, si sunt qui tantum malum credere velint, cum omni detestatione illis anathema dicimus. Hoc etiam salubriter profitemur, & credimus, quod in omni opere bono non nos incipimus, & postea per Dei misericordiam adjuvamur: sed ipse nobis, nullis praecedentibus bonis meritis, & fidem & amorem sui prius inspirat, ut & baptismi sacramenta fideliter requiramus, & post baptismum cum ipsius adiutorio ea quae sibi sunt placita implere possimus’ (italics mine). Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. J. D. Mansi (Paris 1901–1927; repr. Graz 1960) VIII 717–18.Google Scholar

22 The Christian Centuries I 409.Google Scholar

23 Oberman, Bradwardine 96. For Gottschalk's writings, see Oeuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d'Orbais, ed. Cyrille Lambot (Louvain 1945).Google Scholar

24 See Seeberg, , Textbook II 22–27, for a biased but acute description of Gregory's modifications of the Augustinian doctrine of grace. Cf. Moralia 24.10.24 (PL 76.299) and Moralia 33.21.40 (PL 76.699). For Rabanus, see the letters to Hincmar, Notingum, and Eberhard in PL 112.1518–62.Google Scholar

25 My account of later medieval developments in the doctrine of justification is especially indebted to Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids 1967) passim, and Forerunners of the Reformation (New York 1966) 129–30.Google Scholar

26 The original of this treatise, the Scala paradisi, may be located in PL 184.475–84. The Middle English translation cited, ‘A Ladder of Foure Ronges,’ is printed in Deonise Hid Divinitee and other Treatises, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (London 1955) 103–4.Google Scholar

27 Cited in Oberman, Forerunners 130.Google Scholar

28 Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica (Quaracchi 1948) IV 993–95 (lib. III, pars 3, inq. 1, tract. 1, q. 5, m. 3, 629); Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in IV libros Sententiarum in Opera omnia, edd. S. E. Fretté and Paul Maré (Paris 1873) VIII 379 (lib. II, d. 28, q. 1, a. 3); and John Duns Scotus, Quaestiones in IV libros Sententiarum in Opera omnia (Lyon 1639; repr. Hildesheim 1968) VI.2, 912 (lib. II, d. 28, q. un.). Also cf. lib. II, d. 7, q. 2. Concerning Aquinas it should be noted that his ‘pelagianizing’ Sentence Commentary, not the more Augustinian Summa, was normative for late medieval scholasticism. See Oberman, , ‘Iustitia Christi and Iustitia Dei: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification,’ Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966) 5.Google Scholar

29 In librum Sapientiae Regis Salomonis praelectiones CCXIII lect. 146 ([Basle] 1586) 492. Holcot probably saw himself as following in an authentic tradition of his order, since much of what he says about justification can be found in Aquinas’ Sentence Commentary. Both Holcot and Aquinas appear to borrow key ideas and phrases from Alexander of Hales. In fact, part of the quotation cited above is taken from Alexander's Summa theologica (lib. III, pars 2, inq. 1, tract. 1, q. 5, m. 3, 629), where the passage is referred to Augustine! Actually, it is taken from Rabanus (PL 111.1341), whose liberal semi-Augustinianism is heavily dependent on texts from the same early Augustinian treatises used in later times to prove that one could acquire first grace through sincere natural effort.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. lect. 36, p. 127.Google Scholar

31 Professor William J. Courtenay has recently suggested that a central problem in modern studies of late medieval thought has been the use of artificially imposed and anachronistic nomenclature, as with Nominalism, via moderna, and Ockhamism. See his Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to his Life and Writings (Leiden 1978) 159. Also see his ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’ in The Pursuit of Holiness, edd. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman (Leiden 1974) 31–35, 52–54, et passim. Cf. P. O. Kristeller's objection (ibid. 65–66) to Courtenay's critique of traditional terminology. My own usage follows that of Oberman, i.e., continuing to refer to Nominalism and Nominalists while understanding that the traditional picture of their beliefs (which gave birth to the term ‘Nominalism’) is largely distorted.Google Scholar

32 Quoted in Oberman, Harvest 32.Google Scholar

33 Though they were unable to identify the specific theological patterns, both Mabel Day and George Sanderlin noticed long ago the general tendency of this passage as one emphasizing the role of free will in salvation. See Day's, ‘Duns Scotus and Piers Plowman,’ Review of English Studies os 3 (1927) 333–34, and Sanderlin's ‘The Character “Liberum Arbitrium” in the C-text of Piers Plowman,’ Modern Language Notes 56 (1941) 449–53.Google Scholar

34 ‘… man in puris naturalibus can be compared to a wild tree in the forest producing fruits which are good, though sour. Thus by the use of natural reason one can do works which are morally good, but not meritorious of eternal life. Geiler points out that some have claimed that these “fruits” are not only useless but even sinful, poisoned by the serpent's bite through original sin. They are never properly directed, in the absence of grace, toward the final end of man. Thus they are inordinate works, done out of self-love, and warped. Geiler says that this position is severe and commonly rejected by the doctors.’ E. Jane Dempsey Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching: A Study of John Geiler of Leisersberg (Leiden 1966) 117. For a similar view, see Jean Gerson, De vita spirituali animae, lectio 1, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. P. Glorieux (Tournai 1962) III 117.Google Scholar

35 2.6.16 (PL 44.445–46).Google Scholar

36 1.23.26 (PL 44.428–29).Google Scholar

37 The fruit is arranged in terms of the metaphorical hierarchy of matrimony, widowhood, and virginity. Langland explains elsewhere (9.110–14) that matrimony is the root of the virtues of the other estates.Google Scholar

38 Cf. the debate in Hell (18.286–94), where Satan, Goblin, and an unnamed devil repudiate Lucifer's claim to rightful title.Google Scholar

39 In an article entitled ‘Liberum Arbitrium in the C-Text of Piers Plowman,’ Philological Quarterly 52 (1973) 680–95, Britton J. Harwood seeks to resolve the unexpected turn in the Tree episode by supposing that the poet has deceived us with an optimistic account of works in order to rap our knuckles all the more sharply with an ensuing Augustinian defense of grace. That Langland intends the surprise to be a harsh one is clear. But Harwood's assumptions about possible roles for free choice in man's salvation seem excessively narrow. Hence his candid admission that ‘there is something disconcerting in a merely human faculty's picking up and putting down the Three Persons of the Trinity like a Swiss bellringer’ (689). Harwood recognizes part of what Langland is doing with the staves but then denies his own insight because of a doctrinal a priori: ”We do not have here, I am fairly sure, the mystical gifts of divine power, divine wisdom, and divine grace: grace itself, a supernatural strengthening of human conation and cognition, precedes charity’ (691; italics mine). This a priori has also apparently obscured for Professor Harwood the meaning of Holy Church's initial statement to Will, wherein man's natural capacity for charity is asserted. Similarly, though he has recognized the Pelagian implications in Liberum Arbitrium's confident description of his protecting the fruit, Harwood assumes that Langland must be scoring ironic points here in favor of textbook orthodoxy; therefore, he concludes that (a) Liberum Arbitrium, despite his name, is not truly liberum and that (b) the fruit he is protecting is all rotten (691–92). Still, Harwood is surely correct in reading the C-version as more susceptible to an Augustinian interpretation than B. One of the largest, most significant series of changes in C from B concerns the very texts that I adduce here as evidence of Langland's semi-Pelagianism. As I will show in a forthcoming article, Langland's views in C remain influenced by semi-Pelagian thought, but he goes to great lengths to bring some of his earlier, more blatant statements into closer accord with the prevailing semi-Augustinian syncretism of the later fourteenth century.Google Scholar

40 The best recent discussion of the rhetoric of Will's gradual reform and of Passus 15.1–12 is Joseph Wittig, ‘The Dramatic and Rhetorical Development of Long Will's Pılgrimage,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 76 (1975) 62–66.Google Scholar

41 Many critics have emphasized the ominous parallels between Will's desire for the fruit and the story in Genesis 3 of the Fall of Man. Though such parallels must have been apparent to Langland and give the scene some of its resonance, they define only one dimension of its significance. By contrast, Holcot's tropological discussion of fructus seems more directly relevant to Will's conscious intentions: ‘Notandum est quod fructus: id est, opera sanctorum sunt & esse debent alimenta nostra. Nam ex exemplis & operibus bonorum debemus proficere & nutriri sicut homo augetur, & crescit per hoc quod manducat corporaliter. Et ideo sancti viri & honeste viventes ipsi pascunt omnes Christianos proximos, & vicinos suos exemplis virtutum suarum: & licet hoc omni homini conveniat… .’ In librum Sapientiae lect. 47, p. 167.Google Scholar

42 The OED lists sauour and saueour as homographs. I am aware that the poem does not explicitly identify the apples of Piers which Jesus jousted for with the eucharistic host, but the narrative logic of Will's spiritual feeding in the Communion of Passus 19 clearly completes the pattern frustrated in Passus 16.Google Scholar

43 ‘From Plowing to Penitence: Piers Plowman and Fourteenth-Century Theology,’ Speculum 55 (1980) 715–25. For Baker's assertion of Langland's resemblance to Gregory, see 718 n. 8. Contrary to the view of most modern scholars that such radical Augustinians were a distinct minority, Baker appears to envision them as one of three groups roughly equal in numbers and influence.Google Scholar

44 Ibid. 718 n. 9.Google Scholar

45 Super primum et secundum Sententiarum, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (Venice 1522; repr. St. Bonaventure, N.Y. 1955), lib. II, d. 29, q. 1. a. 2 (fol. 105m).Google Scholar

46 Lib. II, f. 29, q. 1, a. 2 (fol. 106c).Google Scholar

47 Lib. II, dd. 26–28, q. 1. a. 3 (fol. 100b).Google Scholar

48 Lib. II, dd. 26–28, q. 1, a. 3 (fol. 98o).Google Scholar

49 Liberum arbitrium is not to be identified with the third stave, which is given no Latin tag but which seems equated with grace and the Holy Spirit; yet it is clear that liberum arbitrium himself completes the pattern of the image of God in man, correlating with the attributed divine powers of potentia and sapientia. This point is elucidated by Langland's assertion, later in Passus 16, that the Holy Spirit is, as it were, the Free Will of God: ‘So is þe fader forþ wiþ þe sone and fre wille of boþe, / Spiritus procedens a patre & filio &c, / Which is þe holy goost of alle …’ (223–24).Google Scholar

50 ‘Si est iustus, hoc non est nisi per gratiam tuam: quia nullus potest iustus fieri nisi te initiante et incipiente bonum motum… .’ In librum Sapientiae lect. 150, p. 502.Google Scholar

51 Cf. the following: Ockham, Super IV libros Sententiarum in Opera plurima (Lyon 1494–96; repr. London 1962) IV, lib. IV, q. 9Y; Holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum questiones (Lyon 1518; repr. Frankfurt a.M. 1967) lib. II, q. 1c–d; Fitzralph, Summa Domini Armacani in questionibus Armenorum (Paris 1511) lib. XII, cc. 16–19; Gerson, Oeuvres complètes III 117–18 (De vita spirituali animae L. 1), and IX 95, 106 (Regulae mandatorum 1, 44); and Biel, Epitome et collectorium ex Occamo circa quatuor Sententiarum libros (Tübingen 1501; repr. Frankfurt a.M. 1965) lib. II, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, dub 40. Wodeham's Sentence Commentary is available only in an abridgement by Heinrich von Oyta: Adam Goddam, Super quatuor libros Sententiarum, ed. John Major (Paris 1512). But see William J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden 1978) 724–25 n. 18. Though the book must be used with caution, Gordon Leff's Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge 1957) 242–50 also contains quotations from Wodeham's Sentence Commentary that are relevant. Regrettably, the second book of d'Ailly's Sentence Commentary, which would be most revealing of his attitudes on questions of the interrelation of grace, merit, and free will, does not survive. However, if his comments on a related question in the first book are representative, he appears to have accepted Ockham's main conclusions, though not without significant reservations. See his Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (Strassburg 1490; repr. Frankfurt a.M. 1968) lib. I, q. 12, a. 2. Also see Courtenay, William J., ‘Covenant and Causality in Pierre d'Ailly,’ Speculum 46 (1971) 107–8, for a possible allusion by d'Ailly to his belief in the doctrine of facere quod in se est.Google Scholar

52 This phrase, from the Libellus fidei ad Innocentiam papam, was cited by medieval authors as St. Jerome's. The work is now assigned to Pelagius. See, e.g., Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 109, a. 4, obj. 2. Cf. Canon 18 on justification from Trent, Sessio VI: ‘Si quis dixerit, Dei praecepta homini etiam iustificato et sub gratia constituto esse ad observandum impossibilia: a.s.’ For the texts of Pelagius’ original statement, see PL 39.2181, PL 45. 1716–18, and PL 48.488.Google Scholar

53 Determinationes q. 4a; in In quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones (n. 51 supra).Google Scholar

54 Nothing specifically associates the predestinarian fatalism adumbrated here (‘For quant oportet vient en place il nyad que pati’ [10.455]) with Bradwardine as opposed to other neo-Augustinians. It is evident, nevertheless, that Langland is alluding to the radical doctrine, since Will's whole point in raising the subject is to imply that one's deeds are irrelevant to one's eternal destiny.Google Scholar

55 Canons 6 and 7 on baptism from Trent, Sessio VII, address Will's mistaken trust in baptismal grace: ‘6. Si quis dixerit, baptizatum non posse, etiamsi velit, gratiam amittere quantumcumque peccet, nisi nolit credere: a.s. 7. Si quis dixerit, baptizatos per baptismum ipsum solius tantam fidei debitores fieri, non autem universae legis Christi servandae: a.s.’ Commentaries on the Sentences do not directly address this issue of indefectible baptismal grace, but discussions of related questions make it plain that no medieval schoolman would have defended this thesis.Google Scholar

56 Speculum 55 (1980) 721–22, and 722 n. 20.Google Scholar

57 Misericordia Dei (Leiden 1968) 129–30.Google Scholar

58 Theologians more moderate than Augustine never tired of insisting, in his own day as well as later, that this sort of blind complacency is the natural outcome of the Bishop of Hippo's denigration of works. Peter Brown's description of Augustine's typical ‘good Christian’ — a sort of Haukyn figure — tends to support this criticism: ‘a man with a few good works to his name, who slept with his wife, faute de mieux, and often just for the pleasure of it; touchy on points of honour, given to vendettas … and, for all that, a good Christian … “looking on himself as a disgrace and giving the glory to God.”’ Augustine of Hippo 348.Google Scholar

59 Cf. Gregory of Rimini's position, nn. 46–48 supra.Google Scholar

60 Harwood, Britton J., ‘“Clergy” and the Action of the Third Vision in Piers Plowman,’ Modern Philology 70 (1972–3) 287–88, denies that Trajan is saved for his righteousness. Instead Harwood insists that Imaginatif's conclusions about Trajan harmonize with Father Dunning's assessment of Langland's orthodoxy (cf. Wittig's discussion, n. 61 infra). Trajan was saved, we are told, by a special revelation enabling him to have explicit faith. Which lines actually present this notion seems unclear. Many appear to contradict it. In the dialogue of Will and Imaginatif, Harwood finds Will defending works and Imaginatif faith. It is difficult for most, however, to see this dichotomy. Imaginatif's emphasis seems to be on Truth, not Faith — though both are mentioned prominently.Google Scholar

61 ‘Piers Plowman Passus, B, IX–XII: Elements in the Design of the Inward Journey,’ Traditio 28 (1972) 255–56.Google Scholar

62 I would paraphrase the key lines thus:Google Scholar

Trajan was a true knight and never was baptized,

And he is safe, the book says, and his soul in Heaven.

For there is baptism of the font and baptism in blood,

And baptism in fire, and that is established doctrine:

Advenit ignis, etc.

Nevertheless, a true man that never transgressed his law,

But lives as his law teaches and believes there is no better —

And if there were he would change — and who dies with this intent:

God, Who is Truth, would never have it but that authentic truth should be permitted.

And whether its object is true or not, the value of [a man's] faith is great,

And a hope hangs thereon to have a reward for his truth.

Cf. Wittig's paraphrase based on Skeat in ‘Elements in the Design’ 257 n. 48.

63 Though it is probably correct, Kane–Donaldson's conjectural emendation at 12.291 (see their discussion in B- Version 209) can fairly be omitted since it cannot be proven clearer in meaning or more probable in syntax than the line in the B-exemplar printed by Skeat: ‘And wheiþer it worþ or noƷt worþ, þe bileue is gret of truþe.’ However, when A. V. C. Schmidt, The Vision of Piers Plowman (London 1978) 286, opines that ‘it is impossible to believe that a medieval Christian could have easily imagined the view K–D attribute to Imaginatif,’ he is overlooking the rich variety of options available in late medieval theories of justification. In fact, Schmidt's own translation of the relevant half-line from the B-exemplar (‘And whether it will actually turn out so or not’) may contradict his picture of theological orthodoxy. His translation aims to emphasize doubts about Imaginatif's preceding optimistic speculations; but the doubts (if we accept Schmidt's reading) imply the existence of the risqué speculations they appear to moderate. After all, Imaginatif has been talking of those who have no explicit Christian faith, who live by faith in a different law perceived through their natural lights. Furthermore, an acceptable alternative translation of the B-exemplar half-line differs little from the meaning of the K–D emendation, viz., ‘And whether it turns out to be true or not, the faith of a true man is great.’Google Scholar

64 The best recent treatment of this neo-Augustinian revival is Courtenay, William J., ‘Augustinianism at Oxford in the Fourteenth Century,’ Augustiniana 30 (1980) 58–70.Google Scholar

65 Kane–Donaldson's emendation of 12.60 from the corresponding line in C seems preferable to Schmidt's purely conjectural gomes. The line as it stood in the B-exemplar was clearly defective, but the K–D emendation has two advantages: (1) it fills out the metaphor of the preceding line, and (2) it helps to explain the revision of C's following lines, which, unlike B, make explicit the chronological priority of grace to human volition in the process of justification. It is typical of the C revision that Langland should hold to the same basic position as before but seek to soften the figurative impact of B. In certain cases, e.g., the tearing of the pardon, he does this through excising potentially offensive or confusing material; in others, including this one, he allows the B material to remain but introduces additional explanatory lines. It is distinctly less plausible to imagine that Langland actually wrote the drab B-exemplar version of 12.60, or Schmidt's version (both of which are redundant with reference to the uncontested line 12.61), then decided in C to spice this up for the first time, only to lose his nerve immediately and begin to make the careful, semi-Augustinian qualifications of the next few lines.Google Scholar

Yet regardless of which version of the line one chooses, the entire passage (in C as well as B) expresses an absolute obligation to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in preparing one's soul for justifying grace. Otherwise, it is otiose to say that grace only grows among the patient and lowly. This is a position with which no neo-Augustinian could agree. By contrast, a semi-Pelagian like Holcot would find Imaginatif's statement completely satisfactory. At several points in his Lectures on Wisdom Holcot indicates that the entire process of justification, though crucially dependent on our active preparation for the gratia gratum faciens, must begin with the Holy Spirit: ‘… nisi Spiritus sancti gratia per suam benignitatem hominem mollificet salubrem poenitentiam non attentat… .’ Ed. cit. lect. 149, p. 501.

66 Cited in Oberman, Harvest 162 n. 53.Google Scholar

67 On this distinction, see Oberman, Harvest 135–40 et passim. Cf. Holcot, In librum Sapientiae lect. 103, p. 349: ‘… dicendum, quod sola charitas est per quam homo amicus DEI constituitur. Et omnis gratia gratis data, quae potest esse sine charitate, potest communicari bonis & malis amicis DEI & inimicis.’Google Scholar

68 PL 36.44. Says Augustine of some of this psalm's prescriptions, ‘Ista non sunt magna.’Google Scholar

69 Concerning C alterations, see nn. 39 and 65 supra.Google Scholar

70 For the details of this controversy, see David Knowles, M., ‘The Censured Opinions of Uthred of Boldon,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 37 (1951) 305–42. Uthred's self-defense, Contra querelas fratrum, has been edited by Mildred E. Marcett, Uhtred de Boldon, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman (New York 1938). Uthred's vehement denial of the charge of Pelagianism, and the willingness of theologically naive moderns (including Marcett) to believe him, should alert us to the subtlety and delicacy of Langland's position. If one took at face value all such protestations of innocence by late medieval academics, one would be forced to conclude that no one had ever taught Pelagian propositions! Yet it would be wrong to insinuate that Uthred's denials were deliberately disingenuous. The language of his theses, as intricate as an arabesque in its effort to conceal and yet communicate the radical message of human freedom, had been allowed to pass muster in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. But times were changing. The vociferous objections raised by Bradwardine, and later by Wyclif, to the Pelagian implications of the common scholastic inheritance made English prelates in the second half of the century rather touchy on these issues. By raising them against Uthred, Willam Jordan appears to have used the changing climate in church politics to his advantage.Google Scholar

71 See Russell, G. E., ‘The Salvation of the Heathen: The Exploration of a Theme in Piers Plowman,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966) 101–16. I do not think Russell has made his case for Langland's acceptance of the clara visio; in fact, the evidence of C seems to contradict it.Google Scholar

72 MED: mesurable, 3(a). Cf. Holcot's discussion of ‘mesurable mede’: ‘opera nostra ex sua naturali bonitate non merentur vitam eternam de condigno [i.e., as an equal exchange], sed … congruum est [i.e., it is suitable] quod homini facienti secundum potentiam suam finitam, DEVS retribuat secundum potentiam suam infinitam.’ In librum Sapientiae lect. 36, p. 126. It should be noted that though there is no common scale wherewith to measure divine and human power (the latter finite, the former infinite), the retributive relationship itself is described as congruum, i.e., ‘mesurable.’Google Scholar

73 Though the MED glosses mesurelees with the neutral terms ‘immeasurable’ and ‘unlimited’ — which are narrowly justifiable because of the word's etymology — the only example cited is the one in question from Piers Plowman! Schmidt glosses the term in this line ‘immoderate.’ Its only other occurrence in Piers is in a pejorative characterization of the friars’ immoderation in not limiting their numbers (20.68–70). Granted these facts and the preponderantly meliorative and ethical connotations of the adjective root, it seems unlikely that the negative-suffix form here can be made to bear a strictly neutral sense.Google Scholar

74 See Lawlor's, Piers Plowman: An Essay in Criticism 29; Mitchell's ‘Lady Meed and the Art of Piers Plowman,’ reprinted in Blanch, Robert J., Style and Symbolism in Piers Plowman (Knoxville 1969) 183–84; and Murtaugh's Piers Plowman and the Image of God (Gainesville 1978) 43–48.Google Scholar

75 Mitchell 184; and Murtaugh 48.Google Scholar

76 As is usual in C, Langland attempts to forgo subtlety (though the grammatical metaphor irresistibly lures him on) in the interest of clarity, and is concerned lest his simpler readers confuse the essential distinction between the two classes of mede. Moreover, it has occurred to him that some earthly gifts (i.e., those of land and status at the basis of feudalism) are not inherently evil or ‘immoderate,’ as one might suppose from the pre-Peasant's-Revolt B-version's refusal to allow for good earthly mede. Therefore, without changing his outlook at all, Langland shifts his categories so as to reserve the term mede, rendered indelibly pejorative by his characterization of Lady Meed in A and B, for that which is improper in human economic relationships. By contrast, mercede (a word rich in positive connotations from the Vulgate) is implicitly associated with all ‘rect relacioun,’ whether earthly or heavenly.Google Scholar

77 The earlier Wyclifite translation of the Vulgate renders Apocalypse 22.12. ‘Lo! I come soone, and my mede with me, for to Ʒelde to ech man aftir his werkes.’ The Holy Bible … by John Wycliffe and his Followers, edd. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden (Oxford 1850) IV 680.Google Scholar

78 This view is argued by Baker, Denise, ‘Langland's Artistry: The Strategy and Structure of Piers Plowman’ (diss., University of Virginia 1975) 29–31.Google Scholar

79 For Ockham's opinion on this matter, see Leff, Gordon, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse (Manchester 1975) 492–93. Cf. Robert Holcot's lengthy discussion, Sent. lib. I, q. 4f–m; Alexander of Hales, Summa th. IV 357–58 (lib. III, pars 2, inq. 2, q. 4, m. 2, 252); and Thomas Aquinas, Summa th. Ia IIae, q. 109, a. 3. John Geiler of Keisersburg, who stands at the end of the tradition of late medieval Nominalism, summarizes the confident belief that effective knowledge of Truth is not denied those who do their best. Citing Aquinas’ Sentence Commentary (lib. III, d. 25, q. 2, a. 1), Geiler affirms that even a child raised outside the Christian community can gain such knowledge: ‘Respondeo post beatum Thomam in 3. scripti. Si facit quod in se est: utendo donis suis connatis et naturalibus. vivendo bene moraliter. secundum dictamen sue naturalis recte rationis / deus eum illuminabit / vel per se vel per angelum aut hominem. Si hoc non fecerit / sed cor suum peccatis infecerit: abutens naturalibus donis: non est mirum si non attrahitur per magnetem illum… .’ As for the specific contents of this knowledge and the obligations it entails, Geiler is satisfied to quote Gabriel Biel: ‘Fidelis [i.e., a baptized person] vero facit quod in se est. Si secundum regulam fidei detestatur peccatum / proponens in omnibus obedire deo et eius precepta servare. Peccatum detestando removet obicem: volendo deo tanquam summo bono obedire: propter deum / habet bonum motum in deum.’ Cited by E. Jane Dempsey Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching 46, 143.Google Scholar

80 Baker 725 n. 27.Google Scholar

81 Coleman, Janet, ‘Sublimes et Litterati’ 2, has noted that redde quod debes signifies the same for Langland as the old scholastic formula, facere quod in se est. For an Augustinian interpretation of redde quod debes, see Elton Higgs, ‘The Path to Involvement: The Centrality of the Dreamer in Piers Plowman,’ Tulane Studies in English 21 (1974) 30–32. Higgs is doubtless correct in his understanding of the biblical significance of this phrase, but I believe this causes him to misconstrue connotations of the phrase in Piers. Theologians and preachers of Langland's day were not, for the most part, authentically Pauline; and their naively Pelagian assumptions sometimes prevented them from seeing, in Matthew 18 and Romans 13, what is perfectly obvious to the eyes of Professor Higgs. For example, compare the exegesis of the same text about the unjust servant in a vernacular sermon: ‘Thus, þan, skilfully, euery man is dettour to God; ond Ʒiff a man be so, þan I may seye þoo wordes pat I toke to my prechynge, “Ʒelde þat þow oweste,” as I seid at þe begynnynge.’ The sermon then proceeds to enumerate how we may pay our debt to God; first with alms deeds from our goods; secondly, with our bodies by travelling in God's service, prayer, and fasting; third, we must pay Him from our souls a debt of dread, love, and worship. Middle English Sermons, ed. Woodburn O. Ross (EETS os 209 [London 1940] 42–43).Google Scholar

82 Baker 717 and 722 n. 21 places great emphasis on the argument summarized in this paragraph.Google Scholar

83 C-Text 166.Google Scholar

84 ‘The Plowshare of the Tongue: the Progress of a Symbol from the Bible to Piers Plowman,’ Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973) 261–93.Google Scholar

85 Ibid. 288. Another useful discussion of this transition from plowing to ‘plowing’ is Trower, Katherine B., ‘Temporal Tensions in the Visio of Piers Plowman,’ Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973) 408–10.Google Scholar

86 See reference in n. 1 supra; also see his ‘Words, Works and Will: Theme and Structure in Piers Plowman,’ in S. S. Hussey, Critical Approaches 111–24.Google Scholar

87 In fact, apart from Augustine himself, only one of the many commentators on Psalm 13 that I have consulted, Denis the Carthusian, interprets the passage in the light of Romans and original sin. And Denis sees this as merely one option. The commentary of Bruno of Asti is typical in its insistence that something less than total human depravity is intended by Psalm 13.1. Commenting on ‘Non est qui faciat bonum, non est usque ad unum,’ Bruno locates the fault of these ‘fools’ as disbelief, the attitude expressed by Langland's priest: ‘Quia enim fidem non habent, nullum eorum opus in bonum illis imputatur, quoniam “sine fide impossibile est placere Deo.”’ As for those who (like Piers) trust God implicitly, Bruno understands the end of the verse (‘usque ad unum’), which is ambiguous in Latin, as applying to them in an exclusive rather than an inclusive sense: ‘de illis intelligitur, quibus est unus Deus, una fides, unum baptisma, et sicut Apostolus ait, cor unum et anima una’ (PL 164.736a). Anselm of Laon (ps.-Haymo of Halberstadt) agrees with this emphasis, insisting that the purpose of Psalm 13 is to exhort us to faith and to rebuke incredulity (PL 116.233d). Though it is common to interpret this psalm with reference to the faithless Jews of Christ's day, Bruno stipulates that it speaks ‘non solis Judaeis, sed de omnibus qui … fidem Christi non habent’ (736C). Cf. Nicolaus de Lyra, who says of the ‘fool’ of verse 1, ‘… potest exponi de quolibet obstinato in malis: et sic negat Deus factis, et si non verbis. Confitentur se nosse Deum, factis autem negant.’ Biblia sacra cum Glossa interlineari, ordinaria, et Nicolai Lyrani Postilla (Venice 1588) III fol. 103v.Google Scholar

88 Thus many medieval commentaries see the psalm as addressing the persecution of Christ by the incredulous Jews, but broader references to the persecution of His faithful are also seen. E.g., Hugh of St. Cher's ‘Nec solum Christum crucifixerunt, sed & sanctos persecuti sunt. Vnde subdit. Qui devorant: scilicet Christianos seducendo, & occidendo… . Hoc autem peccato praecipue peccant Principes terrae, & Praelati Ecclesiae, & sub ipsis bedelli, & aduocati, & officiales.’ Opera omnia in universum Vetus et Novum Testamentum (Lyon 1649) II fol. 26vb. Cf. Bruno of Asti, PL 164. 737a and Oddo of Asti, PL 165.1173–74.Google Scholar

89 Hence Bruno of Asti, expounding verse 3, underscores their lack of shame and unwillingness to do good: ‘non est timor Dei ante oculos eorum, ac per hoc mala facere non erubescunt, et bona facere non curant’ (736d). Similarly, and with direct application to the issues raised by Piers's pardon, Hugh of St. Cher says of the disbelief described in verse 1 (‘in corde suo’): ‘quia si bene, & firmiter crederet Deum esse punitorem malorum, & remunatorem bonorum, nunquam peccato consentiret.’ Opera omnia II fol. 25va. When he gets to ‘Non est qui faciat bonum,’ Hugh is no more relenting than the Plowman's pardon: ‘Hic reprehendit eos de peccato omissionis… . Sicut tenetur homo vitare malum, ita etiam tenetur facere bonum.’ Ibid. fol. 25vb.Google Scholar

90 Ibid., fol. 26ra.Google Scholar

91 The commentary of Thomas Ringstede (ps.-Holcot) on Proverbs 22.10 identifies the derisor figure as an obstinate hypocrite: ‘derisor est ille qui multa promittit & pauca perficit.’ In Proverbia Salomonis (Paris 1510) fol. 190r. Perhaps more apposite is Nicolaus de Byard, who identifies the derisor as an inverted priest-figure: ‘Gregem diaboli custodientes sunt derisores: ne deus auferat aliquam ovem de grege diaboli… . Isti non videntur christiani sed sunt antichristi.’ Earlier, he has compared derisores unfavorably to Herod, noting that ‘herodes occidit pueros iam natos, derisor in utero matris ecclesie conceptos. Quia quamcito apparent in eis aliqua signa voluntatis bone ipsos suffocant verecundiam eis facientes’ (italics mine). Dictionarius pauperum (Cologne 1501) fol. 37r-v.Google Scholar

92 Concerning the end of verse 6, a twelfth-century Enarrationes in Psalmos once attributed to Remigius of Auxerre comments, ‘Vos autem consilium inopis confundistis, id est, confusum et indiscretum putastis consilium inopis, id est humilis de se nihil praesumentis: ideo quia Dominus spes ejus est, id est, quia non vidistis in eo pompam hujus saeculi.’ PL 131.210. One would be hard pressed to find a better description of the priest's attitude toward Piers. However, Hugh of St. Cher somewhat sharpens the relevance of verse 6 to the quarrel between the two — the allegorical and the real representatives of ‘priesthood,’ the one eating the bread of penance (Ps. 41.4), the other ‘devour[ing] my people as … bread.’ Hugh asks who they are who spurn ‘the council of the poor man’ and replies: ‘Pharisei, & Legisperiti, … & illi, qui habent scientiam divinae Scripturae disputant … et ita de vita & scientia sua praesumentes consilium Dei spernunt… .’ Opera omnia II fol. 27rb.Google Scholar

93 The likelihood may not be apparent to casual readers of Piers, but concerning Langland's penchant for concealing elaborate chains of scriptural texts beneath the surface of his fiction, see Alford, John, ‘The Role of the Quotations in Piers Plowman,’ Speculum 52 (1977) 80–99; also Robert Adams, ‘The Nature of Need in Piers Plowman XX,’ Traditio 34 (1978) 274–301.Google Scholar

94 Proverbs was not a popular book for commentaries until the end of the Middle Ages, and few of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century commentaries have ever been printed. None of the few commentaries I have consulted explicitly links verse 10 to verse 9 in the way Langland may have linked them. Nevertheless, some interesting points emerge. The derisor is universally regarded as a heretic or hypocrite who is incorrigible and should be expelled from the Church. Hugh of St. Cher terms him ‘litigiosus, qui exterius nomine, & habitu militat Deo, interius corde, ore, & opere militat Diabolo.’ Opera omnia III fol. 49rb. Cornelius a Lapide, citing the Catena Graecorum, identifies the derisor as a man of depraved opinions and deeds who must be ejected ‘e doctrinae cathedra’! This suggests a cleric, since no one else could sit ‘in cathedra doctrinae.’ Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram (Lyon & Paris 1854) III 633.Google Scholar

When we notice that vv. 9 and 10 comprise a loose parallelism with vss. 7 and 8 (‘qui accipit mutuum servus est foenerantis. Qui seminat iniquitatem metet mala’), it is easy to see why the derisor is termed a heretic, for he is the same one who ‘soweth iniquity’ and ‘shall reap evils.’ The metaphors are especially apt for the priest, whose sowing of disharmony in Passus 7 contrasts with the earlier sowing of the Plowman. Denis the Carthusian notes the connection between this individual's activities and his reward: ‘Qui seminat iniquitatem, id est discordiam aut falsam doctrinam, metet mala, id est, damnationem et tormenta recipiet pro mercede.’ Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani opera omnia (Montreuil 1898) VII 144. Nicolaus de Lyra (Biblia sacra cum Glossa III fol. 33r) says that the reward of this ‘sower’ will be ‘culpa & penae,’ an appropriate remuneration for one who has repudiated Truth's pardon a pena & a culpa.

95 Woolf, ‘Tearing of the Pardon,’ in Hussey, Critical Approaches 52.Google Scholar

96 Ibid. Google Scholar

97 Ibid.Google Scholar

98 Cited by Jane, E. Dempsey Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching 203. Italics mine.Google Scholar

99 ‘The Narrative Art of Piers Plowman’ (diss., University of Florida 1967) 129ff.Google Scholar

100 No claims regarding the literalness of Piers's agricultural activities are relevant here. The fact that a traditional nexus of exegetical imagery may ordinarily function in a purely literal way in this poem (or any other medieval allegory) never prevents the same set of images from projecting their customary figurative connotations when the fictional context evokes them. The actual terms of the pardon do just that, forcing the reader to ask retrospectively what can be meant by ‘helping Piers plow.’ The answer implied includes literal day labor, in the right spirit, but many other less tangible activities as well. For an incisive critique of David Aers's attempt to banish allegory from this section of Piers, see Barney's, Stephen review of Piers Plowman and Christian Allegory in Allegorica 1 (1976) 298–302.Google Scholar

101 That it was only an apparent injustice was well known to all educated medievals. Langland's fiction simply renders sequential these two simultaneous and complementary aspects of Providence, best described in their interaction by St. Augustine in De civitate Dei 1.8.Google Scholar

102 A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (London 1898; repr. Grand Rapids 1966) 19.Google Scholar

A shorter version of this paper was read at the Thirteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 6 May 1978. The author wishes to thank Professor William J. Courtenay for his helpful advice in the process of revising and amplifying that version for publication.