Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

vision.

Curiously enough, the protagonist has no part in the first vision, which seems to have been designed The second for the special benefit of King Edward III. The second vision again shows us the field full of people, but now Conscience appears in their midst, and, cross in hand, begins to preach. He tells them that the pestilences and the south-west wind, which on a Saturday at even tore up trees by the roots, were sent as punishment for sin and a reminder of "domesday." His efforts were supported by Repentaunce, whose eloquence "made William to weope watur with his eyen." The contrite sinners set out on a pilgrimage to "Seynt Treuthe," but lose their way. Meeting a palmer, who had travelled far and wide in the East, they ask him to direct them, but he has never heard of such a saint. At this juncture a ploughman comes forward with the information that he knows the saint well, and has worked for him these fifteen winters. He offers to show them the way. Who is Piers the Plowman? Well, there is no doubt that in the later developments of the poem Piers is none other than Christ himself.

The "hero." In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (x. 4) St Paul speaks of the rock smitten by Moses, from which water gushed out for the Israelites in the wilderness, and, referring to its spiritual significance, he adds, "and that rock was Christ." Langland builds on this passage; "Petrus id est christus," he says in the Vision (xv. 206). The question, however, may fairly be raised whether this interpretation is not really an afterthought. At his

first entrance Piers suggests rather a good honest man leading a true Christian life, and serving as contrast and rebuke to the whole tribe of ecclesiastical hypocrites satirised in the prologue. In any case, there is no absolute inconsistency, as, in Langland's belief, the essence of Christianity lies in practice. This is the conclusion reached at the end of the Visio de Petro Plowman in its first shape. In 1377, however, Langland revised and extended his poem.1 In this second "edition" is elaborated, more fully than in the first, the Visio de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest secundum Wit et Resoun-actually three visions in which the nature of virtue is set forth. Dowel is the personification of a godly life, and the way to its attainment is shown. in the conversion of one Hawkyn, "the Active Man," a minstrel. The central idea of Dobet is love, the essence of which is explained to the poet in a dialogue with Anima (the soul), according to the principles laid down in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and other passages of Holy Scripture. There is a striking coincidence in the sentiments here expressed with regard to the disastrous results of the dos ecclesiæ of Constantine and those of Walther von der Vogelweide, Dante, and Juan Ruiz, while the psychomachy of the last vision may well remind us of the Libro de Buen Amor

1 A third version was produced between 1380 and 1390. The three versions are distinguished as the A text, text, and C text. Professor Skeat has edited the poem, with his customary skill and learning, for the Clarendon Press. Piers Plowman's Creed (contained in Wright's edition) is a Lollard satire dating from the end of the fourteenth century, and thought to be by another hand.

of the Spanish Arch-Priest. Dobest signifies the ideal ministry of the ideal Church.

To resume. The interest of the Vision of Piers the Plowman is twofold. It supplies a picture of contemporary England, and it unfolds to Realism. us the moral and religious ideas of an educated layman. The first aspect has been dealt with by Mr J. W. Mackail in a charming paper contributed to the Cornhill Magazine for 1897, which thoroughly deserves reprinting.1 The remarkable thing about Langland's allegorical personages is that they are evidently drawn from life. Take Covetyse, for instance. He is beetle-browed, bleareyed, his cheeks flap like a leathern purse, and he wears a torn and threadbare tabard twelve winters old. He relates how he served Sim at the Oak, and was his pledged 'prentice, and learnt to lie. At his master's bidding he went to the fairs at "Winchestre and Wych" (Weyhill, in Hampshire), where he cheated; and he alludes to his wife at Westminster, who cheated too. The whole account suggests a living prototype, or, at least, an intimate knowledge of the trading classes and their ways.

At the same time, it might be going too far to make Langland a popular bard. The wedding of Meede the Maiden, with the elaborate court-scenes, suggests that the poet was familiar with "high life," though, it is true, his tone is not very courtly. The allegory of Conscience, who is one of the king's knights, renders it evident that Langland was not specially incensed

1 M. J. J. Jusserand's studies also are of great merit and interest.

against the great people, or against greatness, but he much desired, for great and small, a moral reformation combined with the reign of reason.

Prophetic

The prophecies will naturally remind the reader of the famous foretelling in Dante's first canto-that of the Veltro, who may have been Can literature. Grande or possibly Uguccione. But a circumstance which is far less widely known is that Italy in the fourteenth century rejoiced in a whole literature of such prophecies composed in the vague and rambling style of the French fatrasie, and allied in many cases with the old political serventese. A notable example of the sort, predicting all manner of dreadful things for the year 1369, was fathered on Jacopone da Todi, the religious enthusiast of the preceding century, and bore as title Prophetia fratris Jacoponis. In general these seers, like our modern Moores and Zadkiels, are shrewd enough to avoid perilous precision. The majority of them were friars, and this rage for prophesying was the outcome of a misguided zeal. It is especially noticeable that the prophets-some of them, anyhow-do not drive poor mortals to despair by representing their destiny as fixed, but intimate, like Jonah, that timely repentance may avert the otherwise impending calamities.

Dramatic literature will no doubt be fully dealt with in the succeeding volume, but it is permissible to point out the remarkable similarity between the later visions of Piers Plowman and an early morality -the Castell of Perseverance. Those spiritual combats, I cannot but think, were inspired by the well

known passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 12): "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Religious

The literature of religion in the fourteenth century exhibits the same general traits we have been accustomed to note in other departments-e.g., writings. by a gradual transition from verse to prose. The subjects of the narrative poems, and this is true also of other metrical compositions, are mostly conventional, and the same in all European languages. Many, indeed, are derived from a common source, such as the Aurea legenda of Jacobus a Voragine.

Though nobody is known to have essayed a poetical version of the whole Bible, portions thereof, and especially the Psalter, were frequently rendered into verse. The Psautier lorrain and the Northumbrian Psalter are specimens. In this connection may be mentioned some remarkable homilies in the Northumbrian dialect, to which also belongs the Cursor Mundi or Cursor o Werld, an immense poem describing Old and New Testament history, variegated with mediæval legends. Much relished by contemporary Englishmen, the work is worth reading by their descendants, now that it is at last accessible.1

From works like this it is but a step to edifying compositions, many of which surpass it in vast extent. Such are a number of prodigious visions, of which the three Pèlerinages of Guillaume Deguilleville, com1 E.E.T.S. 7 vols., ed. Morris, 1874-1892.

« AnteriorContinuar »