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Models of Winning in the B-text of Piers Plowman and Wynnere and Wastoure
There are two manere of medes, my lord, by your leve.
That oon God of his grace graunteth in his blisse
To tho that wel werchen while thei ben here.
...
Ther is another mede mesureless, that maistres desireth:
To mayntene mysdoers mede thei take.1
That oon God of his grace graunteth in his blisse
To tho that wel werchen while thei ben here.
...
Ther is another mede mesureless, that maistres desireth:
To mayntene mysdoers mede thei take.1
In Passus III of Piers Plowman, Conscience proposes two separate categories of reward: God’s gift to men, and the corruptible transactions of the world. His division of ‘mede’ implies material gain is inherently incompatible with the divine economy. Both Langland and the poet of Wynnere and Wastoure, with their economic concerns, must negotiate this division. While Langland attempts to reconcile gain and expenditure with a path to salvation, the subject matter of Wynnere is dissociated from divine judgement. I propose that these texts are best understood in terms of two temporal models: continuum between the historic moment and eternity, and independence of the historic moment from divine consequence. I will demonstrate how the value-systems of payment and reward in Wynnere and the Visio in the B-text of Piers Plowman are dependent upon their relation to both contemporary events and redemptive history, and that transition between temporal models signals an impetus toward either economic or covenantal reform.
Jacques Le Goff stresses that, for the early Christians, eternity was not opposed to time: ‘their eternity was merely the extension of time to infinity’.2 This distinguishes a quantitative, rather than qualitative, difference. When one construes qualitative opposition between time and eternity, the result on one hand is ‘ascetic world denial’, and on the other denial of divine judgement.3 But when time is conceived as continuous with eternity, then the Christian must simultaneously renounce the world, which is only his transitory resting place, and embrace it as the workplace in which salvation occurs. The ascetic life is neither the focus of Wynnere nor the Visio in Piers Plowman: both are concerned with the world. Their distinction from one another rests upon the timescale on which they represent the consequences of economic activity. In redemptive history the ultimate consequence is the verdict of the Last Judgement, which I will discuss in the following using the term ‘eschatology’.4 However if worldly transactions are separated from divine accountability they need to be ordered by an alternative value-system. Wynnere establishes its own system by defining itself against the apocalyptic tradition.
Morton Bloomfield writes that ‘the classic Judeo-Christian apocalypse is cast in dream-form, a revelation from some superior authority, eschatologically orientated, and constitutes a criticism of, and a warning for, contemporary society’.5 The opening passage of Wynnere appears to place the text in this tradition: it is the introduction to a dream, establishes itself in a setting of social decay, and prophesies signs of the end-times. ‘When wawes waxen schall wilde and walles bene doun... Thene dredfull domesday it drawith neghe aftir’.6 The eschatological impetus is sustained by Wynnere’s first words: ‘I hatt Wynnere, a wy that alle this werlde helpis/ For I lordes cane lere thurgh ledyng of wit’ (ll.222-3). Wynnere presents himself as a figure whose instruction could benefit the world, which implies that he will provide the guidance necessary to avoid divine retribution. This authority rests upon the traditional, religious connotations of the term ‘winning’: storing up favour with God.
However, as Wynnere begins his attack on Wastoure, it emerges that he is not fighting against the threat of apocalypse, but rather national downfall brought about by an economic policy of waste: ‘This wikkede weryed thefe that wastoure men calles/ That if he life may longe this lande will he stroye’ (ll.242-3). Thus the expectation of socio-economic commentary located within a continuum of redemptive history is cut down to historical and national specificity. A great deal of critical attention has been paid to the precise moment of the text’s composition.7 This dating process provides us with an informative economic context for the poem: the severe shortage of coin in circulation, for example, and pressure of taxation to raise revenue for Edward III’s war on France. Because this historic moment is separated from its original eschatological framework, we perceive a separation from concerns of divine judgement and, by implication, from familiar standards of morality.
The debate, to be judged by the English king, is concerned with economic behaviours detrimental to the nation. Winning is bad for England because it represents not only the accumulation of goods but also hoarding, which removes coin from circulation. This overturns the established positive notions of what winning signifies. In religious terms, Wynnere’s stockpiling makes him guilty of usury because it utilises time, which belongs to God alone, for the purpose of profit. But by placing discussion of hoarding within a narrative that has been removed from divine judgement, it cannot be condemned on religious terms. Rather the poet’s innovations to the term ‘winning’ alert us to the fact that, along with a new vocabulary, the country must look for a new guiding morality. Although he rejects the religious judgement of stockpiling, he is not of the opinion that such self-serving behaviour can be prudential. Instead the poet proposes a policy based on what twentieth-century economists call ‘circular-flow’ theory.
Circular-flow theory is based on the necessary interdependence of input and output. Wynnere represents input, Wastoure output. The transgressions of each character are a direct result of their dislocation from one another; if brought together they would counterbalance the other’s weaknesses and the hoarded wealth would be redistributed. The intrinsic interdependence of gain and expenditure is expressed in the very structure of the verse:
Alle þat I wynn thurgh witt he wastes thurgh pryde,
I gedir, I glene and he lattys goo sone,
I pryke and i pryne and he the purse opynes (ll.231-2).
I gedir, I glene and he lattys goo sone,
I pryke and i pryne and he the purse opynes (ll.231-2).
Each line represents the two sides of a transaction. Lois Roney argues that this represents a conception of the English nation as a single, self-sustaining economic unit, ‘in which every act of producing/saving/conserving is balanced by every act of consuming/spending/wasting as if England is envisioned as an equilibrium state’.8 The king imagines the equilibrium state as the separation of the two figures, allowing them to do what they do best: he plans to send Wastoure to Cheapside to encourage people to spend their money, while Wynnere is to reside in Rome at the expense of the ultimate winner, the Pope, hoarding money in order to fund the king’s military campaigns.9 Out of an eschatological context, the placing of Wynnere with the Pope is stripped of its irony. The significant guiding principle is not reform of the individual, but rather how the very actions that have just been condemned can be utilised for the benefit of the nation. Social conscience, where the individual’s identity as an English citizen subjugates selfish desire, has replaced religion as the moral-framework.
The poet of Wynnere delineates the moral-code within which his reforms are proposed by first invoking divine judgement, which contains an inherent morality, and then rejecting it. This negative model of self-definition is a technique that Langland uses at the beginning of Piers Plowman to establish the value-system within which his narrative will operate. The Prologue opens with a vision of the field of folk, densely populated with traders, where monetary transaction is at the fore. The reader traces the distribution and misappropriation of currency to begging wasters, and pardoners who sell absolution. Having established in the Prologue a prospect limited to worldly gain and expenditure, apparently without a divine telos, Langland proceeds to reject this temporal model. In Passus I the character Holy Church places this world within the continuum of redemptive history, simultaneously establishing linguistic continuity between worldly and spiritual economy. The dreamer asks Holy Church how he can save his soul: ‘Teche me to no tresor, but tel me this ilke -/ How I may save my soule, that seint art yholden’ (B.I.83-4). The question separates salvation and the notion of worldly gain into discrete entities. However, in her reply, Holy Church uses the word ‘tresor’, which the dreamer used to denote worldly gain, to refer to a contract with God: ‘“Whan alle tresors arn tried,” quod she, “treuthe is the best” ’ (B.I.85).10 Thus by overturning the initial world-view he had represented, Langland establishes that the ultimate force of his economic concerns is soteriological.
This opening transition establishes that Langland uses shifts between temporal models to define the value-system underlying his narrative, and that he proposes a continuum between monetary transaction and the divine economy. While the Vita limits itself solely to the spiritual economy, the Visio provides both a critique of contemporary practices of corrupt transaction and offers an economic vocabulary with which to understand redemptive history. This vocabulary is mobilized for two purposes. First, it articulates the relationship between the two temporal models and notions of winning. Second, it explicates the terms of the Old Law, represented by the contract between Truth and his workers in Passus V and VI, and the New Covenant. As in Wynnere we will see how reform, in this case covenantal, is heralded by eschatological frustration and withdrawal from the temporal continuum.
The distinction between the two versions of ‘mede’, as discussed at the beginning of this essay, forms Langland’s delineation between the two conflicting temporal models that are illustrated by the Prologue and Passus I. The first type of winning is the corruptible worldly gifts that Mede personifies as the daughter of Fals. She is betrothed to Fals Fikel-tonge, and has a retinue comprising Symonie, Cyvylle, and Favel. This type of ‘mede’, located within a specific medieval moment, represents time separated from divine judgement: Mede makes a topical allusion to the 1360 Treaty of Bretigny; and she exemplifies the standard abuses of the age, including corruption within the judicial system, and greed of friars who will give absolution in return for money.
The other type of ‘mede’ is God’s gift of redemption, which is integrated into the personification of Mede by Theology. He supplies her with a second lineage: she is legitimate daughter of Amendes and has been promised to ‘truthe’ (B.II.120). Langland has chosen to create a divided and paradoxical character when he could have used two figures to represent each type of ‘mede’. Langland presents a parallel between this conflated notion of ‘mede’ and temporal continuum, which he illustrates with Mede’s proposed marriages to Fals Fikel-tonge and ‘truthe’. If we assume marriage is an alliance that occurs only once, Mede’s imminent marriage to Fals Fikel-tonge will preclude the joining to ‘truthe’, which was destined for some unspecified time in the future. This assumption becomes the basis of Langland’s model of how to live in the world: if you have the ‘mede’ of the world, you cannot have the ‘mede’ of God. The emphasis on temporal continuum explains why poverty is frequently represented as the assurance of future spiritual possession, and worldly excess represented as premature: ‘Lat no wynnyng forwanye hem while thei be yonge’ (B.V.35). An agreed payment, which can be received only once over the conflated period of time and eternity, implies a contract.
In the same passage, Conscience distinguishes between ‘mede’ and measurable hire: ‘That laborers and lowe [lewede] folk taken of hire maistres,/ It is no manere mede but a mesurable hire (B.III.255-6). In the C-text just payment is given the term ‘mercede’.11 Like the division of the term ‘mede’, this distinction has a spiritual as well as economic application. It provides a vocabulary for one of the most controversial doctrinal issues of the Christian tradition: whether salvation is a gift exceeding man’s merit, or payment in proportion to works done.12
It is ‘mercede’ that Piers and the other workers receive from Truth for ploughing:
For though I seye it myself, I serve hym to paye;
I have my hire of hym wel and outherwhiles moore.
He is the presteste paiere that povre men knoweth:
He withhalt noon hewe his hire that he ne hath it at even (B.V.549-52).
I have my hire of hym wel and outherwhiles moore.
He is the presteste paiere that povre men knoweth:
He withhalt noon hewe his hire that he ne hath it at even (B.V.549-52).
On a literal level, of contract between landowner and worker, ‘serve hym to paye’ denotes cash payment;13 on a theological level it represents a contract between mankind and God where salvation is a price paid in proportion to works done. This exhibits both Langland’s ability to incorporate the contemporary transition to cash-economy into doctrinal discussion, and his acceptance of change within the traditional organization of labour on the estate.14 Langland not only draws an analogy between being a faithful labourer and good Christian, but, through the sacralization of the pay-relationship, he also implies that an individual can attain salvation by fulfilling the terms of earthly contracts.
In the Visio those who adhere to the contract of ‘mercede’ will be rewarded accordingly. But those who do not adhere to this contract, either wasting or partaking of ‘mede mesureless’, will invoke God’s displeasure. It is such intemperance that is attached to each prophecy of God’s retribution: in Passus III there is a prophecy that predicts a time when Mede and ‘Makometh’ shall come to grief (B.III.329); in Passus V Reason asserts that the world is being punished with pestilences ‘for pride and for no point ellis’ (B.V.15); and in Passus VI the excessive eating and drinking prior to harvest-time is to be repaid with Hunger’s famine. The close proximity of these prophecies to one another, and their location directly prior to harvest, permeates the ploughing passages with an eschatological anxiety. In Matthew 13:39 Christ uses the image of harvest to symbolise the Last Judgement: ‘the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels’.15 This image of apocalypse incorporates the notion of contract already established: if you toil, you will reap the fruits of redemption; if you do not, you will receive judgement. The agricultural impact of the divine retribution described by Reason, and threatened by Hunger, evoke the pestilences that had devastated England in 1349, 1361-1362, 1369, 1375-6, which suggest that Langland is associating these natural disasters with the corrupt and lazy behaviour he has been condemning. This is a call for spiritual reform.
But at the close of Passus VI it appears that reform is too late for the wasters, because Hunger is hastening across the landscape:
For Hunger hiderward hasteth hym faste!
He shal awake [thorugh] water, wastours to chaste,
Er fyve yer be fulfilled swich famyn shal aryse:
....
Thanne shal deeth withdrawe and derthe be justice,
And Daw the Dykere deye for hunger. (B.VI. 320-8)
He shal awake [thorugh] water, wastours to chaste,
Er fyve yer be fulfilled swich famyn shal aryse:
....
Thanne shal deeth withdrawe and derthe be justice,
And Daw the Dykere deye for hunger. (B.VI. 320-8)
The implication is that apocalypse is imminent. However, as soon as Passus VII opens, the eschatological impetus is frustrated by the news that Piers has purchased a pardon. The terms of this reprieve are: ‘Do wel and have wel, and God shal have thi soule’ (B.VII.114). While apocalypse had promised judgement once and for all, by contrast, the Pardon represents deferral: the criteria for securing absolution still rests in the future actions of each individual. In fact, couched in the terms of measurable hire, these are the same conditions as the pre-existing contract between the workers and Truth. But this does not mean that the contractual relationship resumes unchanged, for as I illustrated with Wynnere and Wastoure, when an eschatological model is frustrated the reader is alerted to the introduction of a new value-system that will alter the notion of winning. Piers tears the Pardon.16
The motif of tearing is reminiscent of Moses’ act of breaking the tablets of the Ten Commandments when he is angered by the idolatrous conduct of the Israelites (Exodus 32:1-19). Moses is a figure of Christ, and his action foreshadows the tearing of the veil in the temple at the moment of Christ’s death (Mark 15:38). Thus, I propose that Piers’ tearing can be read as a figure of the Harrowing of Hell in Passus XVIII, which implies that the Pardon represents the Old Law. However, its terms are in fact drawn from the Athanasian Creed, which emphasises belief in the incarnation of Christ as the path to salvation. The Pardon, then, simultaneously aligns itself with the terms of the established contract, and looks forward to a new order. Piers’ words after he tears the Pardon contain a similar ambiguity:
‘I shal cessen of my sowyng,’ quod Piers, ‘and swynke noght so harde,
Ne aboute my bely joye so bisy be na moore;
Of preieres and of penaunce my plough shal ben herafter,
And wepen whan I sholde slepe, though whete breed me faille. (B.VII.118-21)
Ne aboute my bely joye so bisy be na moore;
Of preieres and of penaunce my plough shal ben herafter,
And wepen whan I sholde slepe, though whete breed me faille. (B.VII.118-21)
‘Do wel’, as it had previously been understood, was the working of the land. Piers at once rejects this by saying he will ‘swynke noght so harde’, and proposes to replace it with an equivalent form of payment: prayer. The terms of the reform that Piers is proposing remain obscure. For a full explication the reader must wait until the Harrowing of Hell.
In Passus XVIII Mercy, Truthe, Pees, and Rightwisnesse meet and debate the legality of Christ taking the prophets and patriarchs out of hell. This becomes a debate between the concepts of ‘mercede’ and ‘mede’. Truthe and Rightwisnesse cannot believe that the inhabitants of hell could be freed because it would go against a verdict passed by God long ago:
At the bigynnyng God gaf the doom hymselve-
That Adam and Eve and alle that hem suwede
Sholden deye downrighte, and dwelle in peyne after
If thei touchede a tree and of the fruyt eten. (B.XVIII.190-3),
That Adam and Eve and alle that hem suwede
Sholden deye downrighte, and dwelle in peyne after
If thei touchede a tree and of the fruyt eten. (B.XVIII.190-3),
This represents punishment justly paid in return for sins done, and mirrors the contract between Truth and the workers. But Mercy and Pees announce that this contract is about to be overturned because they have been asked by God to be ‘mannes meynpernour for evermoore after’ (B.XVIII.184). The use of the economic term ‘meynpernour’, or surety, implies that Pees and Mercy will make up for any shortfall in mankind’s payment. However, Truthe and Rightwisnesse’s objection is not without cause, as can be seen by Pees’ appearance in Passus IV. In this passage Mede, in an attempt to clear Wrong of the sins he has committed, gives Pees a present of gold: ‘Pitously Pees thanne preyde to the Kynge/ To have mercy on that man that mysdide hym ofte’ (B.IV.98-9). Pees has committed the reprehensible act of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Both parties are right: it is both true that Christ will redeem mankind, and that the Old Law cannot be ignored. This paradox parallels that of the Pardon, in which the terms are identical to the old contract, yet are also implicitly connected with redemption because they originate in the Athanasian Creed.
So that Christ can remain free from blame, he must act within his father’s contractual terms of ‘mercede’ and pay the price for mankind’s salvation just as Piers purchased the Pardon:
Dentem pro dente et oculum pro oculo.
Ergo soule shal soule quyte and synne to synne wende,
And al that man hath mysdo, I ma, wol amende it.
Membre for membre [was amendes by the Olde Lawe],
And lif for lif also – and by that lawe I clayme
Adam and al his issue at my will herafter. (B.XVIII.341-6)
Ergo soule shal soule quyte and synne to synne wende,
And al that man hath mysdo, I ma, wol amende it.
Membre for membre [was amendes by the Olde Lawe],
And lif for lif also – and by that lawe I clayme
Adam and al his issue at my will herafter. (B.XVIII.341-6)
Having satisfied mankind’s debt by the terms of the Old Law, further payment is no longer required. Christ can now institute covenantal reform and stand Pees and Mercy as surety for mankind’s shortfall: ‘my mercy shal be shewed to manye of my bretheren (B.XVIII.394). This satisfies both sets of sisters, and settles the paradox of the Pardon.
Eleven passus after the tearing, the transition from Old Law to New Covenant has finally been explicated. But, beside the terms ‘meynpernour’ and ‘sold’, discussion of Christ’s transaction is almost entirely devoid of economic vocabulary (B.XVIII.213). The economic disengagement alerts us to the fact that Langland has abandoned what appeared to be his initial aim of reconciling material gain with a path to salvation. This is emphasised by the location of Passus XVIII passage after Piers’ rejection of work for the benefit of the community, in favour of the solitary life of prayer, and within the Vita. While the Visio is concerned with man’s faith within a socio-economic context, the scope of the Vita is often characterised as an inner-journey of the individual, and limited to the spiritual economy. Thus we have a sequence of events in Passus VII that runs like this: Piers tears the Pardon, he decides to lead a life of prayer, the passus ends and the Vita begins. The fact that Piers’ adoption of ascesis and transition into the Vita follow the tearing so rapidly suggests a point of crisis in the text: Langland is unable to represent the terms of redemption in a world where ‘mede’ conflates God’s gift with corruptible worldly transactions.
The tearing represents not only the physical hiatus between the two pieces of the document, but also a temporal hiatus between Visio and Vita. This temporal transition is best understood through comparison with Wynnere and Wastoure. In order to delimit the value-system on which his economic reform is based, the poet of Wynnere had to separate his temporal scope from divine judgement. Equally Langland must separate God’s gift from the character Mede in order to stress that there is no taint of corrupt payment, and differentiate Christ’s merciful action from Pees’ unlawful leniency in Passus IV. Because he had anchored his unified notion of gain with a temporal continuum, Langland’s separation of God’s gift simultaneously introduces a qualitative difference between time and eternity. Thus, when Piers tears the pardon the temporal continuum is also severed: transition into the Vita represents separation from both time and the worldly economy.
The Vita’s ‘ascetic world denial’ parallels the denial of divine judgement in Wynnere and Wastoure. In each case the separation of time from eternity is hailed by eschatological frustration. Apocalypse has an ambiguous temporal significance because it both marks an ultimate object and a transition into the eternal: on one side rests time, and the other eternity. By invoking it, each poet is announcing on which side of this divide lie the values that guide his definition of winning.
Ruth R. Roberts (MPhil), U. of Cambridge
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1. William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-text, ed. A.V. Schmidt (London, 1978), III. 231-3, 246-7. Further references to this edition are given by passus and line number.
2.Jacques Le Goff, ‘Merchant’s Time and the Church’s Time in the Middle Ages’ in Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago; London, 1980), p.31.
3.Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: the primitive Christian conception of time and history, tr. Floyd V. Filson, rev. edn (London, 1962), p.213.
4.‘The term "eschatology" comes from the Greek term ta eschata, "the last things," and relates to such matters as the Christian expectations of resurrection and judgment.' Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford, 1994, repr. 1997), p.540.
5.Morton W. Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a fourteenth century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, 1962), p.9.
6.Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Stephanie Trigg (Oxford, 1990), ll.12, 16.
7.For a full discussion, see Elizabeth Salter, ‘The Timeliness of Wynnere and Wastoure’, in Medium Aevum 47 (1978), 40-65; Lois Roney, ‘Winner and Waster’s “Wyse Wordes”: Teaching Economics and Nationalism in Fourteenth-Century England’, in Speculum 69 (1994), 1070-100.
8.Roney, p.1086.
9.See Stephanie Trigg, ‘The Rhetoric of Excess in Wynnere and Wastoure’, in Yearbook of Langland Studies 3 (1989), 91-108 (p.104); Roney, pp.1096-7, by contrast, argues that the characters have been sent to experience the opposite side of transaction, with Wynnere wasting in Rome, and Wastoure winning in Cheapside.
10.Le Goff, p.31
11.William Langland, Piers Plowman: an edition of the C-text, ed. Derek Pearsall (London, 1978), III.332-50.
12.For extended discussion, see James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-text (London, 1990), pp.78-94.
13.Anna P. Baldwin, ‘The Historical Context’, in Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. John A. Alford (Berkeley; London, 1988), p.70.
14.See David Aers, Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination (London, 1980), pp.1-37, who argues, by contrast, that Langland’s attitude to labour organization was ultimately conservative.
15.KJV.
16.For discussion of the tearing see E. Talbot Donaldson, The C-Text and its Poet (New Haven, 1949), pp.162-6; Simpson, pp.74-5.