The Laity, the Vernacular and the Church in Late Medieval England

RAISING UNRULY VOICES: THE LAITY, THE VERNACULAR AND THE CHURCH IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND PAUL HARDWICK DPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE JANUARY 1997 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iü Abstract iv Abbreviations v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The English Vernacular and the Church in the Later Middle Ages 5 CHAPTER 2 Langland's Intended Audience and the Transgression of Audience Boundaries in Piers Plowman 29 CHAPTER 3 The New Danger of Old Anticlericalism in Piers Plowman 54 CHAPTER 4 Lollard Interpretation and Appropriation of Piers Plowman: Pierce the Ploughman's Crede 88 CHAPTER 5 Piers Plowman, Orthodox Reform and the Lay Voice: The Canterbury Tales 121 CHAPTER 6 The "Piers Plowman Tradition" and the Independent Voice of Vernacular Anticlericalism 153 CHAPTER 7 The Threat of the "Unruly" Vernacular 183 CONCLUSION 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY 214 ll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Nick Havely for supervising not only the presentthesis, but also my MA dissertation. His Piers-like ability to offer direction in times of confusion has been invaluable throughout the past four years, and his perceptive and detailed (not to mention prompt) response to plans and drafts too numerous to recall has been a constant stimulus throughout my research. I would also like to thank Alastair Minnis for his suggestions and for bringing his experience (and red pen) to bear on sections of the current work, and Felicity Riddy for providing much-needed signposts in the area of linguistic hierarchies. Although not involved in the present thesis, I would like to acknowledge a particular debt to Karen Hodder. Without the benefit of her enthusiasm and encouragement as an undergraduate, I am sure that I would not be writing this now. During the course of my research in the Department of English at York, I have been fortunate enough to be a part of a stimulating research community at the Centre for Medieval Studies. Of my colleagues, I would particularly like to thank Linda Olson for lending her more refined Latin skills to my "pragmatic literacy, " and John Arnold, Pippa Brockington, Elaine Campbell and Katherine Lewis for suggestions at various stages. The present thesis may well have been little different in content without the day-to-day informal chats about my work, their work and the state of the world in general, but without the inhabitants of the C. M. S. it would undoubtedly have been less enjoyable in the writing. Special thanks are due to my family for their support and confidence throughout the somewhat over-long period it has taken me to get around to doing something worthwhile, and to Elaine Campbell (again) for making it all the more worthwhile. to fellow Cloud Machine for ...and my members of providing a safety valve. i ABSTRACT This study explores the effect upon the late-medieval English Church of the increased usage of the English vernacular as a medium for the discussion of doctrinal issues, by both the clergy and the laity. Chapter One establishes a cultural context, tracing the parallel developments of the promotion of lay piety and the increasing status accorded to the English vernacular in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Chapter Two focusesupon Piers Plowman, and it is suggestedthat this work was originally intended for a purely clerical audience, but its composition in the vernacular inadvertently facilitated accessby a lay readership. Chapter Three addressesthe dangersof the dissemination of hitherto proscribed anticlerical rhetoric amongst a lay readership,and investigates how Langland's conservative reformism could, when viewed from outside the clerical community, be read in an antisacerdotal light. Chapter Four examines such a heterodox reading of Piers Plowman - Pierce the Ploughman's Crede - which demonstrates the way in which orthodox material could be appropriated in order to attack the hierarchical structure of the Church itself. Chapter Five argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales display a strong Langlandian influence but, unlike the Crede Poet, Chaucer uses his references to Piers Plowman to uphold the status quo. It is suggested, however, that by the late fourteenth century the threat to the Church of the English vernacular had become so great that merely to discuss the Church in English was to pose a threat. Chapter Six draws more widely upon literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which owes a debt to Piers Plowman, in order to offer support to the conclusions drawn in chapters Four and Five. In considering a selection of works, both orthodox and heterodox, there is an accumulation of evidence of the destabilising effect upon the Church of the growth of religious discussion in the vernacular. Chapter Sevenconsiders the failure of the Church to addresseffectively the problems posed by the vernacular and, in consideringthe specific case of Reginald Pecock, suggestsa wilful refusal by the English ecclesiastical authorities even to accept the severity of the problem. In conclusion, it is suggested that in looking at religion in England in the pre-Reformation period we should concentrate less upon the perceived opposition between "traditional" religion and its "discontents, " and more upon the broad range of cultural circumstances which led to individual expressions of piety being thus defined. iv ABBREVIATIONS CT. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales PPI. William Langland, Piers Plowman AJA American Journal of Archaeology BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library ChR Chaucer Review CQR Church Quarterly Review EETS e. s. Early English Text Society extra series EETS o. s. Early English Text Society original series EHR English Historical Review ELH English Literary History ES English Studies HTR Harvard Theological Review JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JTS Journal of Theological Studies JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes LH Literature and History LSE Leeds Studies in English MAE Medium 1Evum MLQ Modern Language Quarterly MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology MS Mediaeval Studies N&Q Notes and Queries NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association REAL Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature RES Review of English Studies Rolls Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores SAC Studies in the Age of Chaucer SCH Studies in Church History SP Studies in Philology Spec Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies YES Yearbook of English Studies YLS Yearbook of Langland Studies ZAA Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik V INTRODUCTION "The crucial factor in the growth of a well-instructed laity in fifteenth-century England, " writes Duffy, "was the spread of literacy down the social scale, even to many women."1 This well-instructed laity is seen as actively participating in "traditional" religion; that is: a religious culture which was rooted in a repertoire of inherited and shared beliefs and symbols, while remaining capable of enormous flexibility and variety. ' In proposing this culturally all-embracing system of devotional behaviour, Duffy sets out to provide a corrective to the view of the English religious landscape of the late Middle Ages which is perhaps suggested by much recent scholarship, which has tended to concentrate upon the exceptional and the particular; "the Lollards, witches, and leisured aristocratic ladies."3 Whilst Duffy's work indeedprovides a timely reminder of the countless Christians of all stations whose unquestioning, and unquestioned, orthodoxy absented them from subsequent record, I shall argue in the present thesis that this spread of literacy - more specifically, the spread of vernacular literacy - makes it impossible to take this notion of "traditional" religion at face value. Duffy states that "serious interest in religious education in the vernacularcould tip over into, or become confused with, Lollardy. " However, I shall suggest, using fourteenth- to sixteenth-century appropriations and manipulations of Piers Plowman as a "case study," that the use of the vernacular for the discussion of doctrinal ' Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-1580 (London, 1992), p. 68. ZIbid., p.3. 3 Ibid., p. 2. For an extensive survey of developments in the study of English medieval ecclesiastical history over the last half-century, see Peter Heath, "Between Reform and Reformation: The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, " JEH 41 (1990): 647-678. 1 issues itself rendered the doctrinally orthodox potentially threatening to the Church. The Book of Margery Kempe offers many examples of a pious, outspoken laywoman coming into conflict with the Church. 4 Margery, however, may be seen as a rather extreme example, so I should like to introduce my topic by offering instead a brief example of a fourteenth-century dramatisation of an intelligent laywoman's brush with a representative of the Church; that of Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Friar: 5 "Dame, " quod he, "God yeve yow right good lyf! Ye han heer touched, also moot I thee, In scole-matere greet difficultee. Ye han seyd muche thyng right wel, I seye; But, dame, heere as we ryde by the weye, Us nedeth nat to speken but of game, And lete auctoritees, on Goddes name, To prechyng and to scoles of clergye. 6 With thesewords, Chaucer's Friar graciously approves the preceding tale of the Wife of Bath, whilst at the same time mildly censuring her usurpation of a discourse which he considersto be more suited to clerics and scholars than to a lay pilgrim. Although I will, for the present,defer detailed discussion of Chaucer's place in late medieval anticlericalism, 7 1 feel that this brief interjection by the Friar provides a convenient point of entry into the subject, as it draws together a number of issues which are relevant to a broad consideration of vernacular anticlericalism in England during the period as a whole. The Friar's prologue is frequently considered in the light of the animosity displayed 4 In Leicester, for example, Margery is accused of Lollardy and, consequently, examined upon points of doctrine.

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