“Many ferlis han fallen in a fewe ȝeris”: Debt, Obligation, Godly Presence, and Grasping the Miraculous in Piers Plowman
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Warren Tormey
Abstract
A work that survives in multiple versions and manuscripts, Piers Plowman is unusually “present” in the world of contemporary scholarship, just as it was within the social and public worlds across many decades in its own time. With its complicated allegorical structure and status as a multi-textual work, the poem was appropriated into varied contexts after it had appeared, just as it continues to beguile contemporary scholars. Specifically, with its fundamental preoccupations with the concepts of debt and obligation, the poem engages within an increasingly transactional culture that conjoined ecclesiastical functions firstly with monetary relationships. Within that culture, Langland aligns the miraculous above all with clerical abuses but also with the dynamics of conversion and salvation, and with the controversial figure of Trajan, the “Virtuous Pagan,” central to this theme. In its later stages the poem engages more constructively with the theme of the miraculous in its attempt to understand the concept of salvation beyond the problematic dynamics Langland had first identified. Ultimately, in Langland’s notion of miracles he positions them on the borderlands between the abstract and the tangible, thus capturing an evolving conception of the miraculous in the late Middle Ages.
Abstract
A work that survives in multiple versions and manuscripts, Piers Plowman is unusually “present” in the world of contemporary scholarship, just as it was within the social and public worlds across many decades in its own time. With its complicated allegorical structure and status as a multi-textual work, the poem was appropriated into varied contexts after it had appeared, just as it continues to beguile contemporary scholars. Specifically, with its fundamental preoccupations with the concepts of debt and obligation, the poem engages within an increasingly transactional culture that conjoined ecclesiastical functions firstly with monetary relationships. Within that culture, Langland aligns the miraculous above all with clerical abuses but also with the dynamics of conversion and salvation, and with the controversial figure of Trajan, the “Virtuous Pagan,” central to this theme. In its later stages the poem engages more constructively with the theme of the miraculous in its attempt to understand the concept of salvation beyond the problematic dynamics Langland had first identified. Ultimately, in Langland’s notion of miracles he positions them on the borderlands between the abstract and the tangible, thus capturing an evolving conception of the miraculous in the late Middle Ages.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Miracles, Wonders, and Human Existence Globally and in the Pre-Modern Age: Also an Introduction 1
- (False) Miracles, Doctors and the potentia of Saints in the Gaul of Gregory of Tours 107
- Apostle’s Miracles and Kings’ Authority in West Francia (ca. 850–ca. 1050) 127
- Fecundity, Motherhood and Healing Karāmāt (Miracles): A Comparative Study of Sayyidah Nafīsah and Christian Women Saints 161
- Intertextuality and the Transcendental Miracle of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-Ghufrān (The Epistle of Forgiveness) (1033 C.E.) 189
- The Miracles of Solomon: A Comparative Study of Al-Thaʿlabī’s Qiṣaṣ Al-Anbiyāʾ and “The City of Brass,” a Tale in the Arabian Nights Collection 215
- Miracle Accounts as Teaching Aids and Learning Tools: Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum as a Mirror of Everyday Life and the History of Mentality 241
- The Ultimate Miracle: Revival of the Dead in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria 275
- Miracle of Miracles: Improbable Choices and Impossible Outcomes in Dante’s Paradiso 299
- Miraculosa gratia: Discerning the Spirit, Discerning the Body in the Liber of Angela of Foligno and in the Vita of Clare of Montefalco 337
- Miraculous Revelation in the Middle English Pearl 375
- The Miracles of the Immaculate Conceptions in the St. Anne’s Legend and the Middle English Joseph of Aramathie 405
- “Many ferlis han fallen in a fewe ȝeris”: Debt, Obligation, Godly Presence, and Grasping the Miraculous in Piers Plowman 427
- Margery Kempe and Miracles: Guarding Understanding and Interpretation of Experience 459
- Where Has God Gone in the Vernacular Renderings of Lanfranc’s Chirurgia magna? 477
- Non vidit, sed firmiter credit – The Many Roles of Jews in Christian Miracle Narratives 505
- “Never of Myselff”: Failure and Interiority in Malory’s “The Healing of Sir Urry” 555
- Between Wonders and Miracles. The Use and Abuse of Natural Substances in the Healing Rituals of Late Medieval and Early Modern Popular Culture 581
- Between Wonder and Science: Alchemy in Augurello’s Mini-Epic Chryrsopoeia (1515) 619
- “Miraculous Light” – Natural Phenomena and Divine Salvation in the Medieval and Early Modern World 647
- Biographies of the Contributors
- Index
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Miracles, Wonders, and Human Existence Globally and in the Pre-Modern Age: Also an Introduction 1
- (False) Miracles, Doctors and the potentia of Saints in the Gaul of Gregory of Tours 107
- Apostle’s Miracles and Kings’ Authority in West Francia (ca. 850–ca. 1050) 127
- Fecundity, Motherhood and Healing Karāmāt (Miracles): A Comparative Study of Sayyidah Nafīsah and Christian Women Saints 161
- Intertextuality and the Transcendental Miracle of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-Ghufrān (The Epistle of Forgiveness) (1033 C.E.) 189
- The Miracles of Solomon: A Comparative Study of Al-Thaʿlabī’s Qiṣaṣ Al-Anbiyāʾ and “The City of Brass,” a Tale in the Arabian Nights Collection 215
- Miracle Accounts as Teaching Aids and Learning Tools: Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum as a Mirror of Everyday Life and the History of Mentality 241
- The Ultimate Miracle: Revival of the Dead in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria 275
- Miracle of Miracles: Improbable Choices and Impossible Outcomes in Dante’s Paradiso 299
- Miraculosa gratia: Discerning the Spirit, Discerning the Body in the Liber of Angela of Foligno and in the Vita of Clare of Montefalco 337
- Miraculous Revelation in the Middle English Pearl 375
- The Miracles of the Immaculate Conceptions in the St. Anne’s Legend and the Middle English Joseph of Aramathie 405
- “Many ferlis han fallen in a fewe ȝeris”: Debt, Obligation, Godly Presence, and Grasping the Miraculous in Piers Plowman 427
- Margery Kempe and Miracles: Guarding Understanding and Interpretation of Experience 459
- Where Has God Gone in the Vernacular Renderings of Lanfranc’s Chirurgia magna? 477
- Non vidit, sed firmiter credit – The Many Roles of Jews in Christian Miracle Narratives 505
- “Never of Myselff”: Failure and Interiority in Malory’s “The Healing of Sir Urry” 555
- Between Wonders and Miracles. The Use and Abuse of Natural Substances in the Healing Rituals of Late Medieval and Early Modern Popular Culture 581
- Between Wonder and Science: Alchemy in Augurello’s Mini-Epic Chryrsopoeia (1515) 619
- “Miraculous Light” – Natural Phenomena and Divine Salvation in the Medieval and Early Modern World 647
- Biographies of the Contributors
- Index
