Piers Plowman, Book, and the Testimonial Body 115

INTERVENTIONS: NEW STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL CULTURE Ethan Knapp, Series Editor FICTIONS OF EVIDENCE Witnessing, Literature, and Community in the Late Middle Ages Jamie K. Taylor THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Jamie K., 1975– Fictions of evidence : witnessing, literature, and community in the late Middle Ages / Jamie K. Taylor. p. cm. — (Interventions: new studies in medieval culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1223-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9324-9 (cd) 1. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—History and criticism. 2. Witnesses in literature. 3. Witnesses. 4. Witness bearing (Christianity) I. Title. II. Series: Interventions : new studies in medieval culture. PR255.T39 2013 820.9'001—dc23 2012044198 Cover design by AuthorSupport.com Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations x Introduction Witness Testimony and Literary Production in the Later Middle Ages 1 Chapter One The Face of a Saint and the Seal of a King 24 Chapter Two Silence, Testimony, and the Case of Susanna 55 Chapter Three Neighbors, Witnesses, and Outlaws in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 86 Chapter Four Piers Plowman, Book, and the Testimonial Body 115 Chapter Five Witnessing, Presence, and Lollard Communities 151 Coda Witnessing the Middle Ages 189 Works Cited 199 Index 213 acknowledgments I AM FORTUNATE to have many colleagues and friends who have shown me innumerable kindnesses while I researched and wrote this book. It is a true pleasure to express my gratitude to them. My first teachers of medieval literature and culture, Bruce Holsinger and Beth Robertson, have continually encouraged my work since I met them over a decade ago, and I will always be grateful for their guidance and support. My thinking about witnessing emerged during my early graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, and Rita Copeland, Emily Steiner, and David Wallace helped me shape my beginning thoughts about medieval law into the questions that are at the heart of this book. Kevin Brownlee always offered a kind word and sage advice, as did Liliane Weissberg, Marina Brownlee, Emma Dillon, and Nancy Bentley. Special thanks go to Jonathan Eburne, who gave thoughtful feedback on the entire manuscript, and Hester Blum, who helped me think about its larger conceptual stakes. William Chester Jordan talked medieval witnessing with me and solicited thoughts from his colleagues when I asked him for advice; I want specifically to thank Richard Helmholz and Paul Hyams for sharing their work and thoughts on testimony with me. Vance Smith and Larry Scanlon both took the time to help me think more deeply and sharply about Langland, and an early conversation with Maura Nolan helped me focus on some core questions about medieval testimony. I am also grateful for the insightful comments and thoughts from many colleagues, acquaintances, and friends, many of whom are probably not even aware that our discussions found their way into the book: Candace vii viii • Acknowledgments Barrington, Andreea Boboc, Chris Bradley, Cristina Cervone, Andrew Cole, Holly Crocker, Celeste Dinucci, Bob Edwards, Carey Eckhardt, Kasey Evans, Frank Grady, Marissa Greenberg, Jon Hsy, Stephanie Gibbs Kamath, Kathleen Kennedy, Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, Jana Mathews, Tim McCall, Jus- tine Murison, Chris Oze, Keith Poniewaz, Shyama Rajendran, Masha Ras- kolnikov, Jessica Rosenfeld, Martha Schoolman, Matt Shoaf, Stella Singer, Paul Strohm, Amy Vines, and Caitlin Wood. A friendly group of early mod- ernists welcomed me into their works-in-progress group, and they offered sharp feedback on several pieces of this project: thanks go particularly to Alice Dailey, Matt Kozusko, Zack Lesser, Laura McGrane, Nichole Miller, Shannon Miller, Kristin Poole, Lauren Shohet, and Eric Song. I am lucky to have found myself in a friendly department at a collegial institution, and I am very grateful for the support and encouragement of my colleagues and friends at Bryn Mawr College: Linda-Susan Beard, Elaine Beretz, Peter Briggs, Kim Cassidy, Catherine Conybeare, Anne Dalke, Igna- cio Gallup-Diaz, Marianne Hansen, Jennifer Harford Vargas, Jane Hedley, Gail Hemmeter, Maud McInerney, Hoang Nguyen, Ray Ricketts, Bethany Schneider, Rosi Song, Kate Thomas, Karen Tidmarsh, Michael Tratner, Elly Truitt, and Sharon Ullman all deserve thanks for their generosity, support, and good cheer. Particular thanks go to the unbelievably energetic Katherine Rowe, whose enthusiasm and expertise have been invaluable for this project, and to Bryn Thompson, who helped this book materially and otherwise with her trademark elegance and grace. Louisa Foroughi cheerfully double- checked a few Latin translations, and Kersti Francis was indispensable in the final stages of this project. At Bryn Mawr, support for this book came from a Junior Faculty Research Leave, the Helen Taft Manning Fund, and a Faculty Research Grant. Outside of Bryn Mawr, some of the research for this book was conducted with support from an Andrew W. Mellon Huntington Library Research Grant. I want to thank the librarians at the Beineke Rare Book Library, Princeton Univer- sity’s Rare Books and Special Collections, and the University of Pennsylva- nia’s Rare Book Library. I am also grateful to AnnaLee Pauls, Charles Greene, and Paul Needham at Princeton for their help with the image included in this book. Ethan Knapp and the anonymous reviewers for The Ohio State Univer- sity Press were thorough, generous, and thoughtful readers of the manuscript, and the book has benefitted enormously from their engagement with it. I am especially grateful for Malcolm Litchfield’s encouragement and guidance throughout the publication process, and for Maggie Diehl’s and Kristen Ebert-Wagner’s editorial acumen. Acknowledgments · ix I delivered versions of parts of this book as talks at the University of Toronto, Villanova University, the Delaware Valley Medieval Association meeting at Bryn Mawr College, the Modern Language Association meeting in San Francisco, the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, and the New Chaucer Society. Part of chapter 3 appeared in English Language Notes 48.2 (Fall/Winter 2010): 85–97. Copyright © the Regents of the University of Colorado 2010. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. I am most grateful for the ongoing support and love of my family, especially of my parents, Ronald and Patricia, and my sisters, Lara, Meredith, and Dana. And finally, my wonderful husband, Andrés, and my lovely son, Javi, are the greatest joys of my life. This book is dedicated to them. abbreviations CCSL Corpus christianorum series latina CHMEL Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature EETS Early English Text Society (e.s., extra series) EHD English Historical Documents, 1189–1327, ed. Harry Rothwell. London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1975. JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology MLQ Modern Language Quarterly PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J-P. Migne. Paris, 1844–64. PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America SAC Studies in the Age of Chaucer STC Short-Title Catalogue YLS Yearbook of Langland Studies x introduction Witness Testimony and Literary Production in the Later Middle Ages W I TNESSES were integral to a wide range of devotional and legal practices throughout the Middle Ages. As the crowds at martyrs’ trials, the audiences of mystery plays, and the readers of saints’ lives, they were repeatedly invoked in the traditions, rituals, and texts that shaped and articulated the ideals of Christian communities to testify to the sanctity and efficacy of Christian doctrine. Likewise, in ordeal trials, last wills and testaments, and writs of complaint, witnesses attested to the integrity of a law-abiding community. This book focuses on both devotional and legal witnessing practices in the later Middle Ages, arguing for the centrality and the plasticity of witnessing in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English culture. It describes witnessing as a diverse set of customs and procedures that sought to produce and authenticate different communities and kinds of authority. The swearing of an oath, the communal experience of a miracle, the oral testimony of a defendant, and courtroom documents alike provided religious and secular officials ways to construct and police doctrinal, customary, and royal communities. Yet witnessing practices could also be used to dispute or reframe, rather than shore up, doctrinal and legal communities. For example, as chapter 3 explores, outlaws sometimes deployed witnessing discourse to authorize communities that lived beyond the disciplinary reach of the crown. Likewise, as described in chapter 5, some Lollards used fifteenth-century depositional formulae to imagine a coherent community of heterodox believers even as 1 2 • Introduction ecclesiastical officials sought to censure such communities through the stra- tegic use of testimonial rhetoric. In particular, this book illustrates that witnessing practices offered medieval vernacular writers a language and a framework to examine the vari- ous ways devotional, moral, legal, or ethical obligations to one’s community might be understood and to challenge how the authority to determine those obligations could be asserted.1 Writers such as Chaucer and Langland, as well as lesser-known theologians such as John Waldeby and William Thorpe, depicted episodes of witnessing in their work to explore the overlaps and ten- sions between different kinds of legal or doctrinal communities. Accordingly, they imagined their own literary productions both attesting to and critiquing ecclesiastical and legal modes of community-formation and -articulation. The late medieval witnessing ideals and practices this book explores emerge from a long history of devotional and legal forms of testimony.

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