Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

Morton Bloomfield famously remarked that reading Piers Plowman “is like reading a commentary on an unknown text”: in this erudite and carefully argued book, Thomas persuasively demonstrates that in many places, that text may be canon law. In addition to looking past the poem’s material sources (that is, biblical and patristic originalia) to its formal sources (that is, legal and other writings in which these quotations are deployed) (66), Thomas also asks us to reconsider the purposes and practice of medieval commentary. Rather than providing an exposition of known truths within a “closed dogmatic system” (238), commentary invents old materials anew as it engages in current debates. Literary works reinvent these materials in a new and different way, giving us insight into how writers and readers who were not canon lawyers nor engaged in the practice of law might nonetheless “mobilize the discourse of canon law” (236) in pursuit of other goals. The five chapters of this book treat successively the stages of the penitential process—contrition, restitution, satisfaction, and the process as a whole—while the epilogue looks back on canon law from the perspective of Luther, suggesting that it was from a post-Reformation perspective that the law of the Catholic church began to appear closed and dogmatic. However, this book accomplishes more than a tour of the penitential process as it appears in a literary work. For scholars of Piers Plowman, Thomas provides a new account of the relationship between the B and C versions of the poem, focused on their treatments of canon law, but without assuming that C is a revision of B. He devotes two full chapters to revisiting the scenes treating Lady Mede, providing new insight into some of the most commented-upon passages of the poem. For medieval literary scholars more broadly, he gives a clear and straightforward introduction to the books of canon law and their principal commentators that may encourage more of them to explore them. And for interdisciplinary work on literature and law, he offers a new understanding of how literary works might deploy legal maxims to new ends, in a kind of poetic reshaping of canonist thought. Chapter one examines how penitential manuals and Piers Plowman alike present contrition, or remorse for sins, as set of behaviors that need to be taught and assessed for the quality and sincerity of their performance. Canonist writings allow Thomas to explain the norms that Mede violates by showing no remorse, and highlight how the friar’s failure to require contrition is a “legal infraction and not just a pastoral oversight” (49). Chapter two considers why and how the C version of Piers Plowman rewrites Mede’s discussion with Conscience to omit any mention of usury. Thomas provides a lucid exposition of the canon law debate over usury, and shows rare sensitivity to how complex and much-