I hope I posted correctly this time.

Susan Norton

EN 620

Dr. Atkinson

16 January 2008

Search for Truth and Salvation
One of the main themes in William Langland’s medieval, poetical work Piers Plowman is the search for Truth and salvation. In the poem the narrator William is wandering the English countryside in search of “wonders” (p3 ln 4). In the process he reclines by the side of a brook and is lulled to sleep and a dream then ensues. At first he dreams of his present society and its sinful behaviors. As the dream continues, William is granted an interview with the personified Holy Church, which will be referred to hereafter as the Sacred Lady or She, in which he inquires as to how he can receive salvation.
At the beginning of the dream William mentions two towers, one on a hill-top and the other in a dungeon. The tower on the hill symbolizes Truth or God and Heaven. The tower in the dungeon represents a Lie or the Devil and Hell. All sorts of people are located between the two towers in a field which would represent their current condition on earth as being between Heaven and Hell. William proceeds to address the corrupt nature of his present society, particularly that of church officials. The corruption of the church officials would certainly have led to a hindrance for individuals seeking Truth as they would have been practicing false doctrines as well as hypocrisy. Of course, behind the corruption is the root of all evil, money. Several instances are mentioned in which the people are misled by church officials for their own personal acquisition of money. Prevalent among the corrupted religious figures are the friars who are “[p]reaching to the people for their own paunches’ welfare,/ [m]aking glosses of the Gospel that would look good for themselves;/ [c]oveting copes, they construed it as they pleased” (p5 lns 59-61). William goes on to say that they sell their services, particularly those of confession and forgiveness of sins, which cannot be purchased with man’s money. I find the role of the pardoner most humorous because it implies that it is acceptable to sin as long as a person pays to do so. (I can hear them now: “What’s the going price for a good drinking binge these days?”) William contributes much of society’s fault of letting this corruption exist, as well as that in the government, to the people’s lack of education and state of being unlearned. “[I]lliterate men lacked/ [t]he jargon or judgment to justify themselves,/ [and] can only suffer and serve” (p9 lns 129-131).
Later in the dream in “Passus I” while he is still on his spiritual journey, William is provided the opportunity to interview the Sacred Lady herself and ask Her how he may acquire salvation. At first William is unaware of who She really is. Perhaps this is symbolic of the fact that the church had become unrecognizable due to the corruption of its inner workings. She begins by telling him that most people are content while in this world as long as they have their health. Then, She directs William’s attention to the tower on the hill and proclaims it the embodiment of Truth and allegorically, God. She next points out that there are only three necessities in life: food, clothing/shelter, and drink. However, She cautions William on drinking to excess. When William next asks Her to whom money belongs, which obviously the people had been deceived in this area, She directs him to the Gospel for his answers and not to corrupt church officials. William then inquires about the second tower in the dungeon in which She explains it is the dwelling place of Wrong or allegorically, Satan.
It is not until the preceding events have transpired that William begins to question who his wise acquaintance and mentor is. She lovingly reprimands him for not recognizing her since She befriended him first and taught him the faith. William immediately drops to his knees in an act of reverence and begins to pray and seek counsel on how to achieve salvation and find Truth. The Sacred Lady’s answer is Truth, in the allegorical form meaning God. She responds, “And who end , as I said earlier, in Truth that is the best/ [m]ay be certain that their souls will ascend to Heaven” (p21 lns 131-2).
William’s response to the Sacred Lady not only agitates Her but also brings up another interesting paradoxical idea. He professes that he has no “natural knowledge” of Truth and wishes to be taught (p21 ln 138). The Sacred Lady seems to contradict Herself somewhat because She had just said, prior to William’s response, that unlearned men have to be taught that Truth is the way whereas learned men already know this (p21 lns 135-7). So why does She become angry with William when he says he has no “natural knowledge”? She exclaims that this knowledge is natural and therefore instinctive and does not have to be taught. She tells William, “It’s a natural knowledge that’s nurtured in your heart/ [t]o love your Lord more dearly than you love yourself…” (p21 lns 143-4). The resulting paradox is, can William be taught something that is supposed to be natural because if he is taught something that is supposed to be natural or instinctive, can it continue to be considered so? William’s disagreement with the Sacred Lady indicates he believes there is some reasoning involved in acquiring knowledge of Truth which leads to salvation. Both of these arguments imply somewhat that man has the ability to save himself because one indicates that man is instinctively born to know Truth, which would negate free will, and the other implies that through rationalization on his own, man can know Truth and needs no help from Truth in the acquisition of knowledge about Truth.





















Works Cited
Langland, William. Piers Plowman. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006.