At this same time the commons had risen in Suffolk in great numbers, and had as their chief Sir John Wraw, who brought with him more than ten thousand men. And they robbed many good folks, and cast their houses to the ground....
At the same time there were great levies in Norfolk, and the rebels did great harm throughout the countryside, for which reason the bishop of Norwich, Sir Henry Despenser, sent letters to the said commons, to bid them cease their malice and go to their homes, without doing any more mischief. But they would not, and went through the land destroying and spoiling many townships, and houses of divers folk....
Afterwards the king sent out his messengers into divers parts, to capture the malefactors and put them to death. And many were taken and hanged at London, and they set up many gallows around the City of London, and in other cities and boroughs of the south country. At last, as it pleased God, the king seeing that too many of his liege subjects would be undone, and too much blood spilt, took pity in his heart, and granted them all pardon, on condition that they should never rise again, under pain of losing life or members, and that each of them should get his charter of pardon, and pay the king as fee for his seal twenty shillings, to make him rich. And so finished this wicked war.
From Anonimalle Chronicle, trans. C. Oman, in The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906).
My Brother Man
WALTHER VON DER VOCELWEIDE
Thirteenth century
Who fears not, God, Thy gifts to take,
And then Thy ten commandments break,
Lacks that true love which should be his salvation.
For many call Thee Father, who
Will not own me as brother too:
They speak deep words from shallow meditation.
Mankind arises from one origin;
We are alike both outward and within;
Our mouths are sated with the selfsame fare.
And when their bones into confusion fall,
Say ye, who knew the living man by sight,
Which is the villein now and which the knight,
That worms have gnawed their carcasses so bare?
Christians, Jews, and heathens serve Him all,
And God has all creation in His care.
From I Saw the World, trans. I. G. Colvin (London: Arnold, 1938).
Piers Plounnan’s Protest
WILLIAM LANGLAND
Fourteenth century
Therefore I warn you rich, who are able in this world
On trust of your treasure to have triennials and pardons,
Be never the bolder to break the ten commandments;
And most of all you masters, mayors and judges,
Who have the wealth of this world, and are held wise
by your neighbours,
You who purchase your pardons and papal charters:
At the dread doom, when the dead shall rise
And all come before Christ, and give full accounting,
When the doom will decide what day by day you
practised,
How you led your life and were lawful before him,
Though you have pocketfuls of pardons there or provincial letters,
Though you be found in the fraternity of all the four
orders,
Though you have double indulgences—unless Do Well
help you
I set your patents and your pardons at the worth of a
peascodl
Therefore I counsel all Christians to cry God mercy,
And Mary His Mother be our mean between Him,
That God may give us grace, ere we go hence,
To work with such a will, while we are here,
That after our death day, and at the Day of Doom,
Do Well may declare that we did as He commanded.
The poor may plead and pray in the doorway;
They may quake for cold and thirst and hunger;
None receives them rightfully and relieves their suffering.
They are hooted at like hounds and ordered off.
Little does he love the Lord, who lent him all these
favours,
And who so parts his portion with the poor who are in
trouble.
If there were no more mercy among poor than among
rich men,
Mendicants might go meatless to slumber.
God is often in the gorge of these great masters,
But among lowly men are his mercy and his works;
And so says the psalter, as I have seen it often:
Ecce audivimus eam in Effrata, invenimus eam in campis
silvae.
Clerics and other conditions converse of God readily,
And have him much in the mouth, but mean men in
their hearts.
Friars and false men have found such questions
To please proud men since the pestilence season,
And have so preached at Saint Paul’s from pure envy of
clerics,
That men are not firm in faith nor free in bounty
Nor sorry for their sins. Pride has so multiplied
In religious orders and in the realm, among rich and
poor folk,
That prayers have no power to prevent the pestilence,
Yet the wretches of this world are not warned by each
other.
The dread of death cannot draw pride from them;
Nor are they plentiful to the poor as plain charity wishes;
But glut themselves with their goods in gaiety and gluttony,
And break no bread with the beggar as the Book teaches.
Lo, lords, lo, and ladies! witness
That the sweet liquor lasts but a little season,
Like peapods, and early pears, plums and cherries.
What lances up lightly lasts but a moment,
And what is readiest to ripen rots soonest.
A fat land full of dung breeds foul weeds rankly,
And so are surely all such bishops,
Earls and archdeacons and other rich clerics
Who traffic with tradesmen and turn on them if they
are beaten,
And have the world at their will to live otherwise.
As weeds run wild on ooze or on the dunghill,
So riches spread upon riches give rise to all vices.
The best wheat is bent before ripening
On land that is overlaid with marle or the dungheap.
And so are surely all such people:
Overplenty feeds the pride which poverty conquers.
The wealth of this world is evil to its keeper,
Howsoever it may be won, unless it be well expended.
If he is far from it, he fears often
That false men or felons will fetch away his treasure.
Moreover wealth makes men on many occasions
To sin, and to seek out subtlety and treason,
Or from coveting of goods to kill the keepers.
Thus many have been murdered for their money or
riches,
And those who did the deed damned forever,
And he himself, perhaps, in hell for his hard holding;
And greed for goods was the encumbrance of all together.
Pence have often purchased both palaces and terror;
Riches are the root of robbery and of murder;
He who so gathers his goods prizes God at little.
Ah! well may it be with poverty, for he may pass untroubled,
And in peace among the pillagers if patience follow
him!
Our Prince Jesus and His Apostles chose poverty together,
And the longer they lived the less wealth they mastered.
“When the kindness of Constantine gave Holy Church
endowments
In lands and leases, lordships and servants,
The Romans heard an angel cry on high above them:
”This day dos ecclesi
ae has drunk venom
And all who have Peter’s power are poisoned forever.’
But a medicine may be given to amend prelates
Who should pray for the peace and whose possessions
prevent them.
Take your lands, you lords, and let them live by tithing!
If possession is poison and makes imperfect orders,
It were good to dislodge them for the Church’s profit,
And purge them of that poison before the peril is greater.
“If priesthood were perfect all the people would be converted
Who are contrary to Christ’s law and who hold Christendom
in dishonour.
All pagans pray and believe rightly
In the great and holy Cod, and ask His grace to aid
them.
Their mediator is Mohammed to move their petition.
Thus the folk live in a faith but with a false advocate,
Which is rueful for righteous men in the realms of Christendom,
And a peril to the pope and to the prelates of his creation
Who bear the names of the bishops of Bethlehem and
Babylon."
“And would that you, Conscience, were in the court of
the king always,
That Grace, whom you commend so, were the guide of
all clergy,
And that Piers with his plows, the newer and the older,
Were emperor of all the world, and all men Christian!
He is but a poor pope who should be the peoples’ helper
And who sends men to slay the souls that they should
rescue.
But well be it with Piers the Plowman who pursues his
duty!
Qui pluit super justos et injustos equally,
Sends forth the sun to shine on the villein’s tillage
As brightly as on the best man’s and on the best
woman’s.
So Piers the Plowman is at pains to harrow
As well for a waster and for wenches in the brothels
As for himself and his servants, though he is served
sooner.
He toils and tills for a traitor as earnestly
As for an honest husbandman, and at all times equally.
May he be worshipped who wrought all, both the good
and the wicked,
And suffers the sinful till the season of their repentance!
God amend the pope, who pillages Holy Church,
Who claims that before the king he is the keeper of
Christians,
Who accounts it nothing that Christians are killed and
beaten,
Who leads the people to battle and spills the blood of
Christians,
Against the Old Law and the New Law, as Luke witnesses....
Surely it seems that if himself has his wishes
He recks nothing of the right nor of the rest of the people.
But may Christ in His Kindness save the cardinals and
prelates
And turn their wits into wisdom and to welfare of the
spirit!”
“Charity is God’s champion, like a child that is gentle,
And the merriest of mouth at meat and at table.
For the love that lies in his heart makes him lightsome in
language,
And he is companionable and cheerful as Christ bids
him.
Nolite fieri sicut hypocritae tristes, etc.
I have seen him in silk and sometimes in russet,
In grey and in furred gowns and in gilt armour;
And he gave them as gladly to any creature who needed
them.
Edmund and Edward were each kings
And considered saints when Charity followed them.
I have seen Charity also singing and reading,
Riding, and running in ragged clothing;
But among bidders and beggars I beheld him never.
In rich robes he is most rarely witnessed,
With a cap or a crown glistening and shaven,
Or in cleanly clothes of gauze or Tartary.
In a friar’s frock he was found once,
But that was afar back ir. Saint Francis’ lifetime;
In that sect since he has been too seldom witnessed.
He receives the robes of the rich, and praises
All who lead their lives without deception.
Beatus est dives qui, etc.
He comes often in the king’s court where the council is
honest,
But if Covetousness is of the council he will not come
into it.
He comes but seldom in court with jesters,
Because of brawling and backbiting and bearing false
witness.
He comes but rarely in the consistory where the commissary
is seated,
For their lawsuits are overlong unless they are lifted by
silver,
And they make and unmake matrimony for money.
Whom Conscience and Christ have combined firmly
They undo unworthily, these Doctors of Justice.
His ways were. once among the clergy,
With archbishops and bishops and prelates of Holy
Church,
To apportion Christ’s patrimony to the poor and needy.
But now Avarice keeps the keys and gives to his kinsmen,
To his executors and his servants and sometimes to his
children.
“I blame no man living; but Lord amend us
And give us all grace, good God, to follow Charity!
Though he mistrusts such manners in all men who meet
him,
He neither blames nor bans nor boasts nor praises,
Nor lowers nor lauds nor looks sternly
Nor craves nor covets nor cries after more.
In pace in idipsum dormiam, etc.
The chief livelihood that he lives by is love in God’s
passion.
He neither bids nor begs nor borrows to render.
He misuses no man and his mouth hurts no one.”
From The Vision of Piers Plowman, trans. H. W. Wells.
The Waldensian Heretics
BERNARD GUI
Early fourteenth century
CONCERNING THE WALDENSIAN SECT AND FIRST OF ALL CONCERNING THEIR ORIGINS AND BEGINNINGS
THE sect and heresy of the Waldensians began in about the year 1170 A.D. Its founder was a certain citizen of Lyons, named Waldes or Waldo, from whom his followers were named. He was a rich man, who, after having given up all his wealth, determined to observe poverty and evangelical perfection, in imitation of the apostles. He caused to be translated into the French tongue, for his use, the Gospels, and some other books of the Bible, and also some authoritative sayings of Saints Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Gregory, arranged under titles, which he and his followers called “sentences.” They read these very often, and hardly understood them, since they were quite unlettered, but infatuated with their own interpretation, they usurped the office of the apostles, and presumed to preach the Gospel in the streets and public places. And the said Waldes or Waldo converted many people, both men and women, to a like presumption, and sent them out to preach as his disciples.
Since these people were ignorant and illiterate, they, both men and women, ran about through the towns, and entered the houses. Preaching in public places and also in the churches, they, especially the men, spread many errors around about them.
They were summoned, however, by the archbishop of Lyons, the Lord Jean aux Belles-Mains, and were forbidden such great presumption, but they wished by no means to obey him, and cloaked their madness by saying that it was necessary to obey God rather than man. They said that God had commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel to all men, applying to themselves what was said to the apostles whose imitators and successors they boldly decl
ared themselves to be, by a false profession of poverty and the feigned image of sanctity. They scorned the prelates and the clergy, because they abounded in riches and lived in pleasantness.
So then, by this arrogant usurpation of the office of preaching, they became masters of error. Admonished to cease, they disobeyed and were declared contumacious, and then were excommunicated and expelled from that city and their country. Finally in a certain council which was held at Rome before the Lateran council, since they were obstinate, they were judged schismatic, and then condemned as heretics. Thus, multiplied upon the earth, they dispersed themselves through that province, and through the neighbouring regions, and into Lombardy. Separated and cut off from the Church, mingling with other heretics and imbibing their errors, they mixed the errors and heresies of earlier heretics with their own inventions....
CONCERNING THE ERRORS OF THE WALDENSIANS OF MODERN TIMES (SINCE FORMERLY THEY HAD MANY OTHERS)
The principal heresy, then, of the aforesaid Waldensians was and still remains the contempt for ecclesiastical power. Excommunicated for this reason, and delivered to Satan, they were precipitated into innumerable errors, and mingled the errors of earlier heretics with their own.
The erring followers and sacrilegious masters of this sect hold and teach that they are not subject to the lord pope or Roman pontiff or to any prelates of the Roman Church, declaring that the Roman Church has persecuted and condemned them unjustly and undeservedly. Also they assert that they cannot be excommunicated by the Roman pontiff and the prelates, and that they ought not to obey any of them, when they order or command the followers and teachers of the said sect to abandon or abjure it, although this sect has been condemned as heretical by the Roman Church.
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