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Updated: June 27, 2025
The Church was wealthy but the powerful priests kept that wealth in their own hands, and many of the country clergy were almost as miserably poor as the people whom they taught. And it was through one of these poor priests, named William Langland, that the sorrows of the people found a voice. We know very little about Langland.
But from the sorely-tried third quarter of the fourteenth century the solitary voice of Langland cries, as the voice of Conscience preaching with her cross, that "these pestilences" are the penalty of sin and of naught else.
How has the Prologue added to our knowledge of life in the fourteenth century? Give examples of Chaucer's vivid pictures. What specimens of his humor does the Prologue contain? Do any of Chaucer's lines in the Prologue show that the Reformation spirit was in the air, or did Wycliffe and Langland alone among contemporary authors afford evidence of this spirit?
A poem on "The Deposition of Richard II." which has been published by the Camden Society is now ascribed to William Langland. With Henry the Fifth our historic materials become more abundant. But with the accession of Henry the Sixth we again enter on a period of singular dearth in its historical authorities.
There was no room in it for the idleness of those lovely ladies, with their long fingers, whom Langland admonished to sew for the poor. Moreover, exaggerated as some of her husband's ideas upon wifely submission appear today, the book leaves a strong impression of good sense and of respect as well as love for her.
Then, as Langland looked on all this, he saw "A lady lovely in face, in linnen i-clothed, Come adown from the cliff and spake me fair, And said, 'Son, sleepest thou? Seest thou this people All how busy they be about the maze?" Langland was "afeard of her face though she was fair." But the lovely lady, who is Holy Church, speaks gently to the dreamer.
At the same time Langland made literature for the common people out of their common lot, a fact that can hardly be understood unless we remember that villeins, although they might be fined by their lords for so doing, were sending their sons in increasing numbers to schools, which were eventually thrown open to them by the Statute of Labourers in 1406.
There are several versions of Piers, and it is thought by some that Langland himself wrote and re-wrote his poem, trying always to make it better. But others think that some one else wrote the later versions. The poem is divided into parts. The first part is The Vision of Piers the Ploughman, the second is The Vision Concerning Do Well, Do Bet, Do Best.
We may learn this lesson from Beowulf, the first English epic, from Alfred the Great, from William Langland, and from Chaucer's Parish Priest. All Shakespeare's greatest and happiest characters, all the great failures of his dramas, are sermons on this text. In The Tempest he presents Ariel, tendering his service to Prospero: "All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!
The immense influence of his preaching in the native tongue, and the power of his Lollards to stir the souls of the common folk, are too well known historically to need repetition. Though a university man and a profound scholar, he sides with Langland, and his interests are with the people rather than with the privileged classes, for whom Chaucer writes.
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