Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Idea of Universal Salvation

in Piers Plowman B and C

Derek Pearsall
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Underlying all the debates in Langlands Piers Plowmanabout the right

use of worldly goods, about the greed of priests and the corruption within
the Church, about kingship and authority, about the friarsthere is the
question of salvation. How may I save my soul? the dreamer asks Holy
Church in Passus I, and it is this question, with all its implied urgency,
that initiates the movement of the poem and remains pressingly persistent
throughout its progress. A tempting solution is offered by the prospect of
universal salvation, which Christ seems to hold out or at least hint at in his
great speech before the gates of hell to those he has rescued from limbo and
to the assembled major and minor demons:
May no pyement ne pomade ne preciouse drynkes
Moiste me to the fulle ne my furst slokke
Til the ventage valle in the vale of Iosophat
And Y drynke riht rype must, resureccio mortuorum.
And thenne shal Y come as kynge, with croune and with angeles,
And haue out of helle alle mennes soules.
Fendes and fendekynes byfore me shal stande
And be at my biddynge, at blisse or at payne.
Ac to be merciable to man thenne my kynde asketh,
For we beth brethrene of o bloed, ac nat in baptisme alle.
Ac alle that beth myn hole brethrene, in bloed and in baptisme,
Shal neuere in helle eft come, be he ones oute:
Tibi soli peccaui, et malum coram te feci.
Hit is nat vsed on erthe to hangen eny felones
Oftur then ones, thogh they were tretours.
And yf the kynge of the kyngdoem come in the tyme
Ther a thief tholie sholde deth other iewyse,

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Lawe wolde he youe hym lyf and he loked on hym.

And Y that am kynge ouer kynges shal come such a tyme
Ther that doem to the deth dampneth alle wikkede
And if lawe wol Y loke on hem hit lith in my grace
Where they deye or dey nat, dede they neuere so ille.
Be hit enythyng abouhte, the boldenesse of here synne,
Y may do mercy of my rihtwysnesse and alle myn wordes trewe.
For holy writ wol that Y be wreke of hem that wrouhte ille,
As nullum malum impunitum, et nullum bonum irremuneratum.
And so of alle wykkede Y wol here take veniaunce.
And yut my kynde in my kene ire shal constrayne my will
Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me, &c.
To be merciable to monye of my halue-bretherne.
For bloed may suffre bloed bothe afurst and acale
Ac bloed may nat se bloed blede bote hym rewe.
(Audivi arcana verba, que non licet homini loqui.)
Ac my rihtwysnesse and rihte shal regnen in helle
And mercy al mankynde bifore me in heuene.
For Y were an vnkynde kyng bote Y my kyn helpe
And namliche at such a nede that nedes helpe asketh:
Non intres in iudicium cum seruo tuo. (XX.40942)1

While scrupulously observing the law, Christ seems to be evolving here,

through his own compassionate meditation, almost as if he had just come
upon it and were just thinking it out (a characteristic feature of Langlands
way of narrating Christian history), a doctrine and means of universal sal-
vation which will turn the Last Judgment into a day of mercy rather than
wrath.2 This is not the orthodox view of the power of Christs redemptive
sacrifice. Traditional theology, in its attempt to find a place for both Gods
justice and his mercy, held the view that Gods mercy was supreme in this life
and at the particular judgment at the moment of death, but that at the Last
Judgment all would be ordered in accordance with justice alone. This was
the view of Augustine, as he expresses it in his commentary on Psalm 100:1:
Now is still the time for mercy; the future will be the time for judgment
[Misericordiam et iudicium cantabo tibi, Domine (Vulgate)].3 Similarly, in
his commentary on Vulgate Psalm 24:10 he speaks of the two comings of
the Son of God, one in mercy, the other in judgment (unus miserantis,
alter iudicantis).4 There was little comfort in this, and the consequences

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are spelled out with characteristic severity in The Pricke of Conscience. The
particular or private judgment at death is final: as the soul passes from the
body it will be judged to be saved or damned.5 Many of the saved will pass
some time in purgatory (262732, 271021).6 All will appear, body and soul
reunited, at doomsday, where the general judgment, identical with that
already made at death with all the benefit of Gods mercy, will be publicly
pronounced (259598). This was the doctrine taught by the Church.
Langlands theology of universal salvation in Christs speech
is not, however, totally heterodox nor without precedent. There are hints
toward it in Origen, and in vernacular literature, such as Robert Grossetestes
Chateau dAmour and its influential English translation, the Castle of Love,
as well as in the Gospel of Nicodemus, Mandevilles Travels, Margery Kempe,
and Julian of Norwich.7 Origens doctrine of apocatastasis, a Neoplatonic
fantasy of alternating purgation and ascent in which all creatures, even the
devil, will eventually be saved and reunited with God, was dismissed by
Augustine, with a gentle rebuke of our kind-hearted brothers [misericordes
nostri], and condemned by the Church.8 In the Castle of Love, when the Son
promises to undertake the redemption of man, he says he will make the Four
Daughters of God kiss and sauen al e folk on londe.9 If this were read
with a wanton disregard of context, it could suggest a promise of universal
salvation, since the atonement was made for all humanity; but any such
suggestion is squashed by Christs later remarks about the limitations upon
his promise (Castle of Love 141112, 145960) and the authors own descrip-
tions of the eternal torments of the damned in hell (166578, 16951746).10
Nicholas Watson suggests that in such a text the resolution of the debate of
the Four Daughters demands the salvation of all humanity though the
text avoids making this conclusion explicit, and leaves ambiguities that
optimistic writers could exploit.11 This is a generous conclusion. The other
English vernacular writings that have been cited have hints of a promise of
universal salvation, but they are at all points vague or ambiguous or incon-
sistent about its comprehensiveness, and, without any pretence of theological
argument, provide precarious footholds for a sentiment of optimism.
Nevertheless, Watson has seized on these hints in a recent influen-
tial essay, already cited, in which he argues that a predominantly vernacular
tradition existed in which salvation was to be proffered to all human beings,
Christian and pagan, righteous and unrighteous alike. Watson calls his arti-
cle Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in
Pre-Reformation England, and in it he makes the particularly attractive
argument that the theology of universal salvation might be called a ver-

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nacular theology, since it was the inclusivity of the very vernacular itself,
unconstrained by the hierarchies of Latin and of Latin scholastic theology,
which encouraged an equivalent generosity in the theology of salvation.12
Watsons principal witness, along with Piers Plowman, is Julian of
Norwich. In the earlier short text of her Revelation of Love, called in the
new edition A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman, Julian reflects on the pain
of sin, and wonders why, at the beginning, given the foreseeing wisdom of
God, sin was nought letted: for than thought me that alle shulde hafe bene
wele.13 She hears Jesus answer that Sinne is behovelye, but is comforted by
his promise that alle shalle be wele, and alle maner of thynge shalle be wele
(A Vision 13.45, 61).14 This promise, though, is directed only to those that
shalle be safe, and of course leaves open the prospect of eternal torment for
many of Gods creatures, Christians and others (13.60). In the longer text,
she returns to the question of why sin was permitted in the first place, and
receives the same answer that Sinne is behovely, and alle shalle be wele
(Revelation 27.56, 910). Unable to let the question rest, she breaks out A,
good lorde, how might alle be wele for the gret harme that is come by sinne
to thy creatures? (29.23). In other words, she takes momentarily the side
of the orthodox theology of sin and punishment which leads inevitably to
the eschatology of eternal damnation. How can it be otherwise, she asks
tremblingly. Again God replies, in a shewyng, That that is unpossible to
the is not unpossible to me. I shalle save my worde in alle thing, and I shalle
make althing wele (32.4143). Save my word is shorthand for respect
and fulfil the law. The implication, without much detail on particulars like
the fate of the righteous heathen, is of the answer that she hopes for, that is,
salvation for all, even sinners.
Julians meditation on the subject is intellectually sophisticated and
profoundly moving, but it does not entirely escape the objection that all
those who propound a theology of universal salvation must facethat such
a theology, without being necessarily nave, must set aside a great body of
formidably rational argument and base itself primarily on hope and trust in
a God who is at once just, merciful, and unfathomable. Without denying
any of these propositions, the orthodox theology of salvation still finds itself
constrained to accept the necessity of eternal punishment. To put it very
simply: If there is to be no final weeding-out, where is justice, and what is
the point of making an effort?
My argument in this essay is that Langlands theology is not naive
but carefully thought-out, and that Christs speech concludes a long struggle
with the question of salvation that has provided the driving force of the

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poem. It is not a simple conclusion, and in order to begin to understand

it we must trace the course of Langlands salvation thinking through the
poem, both in B and C. It is particularly important to approach the poem
in this wayto attend to it as a unique unfolding drama, with care to mark
who says what and to respect the poems narrative sequence. It is not a poem
whose elements can be extrapolated into a system of belief, but a narrative
and dramatic enactment of the search for truth of belief.

How may I save my soul? the poet begins (I.80), but the question is to
some extent put aside during the Visio, in which ideas of social, economic,
and political reform are uppermost.15 The return to the question of salvation
in C.IX, with the granting of a pardon by Truth to the workers in the field,
triggers the movement of the rest of the poem:
Treuthe herde telle her-of and to Peres sente
To taken his teme and tilion the erthe
And purchasede hym a pardoun a pena et a culpa,
For hym and for his ayres for euere to ben assoiled,
And bad hym holden hym at hoem and eryen his leyes
And alle that holpe hym to erye, to sette or to sowe
Or eny manere mester that myhte Peres auayle,
Pardoun with Peres the plouhman perpetuelly he graunteth.
(IX.18)

The pardon sent from Truth seems at first to offer more than the usual indul-
gence in remitting the guilt of sin (culpa) to the penitent (properly speaking,
only priests could grant this) as well as the punishment for it in this life
(pena). On the other hand, the phrase a pena et a culpa was often loosely
used, and the pardon may be no more than a conventional indulgence.16
Then further, the pardon is said not merely to remit the punishment of sin
in this life but also to accelerate the progress of the penitent through purga-
tory (IX.11, 22), and to enable the patient and humble poor to bypass purga-
tory altogether:
That [those that] taketh thise meschiefes mekeliche and myldeliche
at herte
For loue of here lowe hertes oure lord hath hem ygraunted
Here penaunce and here purgatorye vppon this puyre erthe
And pardon with the plouhman a pena et a culpa. (IX.18487)

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Toward the end of the passus the precise terms of the pardon are finally
announced, in the form of two verses from the Athanasian Creed (ultimately
derived from Matt. 25:46), which was used on Sundays at Prime:
Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eternam;
Qui vero mala in ignem eternum. (IX.28788)

Yet the power of the papal pardon to offer release from sin is still reaffirmed,
including its power to enable the truly penitent to enter directly into the joy
of heaven, even though the dreamer says almost in the same breath that he
believes penance to be a necessary prerequisite:
Yut hath the pope power pardoun to graunte
To peple withouten penaunce to passe into ioye,
As lettrede men vs lereth and lawe of holi churche:
Quodcumque ligaueris super terram erit ligatum et in celis.
And so Y leue lelylord forbede elles!
That pardoun and penaunce and preyeres don saue
Soules that haue syneged seuene sythes dedly. (IX.32530)

It seems that Langland, though he allows his dreamer a good deal of license,
hesitates sometimes at what he has allowed him to say and intervenes to
set the record straight, as in lines 32830 here. The emphasis on penance,
characteristic of C, though here it appears also in A and B, makes clear to
us that the occluded middle term in the verses from the Athanasian Creed is
penance: To do evil but repent is to do well, and in practice is the only way
to do well, since everyone sins.17 It is as if the dreamer hasnt heard this bit,
so that his search for Dowel gets off from the first on the wrong foot.
But for the priest who impugns the pardon, the two lines from the
Athanasian Creed in which it consists are simply a reiteration of the power
to absolve from the guilt of sin granted to the Church by Christ. The priest
is right in recognizing that it is not a pardon in the usual sense. On the
other hand, he fails to realize that the promise of redemption, which makes
the first clause (Qui bona) possible, is itself a form of pardon, that which was
bought on Calvary, and one which would be familiar to a fourteenth-century
audience, specifically in the form of a document conferring the benefits of
the redemption, in the Charter of Christ.18 Piers, on the other hand, had
expected rather more of the pardon than it contained. He seems to have
interpreted the promise of redemption as if it were the gift of redemption, as
if, like a papal or royal pardon, it constituted in itself the act of forgiveness. A

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famous episode in B, where Piers tears the pardon in anger and frustration,
is omitted in C, probably because the scenario, though highly dramatic,
is inconsistent with the role of Piers as the faithful servant of Truth, and
it must be said that those scholars who lay stress on the tearing of the par-
don as itself a significant allegorical act must perforce ignore the evidence of
authorial revision in C.19
Disappointed in finding that the popes pardon, so far from guar-
anteeing salvation, does no more than reassert the necessity of individual good
works, Piers now disappears, and the dreamer takes up the quest for bona,
that is, what constitutes good works. After some initially promising explor-
atory forays, he is brought up short by the ominous words of Scripture:
Thenne Scripture scorned me and mony skiles shewed
And continaunce made on Clergie to congeie me, hit semede,
And lakkede me in Latyn and lyhte by me sette
And saide Multi multa sciunt et seipsos nessiunt.
Tho wepte Y for wo and wrathe of here wordes. . . .
(XI.16064)

And later:
[S]he saide in here sarmon selcouthe wordes:
Multi to a mangerye and to the mete were sompned
And whan the peple was plenere ycome the porter vnpynnede the
gate
And plihte in pauci priueliche and lette the remenaunt go rome.
Al for tene of here tyxst tremblede myn herte
And in a wer gan Y wex and with mysulue to despute
Where Y were chose or nat chose. (XII.4652)20

His anger and distress are at the contemptuous dismissal of his presump-
tion and his fear is that the odds are against himself being one of the chosen
or, even worse, that he may not be one of the predestinati, those predes-
tined to be saved, according to the doctrine expounded by Wyclif in his
De ecclesia as well as by orthodox theologians such as Thomas Bradwardine
in De causa Dei contra Pelagianum.21 This fearful doctrine, unameliorated
in the dreamers understanding by any acknowledgment of the teaching of
Augustine on grace, causes him to fall into a desperate stupor of submis-
sion to Fortune (that is, real life) in which he clutches at straws of hope
that he has gleaned from misreadings of scripture. Some of these are trans

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parently unsatisfactoryhe is attracted for instance by the idea that simple

unlearned men win salvation more readily than the learned (this seems
pleasingly effort-free),
Lewed lele laboreres and land-tulyng peple
Persen with a pater-noster the paleys of heuene
And passen thorgh purgatorie penaunceles for here parfit bileue:
Breuis oratio penetrat celum. (XI.29395a)

He is likewise drawn to the simplicity of the belief that baptism alone will
suffice for salvation (XII.5859):
Thenne may alle cristene come, quod Y, and clayme
therto entre
By that bloed he bouhte vs with and bapteme, as he tauhte:
Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit, &c. (XII.5859a).22

The idea that Christians may claim a right to salvation through baptism
into Christs blood is particularly reckless and quite out of keeping with the
cautiously orthodox remarks of Scripture that prompt it: that Christ sum-
moned all, Sarrasynes and sismatikes as well as Jews, to souke for synne
saue at his breste (XII.5556). But did they come when he called? A little
later, she adds that Gods mercy is above all his worksif it is capable of
being received (and mekenesse her folowe [XII.73]).
The ideas that attract the dreamer are so unsatisfactory, in fact,
that in C the poet detaches them from the dreamer and attributes them
to a character called Rechelesnesse. Rechelesnesse is a kind of alter ego of
the dreamer, an aspect of his consciousness, and the immediate purpose of
extending his role in C is to allocate to him the intellectual questionings
concerning learning and salvation attributed to the dreamer of A and B,
and in so doing to withdraw a further degree of authorial sanction from
them. Part of the strategy seems to be to damp down the false optimism
inspired in the dreamer by familiar tags such as Qui crediderit (compare
Sola fides sufficit [C.XVII.121]). Changes like this may indicate some shift in
Langlands theological position from B to C, but they may equally and just
as importantly be adjustments and clarifications in the development of the
poems intellectual drama. Much remains unclear in this difficult section of
the poem, with its repeated cycles of confrontation, rebuke, loss, suffering
and renewal.23

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It is Rechelesnesse who focuses on the question of the salvation of

the righteous heathen, a vital issue in the debate about universal salvation,
though he himself seems chiefly concerned with demonstrating that learn-
ing is of no use in winning salvation and with stirring up outrage at the iron
whims of divine justice.24 After all, he asks, what men were more learned
than Aristotle and Solomon, both now in hell?
Aristotel and he, ho tauhte men bettere?
Maistres that men techen of goddis mercy and prechen
Wittenesseth that here wordes and here werkes bothe
Were wonder goed and wisest in here tymes,
And holi churche, as Y here, haldeth bothe in helle! (XI.21418)25

Having shown that learning is of no avail in winning salvation, Recheles

nesse now turns for contrast to examples of salvation granted to the sinful
and ignorant, which he makes sound like scandalous miscarriages of justice,
as if to demonstrate that the rules of salvation are completely arbitrary and
unintelligible (see XI.27071a):
A Gode Friday, Y fynde, a feloun was ysaued
That vnlawefulliche hadde ylyued al his lyf-tyme,
And for he biknewe on the croes and to Crist shrof hym
He was sunnere ysaued then seynt John the Baptiste
And ar Adam other Ysaye other eny of the profetes
That hadde yley with Lucifer mony longe yeres.
A robbere was yraunsomed rather then thei alle
Withoute penaunce other passioun other eny other peyne
Passed forth paciently to perpetuel blisse.
Then Marie Maudelene who myhte do worse?
As in likyng of lecherye, no lyf denyede?
Or Dauid the douhty that deuyned how Vrye
Mouhte sleylokeste be slawe and sente hym to werre,
Lelly, as by his lokes, with a lettre of gyle?
Or Poul the apostel, that no pite hadde
Cristene peple to culle to dethe?
And now beth this seyntes, by that men saith, and souereynes in
heuene,
Tho that worste wrouhten the while that thei here were.
(XI.25269)26

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Rechelesnesses diatribe is something of a distraction from the main issue,

that is, the precise circumstances under which pagans may be saved. The
issue is now addressed in a famous case study.
The entry of TrajanYe? bawe for bokes! (XII.75)an inter-
lude in Rechelesnesses diatribe, shifts the emphasis back to good works.
Legends associated with Gregory the Great told how he prayed for the soul
of the emperor Trajan, whose righteousness of life had moved him to inter-
cession.27 Trajan, who was in hell, not in limbo, was promptly released,
because in his life he lived according to truth as he knew it. The legend was
of crucial importance in discussions of grace, predestination, and salvation
in asserting the primacy of good works. Interpretation of the story usually
has Trajan coming back to life to be baptized, so as to salvage the orthodox
theology of salvation, but Langland does not mention this, and Piers Plow-
man is thus somewhat unorthodox in its neglect of the theology attached to
the legend (originally told to celebrate Gregorys power as an intercessor).28
It was the determination of that theology never to countenance the offer of
salvation to a nonbeliever who lived in the Christian era. Indeed, Langland
comes close to Pelagianism in his emphasis on the salvific power of Trajans
truthe as he knew it, and to the view of the moderni that Facientibus quod
in se est deus non denegat gratiam [To those who do what is in them, God
does not deny grace].29 Langland was perhaps content to leave these opinions
with Rechelesnesse (or Trajan, or the dreamer). Trajans contempt for books
is readily taken up by Rechelesnesse and made part of his attack on learning,
but the lesson of Trajans experience is two-edged: it offers comfort for the
righteous unbaptized, but no comfort for the dreamer, who has sought secu-
rity in faith, baptism, and knowledge of the law, and now finds that loue
and leaute in good works are apparently more important. Rechelesnesse,
foiled in every attempt to secure a promise of effort-free salvation, takes ref-
uge in the glorification of poverty as an unofficial form of salvific penitential
abjection, which sounds suspiciously like neo-Franciscanism, but he leaves
the larger subject as riddlingly obscure as when he began.30
Imaginatyf is the next to appear in this cascade of unreliable wit-
nesses. His is the faculty of mind that uses natural phenomena as simili-
tudes of spiritual truth.31 He has some new insights, but he has no cognitive
authority commensurate with Reasons and he frankly admits ignorance in
some matters (XIV.15355, 16667, 212). The commonsensical and even
capricious nature of many of Imaginatyfs examples and analogies and the
rarity of consecutive reasoned argument suggest that lofty interpretations
of his role in relation to scholastic faculty-psychology may be astray.32 He

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argues, for instance, that one of the values of learningwhich Recheles

nesse had scorned as useless for salvationis that it can save convicted
criminals from the noose. But the efficacy of pleading benefit of clergy
(XIV.128), whereby condemned criminals could claim to be beyond the
jurisdiction of lay courts by proving their literacy and clerical status, usually
by reading a passage from Vulgate Psalm 50 in Latin (the neck-verse), is
very doubtful on historical grounds. In discussing the salvation of the thief
on the cross, which so outraged Rechelesnesse, Imaginatyf takes advantage
of the rich array of views expounded by twelfth and thirteenth-century com-
mentators on the fate of the thieves on the cross, the nature of limbo, who
exactly was released from it, who went where, and in what degree of comfort
they lived.33 The idea that there are degrees of bliss in heaven (XIV.131) has
scriptural basis in John 14:2, and is accepted by Aquinas, but it goes against
customary fourteenth-century understanding (as in Pearl, line 601), espe-
cially the slightly ridiculous-sounding suggestion that the penitent thief and
Trajan may be in danger of falling out of heaven:
Ac thogh the theef hadde heuene he hadde noen hey blisse
As seynt Iohan and other seyntes that haen serued bettere.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And riht as Troianes the trewe knyhte telde [bivouacked] nat depe
in helle
That oure lord ne hauede hym lihtliche out, so leue Y of that thef
in heuene.
For he is in the loweste of heuene, yf oure byleue be trewe,
And wel losliche he lolleth there as by the lawe of holy churche.
(XIV.13536, 14952)34

But there was much speculation about Trajans eventual fate, concluding that
his punishment in hell was suspended until judgment day, or that he stayed
in hell but untormented, or that he was made variously uncomfortable.35 In
her Revelations, written between 1344 and 1371, St. Birgitta of Sweden, in
a discussion of the fate of the virtuous pagan in general, offers an example.
God, she says, will judge with mercy those pagans and Jews who whole-
heartedly do what they can. They will be doomed to hell, but they will
have a punishment of mercy in the midst of their sufferings (in the Middle
English translation, ai sall haue les paine).36 They will not have the true
vision of God, because they are not baptizedbut Birgitta adds that there is
the baptism of water, another that of blood, another that of whole-hearted

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desire (of perfite will, in the Middle English translation). With that, and
without further elaboration, she and her confessor (who oversaw the trans-
lation from her original Swedish into Latin), leave the matter, with pagans
and Jews, as it appears, in a kind of limbo, unless they receive the baptism of
the spirit.
Imaginatyf returns to the question at the end of his discourse and
hints at a possible solution to the problem of the salvation of the righteous
heathen in this rather out-of-the-way but perfectly orthodox theology of the
baptism of fire, also called the baptism of desire and the baptism of the
spirit (baptismus flaminis):
Troianes was a trewe knyhte and toek neuere cristendoem
And he is saef, saith the boek, and his soule in heuene.
Ac ther is follyng of fonte and follyng in bloed-shedyng
And thorw fuyr is fullyng, and al is ferme bileue:
Aduenit ignis diuinus non comburens set illuminans, &c.
(XIV.2058a)

Aquinas, like Birgitta and others, expounds these three kinds of baptism,
describing the fullyng of fyr as the visitation upon a man of the Holy
Spirit (see 208a), so that the heart is moved to believe in and love God
and repent for ones sins.37 Such visitation might be made upon any non-
Christian who lived in truth as he knew it (XIV.20917). This theory of
an immediate divine revelation to an infidel of good will was designed to
reconcile two apparently contradictory doctrines: (a) faith and baptism are
necessary for salvation; and (b) God wills the salvation of all men, as Christ
died for all men, and no man is damned but by his own fault.38 Imaginatyf
does not expound this view in detail, and relies more on the righteous hea-
then keeping to the best faith he knows:
Ac treuth that trespassed neuere ne trauersede ayens his lawe
Bote lyuede as his lawe tauhte and leueth ther be no bettere,
And yf ther were a wolde amende, and in suche a wille deyeth
Ne wolde neuere trewe god bote trewe treuthe were alloued,
And wher hit worth or worth nat, the bileue is gret of treuthe
And hope hangeth ay theron to haue that treuthe deserueth:
Quia super pauca fuisti fidelis, &c.
And that is loue and large huyre, yf the lord be trewe,
And a cortesye more then couenant was, what-so clerkes carpe,
For al worth as god wol; and therwith he vanschede. (XIV.20917)

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The rather contorted language of Imaginatyfs final statement of the salvific

power of truth (20914) may possibly be an attempt to obscure its poten-
tially heterodox nature. Belief in universal salvation was condemned as an
error by the Church, as by Walter Hilton, even for Christians.39 What-so
clerkes carpe (216) alludes to this condemnation. But Imaginatyf provides
here, at any rate, an interim answer to the question of the righteous heathen
which accommodates the story of Trajan and softens the ruthless predesti-
narianism of Bradwardine.
After the feast and discourse of Patience, there is extended expo-
sition by Liberum Arbitrium in C.XVII of the urgency of proselytization
among the Saracens and Jews, a theme of special interest in the fourteenth
century.40 He takes up in passing what Imaginatyf said about last-minute
conversion:
For Sarrasynes may be saued so yf they so byleued
In the lettynge of here lyf to leue on holy churche. (XVII.12324)

It has been argued that in his allusions to deathbed salvation Langland may
have been influenced by the theology of Uthred of Boldon, who taught that
all, Christian and infidels alike, receive at the point of death a clara visio of
God through which they may attain salvation; he calls this the baptism of
the spirit.41 Uthreds views were not widely circulated and were singled out
for official condemnation in 1368, but an interest in his work on Langlands
part might be indicated by what appears to be a satirical jibe at Friar Wil-
liam Jordan, the principal architect of Uthreds condemnation, in XV.91.42
For the most part, Liberum Arbitrium does no more than reiterate
the obvious: that if pagans are converted they qualify to be saved in the same
way as Christians.43 The earlier argument of Trajan, that living according to
truth as one sees it is a means to salvation, is left in tatters. Saracens and Jews
may live in truth to their belief, but the truth that they believe in is not in
accord with Gods law:
Iewes and gentel Sarresines iugen hemsulue
That lelyche they byleue, and yut here lawe diuerseth,
And o god that al bygan with gode herte they honoureth
And ayther loueth and byleueth in o lord almyhty.
Ac oure lord aloueth no loue but lawe be the cause. (XVII.13236)

Their belief is false, and they believe in a false mediator: they lyuen oute of
lele byleue for they leue on a mene (XVII.158).44 Regret at their exclusion

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from the hope of salvation (187) is the more bitter in that they already have
a lyppe of oure bileue (253) and know at least its furste clause (316).
The first entirely reliable salvation witness, apart from Piers Plow-
man himself, who appears from time to time in the process of his transfigu-
ration as a kind of Blakeian emanation, is the Good Samaritan, who is a
manifestation of Piers and also a type or forerunner of Christ. He explains
the Trinity with the aid of the analogies of the hand and the torch and within
that explanation he offers the first fully coherent account of the nature of
Gods offer of salvation. He begins with the text of Mark 3:29, Whoever
sins [blasphemaverit] against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, where
the Vulgate reading makes it clear that the unforgivable act, the sin against
the Holy Spirit, is not a sin in the everyday sense but a deliberate, willed
refusal of Gods proffered forgiveness, a denial of the power and gift of grace.
It is, on the human level, as the Good Samaritan explains, vnkyndenesse
(this is the word that is constantly reiterated, meaning, roughly, unnatu-
ralness), the cruel denial of ones natural charity and gratitude as a fellow
human being, not merely as a fellow Christian.
So is the holy gost god and grace withouten mercy
To alle vnkynde creatures, as Crist hymsulue witnesseth:
Amen dico vobis, nescio vos.
Be vnkynde to thyn emcristene and al that thow canst bidde,
Dele and do penaunce day and nyht euere
And purchase al the pardoun of Pampilon and of Rome
And indulgences ynowe, and be ingrate to thy kynde,
The holy goest hereth the nat ne helpeth the, be thow certeyne.
For vnkyndenesse quencheth hym that he can nat shine
Ne brenne ne blase clere for blowynge of vnkyndenesse.
(XIX.21826)45

At last the dreamer, with a kind of solemn and eager earnestness, asks the
question to which the whole poem has been leading:
Y pose Y hadde syneged so, quod Y, and sholde
nouthe deye
And now am Y sory that Y so the seynte spirit agulte,
Confesse me and crye his grace, god that al made,
And myldeliche his mercy aske, myhte Y nat be saued?
Yus, saide the Samaritaen, so thow myhtest repente

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That rihtwisnesse thorw repentaunce to reuthe myhte turne.

(XIX.27984)

The important word here is myhtest. It is the capacity of the hardened sin-
ner to repent that is in question, not Gods willingness to grant forgiveness.
Despairing of Gods mercy, the sinner deprives himself of the power of feel-
ing true contrition. The Good Samaritan elucidates this further:
Thus hit fareth bi such folk that folewen here owene will,
That euele lyuen and leten nat til lif hem forsake;
Drede of disperacion thenne dryueth awey grace
That mercy in here mynde may nat thenne falle.
For goed hope, that helpe thenne scholde, to wanhope ther turneth
And nat of the nownpower of god, that he ne is ful of myhte
To amende al that amys is, and his mercy grettore
Thenne al oure wikkede werkes, as holy writ telleth:
Misericordia eius super omnia opera eius.
Ac ar his rihtwisnesse to reuthe turne, restitucion hit maketh,
As sorwe of herte is satisfaccioun for suche that may nat paye.
(XIX.291300)

God could save all, through his absolute power, but he has decided to with-
draw the full exercise of that power in order to give man true free will. God
does not himself decide to withhold salvation; it is mans freely willed act
of restitucioun (299) that moves God into the pouring out of his grace
(melteth myhte into mercy [196]), and mens refusal, through vnkynde-
nesse, to be moved to receive that grace that denies it to man. Augustine
is close: in his treatise On Grace and Freewill, he insists that the ability
to pray and repent is given by God, as is mans stony-heartedness.46 All this
to preserve Gods omnipotency. And yet, to save mans free will, it is fur-
ther said that God works but to incline mans will (21.43) and that stony-
heartedness (vnkyndenesse) may persist through a will that is obstinate and
absolutely unbending in its opposition to God (14.29). The theologian and
the poet, in their different idioms, come close, as I say, but it is characteristic
of the poet that he returns from these high meditations on Gods power and
mans free will and from the optimistic words of the Psalmist to the mun-
dane necessity of daily penance (XIX.299300). Never satisfied with easy
answers, Langland often refuses hard ones.
The essential work of the poem is now done and the stage is set for

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the entry of Christ. The Crucifixion in Langlands poem is not a tortured

sharing of the agony of the crosshe is not interested in the emotional
poetry of affective devotion nor in identification with the human suffering
of Christbut the celebration of the triumph over death of Christ Panto-
crator. There is suspense in it, enormous power and sublimity, but no sad-
ness. The debates between Lucifer and Satan before the harrowing of hell,
their mutual recriminations and whining complaints about the injustice of
the attack on the devils rights, are more than a little comical, just as their
plans to defend themselves against Christ, as if he were mounting a siege or
leading a cavalry charge, are ludicrously unthreatening. Christs own debate
with Satan has the favorite running out an easy winner.
It is this mood of celebration that inspires Langland to Christs
great speech on salvation, to which I now return, having provided I hope
the necessary context for understanding it better (there are, to be frank, few
accounts of important issues in Piers Plowman that do not end up narrating
the whole poem).
Christ imagines himself in the Vale of Jehoshaphat (XX.411), taken
as the future scene of the resurrection of mankind in accordance with the
prophecy of Joel 3:2, 1213. It is harvest-time, the day of judgment when the
grapes of Gods wrath will be ripe and (what Langland emphasizes almost
exclusively) the wine of forgiveness prepared for his chosen people. The drink
that he thirsted for on the cross is the must or new wine of the resurrec-
tion of the dead. He will have all mens souls out of hell, he saysmeaning
of course that he will have them brought before him for judgment, not nec-
essarily that hell will be permanently vacated. No mention is made of limbo,
which Langland seems to have regarded as a temporary holding area for the
Old Testament Jews until they were released at the harrowing and which is
now disused, nor of purgatory, which he rarely remembers to mention. He
seems to envisage a preliminary dismissal of the fallen angels, as major and
minor demons (Satans legal team, as I like to think of them), unless fendes
and fendekynes (415) means greater and lesser sinners. Working out what
Christ means is not always easy: he is presumably meant to stand at the
pinnacle of the hierarchy of witness, and what he says must be true, but of
course the words put into his mouth are those of a mortal man, and may be
as ambivalent as ever.
The real business of the speech begins in lines 41718, which have
been read as in effect a promise of universal salvation to all Christs fellow
human beings, including pagans. But the promise to show mercy is not of
course the promise of salvation or immediate entry into heaven, and is in

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that respect different from the schemes espoused by Rechelesnesse and his
doubtful witnesses. As we have seen, men must be willing to be saved in
order for God to melt into mercy. Christ then promises (XX.419) permanent
release from hell for all his full brothers, that is, all Christians (in bloed
could refer additionally to the blood of redemption), implicitly excluding
non-Christians. He supports this promise by quoting Vulgate Psalm 50
(Against thee alone have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight),
which implies that therefore Christs forgiveness cancels all debts. The clause
be he ones oute (420), once he is out, refers to the release, for general
judgment at doomsday, of those consigned to hell by the particular judg-
ment at their death. Christ still makes no mention of purgatory, which is a
cornerstone of orthodox eschatology, and where most Christians, according
to the testimony of Dante and The Pricke of Conscience, would have found
themselves at death. Where they are to go afterwards if they are not saved is
a puzzle that is left unmentioned.
It seems unjust that a man should be punished twice for the same
offense, both at death and doomsday, and Langland pursues the parallel
with the idea of double jeopardy, evidently pleased by the analogy with cases
of imperfect hanging, where the victim was left alive as well as kicking. A
famous instance at Leicester in 1363, where the king pardoned the hanged
man (who revived on the way to the graveyard), was recorded in Knightons
Chronicle, and may have prompted Langlands use of the secular analogy.47
This analogy is strengthened by another argument, based on the presence of
a king, with his power to pardon, at an execution (and he loked on hym
[XX.425]). Christ applies this analogy to himself, as a king above all kings
in his power to pardon all those who are condemned and brought to execu-
tion before him. Note that we are still talking only about Christians (see
41920), and further that Christs promise is heavily qualified in two ways.
First, it must be in accord with justice (if lawe wol Y loke on hem [428]),
and second, the sin of the condemned man must be adequately paid for by
penance.48 This will enable him to show mercy and to remain within the
lawagain Christ seems to need the freely-willed cooperation of man.
Christ, after acknowledging further the importance of law in his
determination to punish wrongdoers, then returns to the theme announced
earlier, his kinship with all men, including his halue-bretherne (XX.436),
in saying that his righteous anger may be constrained (though not necessar-
ily negated or neutralized, one might add) so that through common kynde
and sheer fellow-feeling he may show mercy to many of his fellow-creatures
(though not all).49 In the Latin text at 438a Langland quotes Pauls words,

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I heard words which cannot be told, which man may not utter (2 Cor.
12:4), concerning the man (evidently Paul himself) caught up into the third
heaven, and transfers them to his dreamer, suggesting that he is aware of the
limits to which his vision of Christs promise of mercy can be taken, or that
what he said is too daring for general consumption. Allusions to the experi-
ence of Paul, and of other holy men, is characteristic of writers consciously
trespassing into controversial territory.50 Like much of Langlands citation of
the Bible, Pauls words are not dramatically part of the surrounding speech,
and in a situation where nothing is yet clear they serve to wrap everything in
further misty obscurity.
The next lines (XX.43940) constitute the strongest statement that
Christ permits himself of the promise of universal salvation. After asserting
that law and justice will prevail in hell, he promises that the same law and
justice will enable mercy to be shown to all mankind when they range them-
selves before him in heaven.51 (To be tiresomely literal, this is not because
they have already got into heaven but because Christ cannot be anywhere
but in heaven at the Last Judgment.) With the qualification entered earlier
about the tenuous relation between showing mercy and granting salvation,
and the continuing force of Christs reservations about the necessity of pen-
ance and of observing the law, this is a strong but by no means unambiguous
promise of universal salvation.
It is a little unfortunate that the reading of the key line (XX.440)
is the product of an emendation. The emended text reads And mercy al
mankynde bifore me in heuene. But all manuscripts of C have and for
al. Editors of C since Skeat, following all manuscripts of B, have always
emended to al, being puzzled by the syntax and presuming that the arche-
typal scribe of C was influenced by the doublet in the preceding line into
symmetrically repeating it. The original reading makes no sense, and my
presumption is that the verb regnen should be understood to be repeated
in 440: And mercy (shall reign over) all mankind. There is a bare possi-
bility, I suppose, that mercy is a verb, meaning have mercy on, but the
Middle English Dictionary records no such meaning for verb mercien (1), to
thank. Or possibly it is the verb mercien (2), to impose a fine on (as would
follow from Christs exercise of his rihtwysnesse). This is better syntacti-
cally, and fittingly implies some further qualification of the apparent prom-
ise of universal salvation (as does monye in 436, above, and lede forth
which hym luste in 449, later) but it is hard to know what a fine would
be at this point.52 Russell and Kane, in their great 1997 edition of C, have
no textual note on the emendation, but mercy is referenced for this line as a

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noun in Kanes Glossary.53 It is annoying, but typical, that the text should
blur at such a point, but if the understood verb regnen, reign over, is
accepted, this is the nearest Christ comes to a promise of universal salvation,
though there remains a not necessarily inevitable relation between showing
mercy and granting salvation, and there is the continuing force of the reser-
vations about the necessity of penance (430) and of observing the law (428,
432, 449), and a degree of selectivity still seemingly attached to the process
(436, 449).
One other textual matter that should be mentioned is the reading
at B.XVIII.39193, corresponding to C.XX.43436, where, instead of the
three lines in C, B has:
They shul be clensed clerliche and [keuered] of hir synnes
In my prisone Purgatorie til parce it hote.
And my mercy shal be shewed to manye of my [halue]bretheren.
(B.XVIII.39193)

The lines as quoted here include the emendations in Kane and Donaldsons
1975 edition of B: keuered (presumably made to return to health), as a
lectio durior (which it certainly is), replaces archetypal wasshen for purposes
of alliteration, and halue is considered to be accidentally omitted from
archetypal B (it is absent from all manuscripts of B) and is supplied from
C, though it would be an unnecessary (and very misleading) emendation if
we presumed, as seems to be the case, that Langland softened his position
in C to include non-Christians. As for the omission of the lines referring to
purgatory, I think I can detect two motives (it is clearly purposeful). One is
that the mention of purgatory restricts the offer of universal salvation, since
Langland thinks of purgatory as a place for Christians only.54 Second, this
would support the archetypal reading bretheren in B, and encourage the
view that Langland softened his views on salvation in C, though without
going so far as to have Christ issue a promise of universal salvation.55 A third
motive which I am reluctant to adduce is that it would overclarify matters
Langland wished to leave ambiguous (he goes back, without comment, to
the orthodox view of salvation and punishment at C.XXI.19198).
I think we have to recognize that Christs speech is very Langlan-
dian. It has the characteristic backwards and forwards, sidling and spiralling
movement, and the characteristically frequent use of coordinating conjunc-
tions. They signal the essentially additive and associational process of Lang-
lands thinking, which I take to be the antithesis of dialectic. Qualifications

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are piled up through the use of coordinate clauses so that the full complexity
and near-undecidability of every key issue is made syntactically manifest.
The sense is of urgent pressure and unforeseen direction. I have the image
constantly of Langland pressing forward eagerly and urgently but constantly
being thwarted, like the servant in Julian who rushes to serve his lord but
trips over and falls flat in the mire; or the newly enthusiastic folk of Piers
Plowman C.VII, who, inspired by the exhortations of Repentance, go blus-
tering forth over hill and dale in search of saint Truth and get quickly lost; or
the poor man who presses forward batauntliche (with clumsy eagerness)
with his pack of good works on his back in the hope of alms (C.XVI.55). The
movement of Christs speech is one in which ideas are caught up, ruminated
upon, qualified, left unresolved, returned to. The shape of the speech echoes
the shape of the poem: repeated movements of hope and promise halted and
reversed by a scrupulously painful consciousness of the realities that make
them unachievable. It is this that makes possible Langlands characteristic
density of utterance and truth to his experience of thought and reflection.
We should not be surprised in the end if Christ speaks like Langland and
leaves us with no simple answer.

Notes
1 All quotations from the C-version of Piers Plowman in this essay are from my own
new edition, fully revised from the 1978 edition, Piers Plowman: A New Annotated
Edition of the C-Text (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2008). Further citations are
given in the text by passus and line numbers. The text of this new edition owes a great
debt to the Athlone Press edition of C by George Russell and George Kane, Piers
Plowman: The C Version (London: Athlone Press, 1997). In this essay I refer always in
the first instance to the C-text, with full reference to B where necessary. This seems
to me the proper procedure with a poem in a still-continuing process of development,
where to concentrate on B and generally ignore C (which is the more usual practice) is
willfully to cut oneself off from the fuller and larger meaning that Langland intended.
I cite the B-text from the edition of George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, Piers
Plowman: The B Version (London: The Athlone Press, 1975).
2 For further examples of this kind of narration, see XVIII.125; and J. A. Burrow, Lang-
lands Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 63. This practice gives dramatic
immediacy to the narrative, as if the dreamer were witnessing a live event.
3 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, in Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, ed.
J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1865), vol. 37, col. 1282.
4 Enarrationes 36:185. Scholastic commentators like Peter Lombard accepted the dis-

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tinction between the two ministries, though they were obliged to assert their simulta-
neity in the sight of God: see Rosemary Woolf, The Tearing of the Pardon, in S. S.
Hussey, ed., Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches (London: Methuen, 1969), 5075,
at 66. Woolf goes on to describe some of the contradictions that emerged when such
doctrine was dramatized in works like the The Castell of Perseverance, and faith in an
all-embracing divine mercy was set bluntly beside the certain terror of divine judg-
ment (6769).
5 The Pricke of Conscience (Stimulus Conscientiae): A Northumbrian Poem, by Richard
Rolle de Hampole, ed. Richard Morris (Berlin, 1863, for the Philological Society), lines
258386, 261922. The attribution to Rolle is no longer accepted. Further citations
are given in the text by line numbers.
6 Unbaptized children will dwell for ever in hell, in the upper regions (Pricke 279093),
often called limbo. Langlands dreamer refers to this doctrine in B.XI.82, in a passage
deleted in C (after C.XII.22).
7 For discussion of these writings, see Nicholas Watson, Visions of Inclusion: Uni-
versal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England, Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 14587, at 14953.
8 For apocatastasis, and Augustines rejection of it, see Cindy L. Vitto, The Virtuous
Pagan in Middle English Literature (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,
1989), 917; Augustine, The City of God (De civitate Dei), trans. Henry Bettenson
(London: Penguin, 1972), Book 21, chap. 17. Compare the more general rejection of
Origenism, 11.23.
9 Castle of Love, line 554, in Karl Sajavaara, ed., The Middle English Translations of Rob-
ert Grossetestes Chateau dAmour (Helsinki: Socit Nophilologique, 1967), 308.
10 See C. W. Marx, The Devils Rights and the Redemption in the Literature of Medieval
England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 6672. Thomas D. Hill, in Universal Sal-
vation and its Literary Context in Piers Plowman B. 18, Yearbook of Langland Stud-
ies 5 (1991): 6576, having found universalistic speculation current in Anglo-Saxon
England, discusses the Gospel of Nicodemus briefly, noting that the harrowing deliv-
ers all mankind, good and evil alike, from hell (73)though of course, one should
add, only to prepare for future judgment.
11 Watson, Visions of Inclusion, 150.
12 Ibid., 16673.
13 A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman, section 13, lines 3637, in Nicholas Watson
and Jacqueline Jenkins, eds., The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a
Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press, 2005), 91. Further citations to both works of Julian are given in the text
by, respectively, section and line numbers or chapter and line numbers.
14 Behovelye means both necessary and good and proper.
15 Visio is the rubric traditionally assigned to the prologue and first nine passs of the
poem; see Pearsall, Piers Plowman 1 n. 4. The apocalyptic prophecies of a future
order which Langland occasionally employs (Prol. 6465, III.47781, IV.10845,
V.16879, VIII.34354), insofar as they may be associated with Joachite and other
millennial writings, imply a future universal spiritual renewal: see Kathryn Kerby-
Fulton, Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late

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Medieval England (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 46,
50, 10924, 428 n. 136 (Kerby-Fulton emphasizes the Latin tradition of inclusive
salvation). But Langlands use of such prophecies and their popular vernacular reduc-
tions is chiefly minatory: his concern is with homiletic and personal engagement, not
with revelatory or visionary theology.
16 See T. P. Dunning, Piers Plowman: An Interpretation of the A Text, 2nd ed., rev. by
T. P. Dolan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 10910.
17 Traugott Lawler, The Pardon Formula in Piers Plowman: Its Ubiquity, Its Binary
Shape, Its Silent Middle Term, Yearbook of Langland Studies 14 (2000): 11752, at
118.
18 See Woolf, The Tearing of the Pardon, 5660.
19 There is a large scholarly literature on the pardon, especially the tearing of the pardon
in B. For a succinct review of the whole debate, see Lawler, The Pardon Formula.
20 C omits here a passage in B (X.33776) in which Scripture explains, in what may
seem a clumsy and unnecessary anticipation of later discussion, that baptism alone is
insufficient for salvation, except in extremis for Saracens and Jews, who may be bap-
tized at the point of death and have no time to sin further (B.X.34650). Scriptures
role is minimized in C (she has only C.XI.16265, XII.4250, 7376), where she is
restricted to the assertion of simple points of doctrine, perhaps because Langland does
not want such an apparently authoritative figure pronouncing opinions on issues that
he wishes to keep in dramatic play.
21 For Wyclifs views, see Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of
Heterodoxy to Dissent, c. 1250 c. 1450, 2 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1967), 2:51619. For the brutality of Wyclifs views on predestination, see Kerby-
Fulton, Books under Suspicion, 39192. Bradwardine on predestination is conveniently
quoted and translated in A. R. Myers, ed., English Historical Documents, Volume 4:
13271485 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969), 881.
22 Though scripturally based (Mark 16:16), this belief was condemned by Augustine,
along with a similar belief in the salvific power of the sacrament of the Body of Christ
(City of God, 21.19, 25), and elsewhere severely questioned (see Watson, Visions of
Inclusion, 156 n. 50).
23 Nicolette Zeeman, Piers Plowman and the Medieval Discourse of Desire (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 201.
24 On the debate concerning the salvation of the righteous heathen (or virtuous pagan,
or ancient just, or unbaptized), see T. P. Dunning, Langland and the Salvation of
the Heathen, Medium vum 12 (1943): 4554; G. H. Russell, The Salvation of the
Heathen: The Exploration of a Theme in Piers Plowman, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966): 10116.
25 Orthodoxy assigned all unbaptized, before and after the act of redemption, to hell.
An exception was made for the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets, who were placed
in limbo inferni, in a region on the threshold of hell, whence they were taken out by
Christ at the harrowing of hell. The place of Solomon was a matter of particular dis-
pute, because of the contradictory accounts of his later career in 1 Kings 11 and 2
Chron. 9; he was never mentioned among those brought out of limbo by Christ, and
was generally assumed to be in hell (see also C.III.328).

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26 For the penitent thief on the cross, see Luke 23:4243, and C.VI.319. Rechelesnesses
list of famous sinners who were saved is conventional. Usually, the emphasis is on the
availability of mercy, but here they are tendentiously employed and adapted by Reche-
lesnesse in the rejection of learning as an aid to salvation: see Marie Collins, Will
and the Penitents: Piers Plowman B X 42035, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 16 (1985):
290308, at 308.
27 For discussion of the legend of Trajan, see J. S. Wittig, Piers Plowman B IXXII: Ele-
ments in the Design of the Inward Journey, Traditio 28 (1972): 21180, at 24963;
Pamela Gradon, Trajanus Redivivus: Another Look at Trajan in Piers Plowman, in
Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds., Middle English Studies Presented to Norman
Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 93114;
Gordon Whatley, The Uses of Hagiography: The Legend of Pope Gregory and the
Emperor Trajan in the Middle Ages, Viator 15 (1984): 2563; Whatley, Piers Plow-
man B.12.27794: Notes on Language, Text, and Theology, Modern Philology 82
(198485): 112.
28 Both Aquinas (see Dunning, Langland and the Salvation of the Heathen, 53) and
Dante (Paradiso 20.11217), in telling the story of Trajan, insist on the necessity of bap-
tism, though the latter, in telling also the similar story of the virtuous Trojan Ripheus
(Paradiso 20.12023), accepts a figurative baptism for one who lived before baptism was
invented. Frank Grady, Piers Plowman, St. Erkenwald, and the Rule of Exceptional Sal-
vation, Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992): 6186, reminds us that the story of Trajan
was a popular legend which official theology accommodated somewhat grudgingly (65),
and that Langland, in being faithful to its popular origins, denies it the credit of ortho-
dox theology (69). There were many such popular legends evincing a sentiment in favour
of universal salvation (see Vitto, Virtuous Pagan, 3639).
29 Janet Coleman, Piers Plowman and the Moderni (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letter-
atura, 1981), 12646; Gradon, Trajanus Redivivus, 10113.
30 See David Aers, Sanctifying Signs: Making Christian Tradition in Late Medieval
England (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 11922.
31 See B. J. Harwood, Imaginative in Piers Plowman, Medium vum 44 (1975):
24963, at 255.
32 See Ralph Hanna, Langlands Ymaginatif: Images and the Limits of Poetry, in Jer-
emy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds., Images, Idolatry, and
Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 8194; Fiona Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience
in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4050.
33 See Vitto, Virtuous Pagan, 1728.
34 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 34, Charity (2a2ae. 2333), ed. R. J. Bat-
ten (London: Blackfriars, 1975), q. 28, art. 3:2, and resp. 2.
35 See Gradon, Trajanus Redivivus, 9598.
36 The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, trans. Denis Searby, with introduction and
notes by Bridget Morris, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Book 3,
chap. 26. The Middle English translation was written ca. 141020. See The Liber
Celestis of St. Bridget of Sweden, ed. Roger Ellis, vol. 1, Early English Text Society o.s.
291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23536.

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37 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 57, Baptism and Confirmation (3a. 6672), ed. J. J.
Cunningham (London: Blackfriars, 1975), q. 66, art. 11. See Dunning, Langland
and the Salvation of the Heathen, 52.
38 See Dunning, Langland and the Salvation of the Heathen, 49, 47; compare
C.XII.53, XVII.124. For doubts about the suitability of Trajan for the baptism of
desire, see Gradon, Trajanus Redivivus, 98101.
39 See Watson, Visions of Inclusion, 147.
40 See Vitto, Virtuous Pagan, 33.
41 See Russell, Salvation of the Righteous Heathen, 11016; and Kerby-Fulton, Books
under Suspicion, 36094, with further citations of scholarship on the subject.
42 See M. E. Marcett, Uhtred de Boldon, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman
(New York: published by the author, 1938).
43 Rebecca Davis, Fullynge Nature: Spiritual Charity and the Logic of Conversion
in Piers Plowman, Yearbook of Langland Studies 19 (2005): 5979, discusses this pas-
sus in detail, and argues that the special vigor of the exhortation to conversion implies
some reservation about the promise of universal salvation (6365). But Christs prom-
ise is still to come in the poems narrative sequence, in C.XX, where it has its own
unique place; it is not part of a preexisting system of belief underlying the whole
poem.
44 Compare XVII.258. For the necessity of belief in the Mediator, see Peter Lombard,
Magistri Petri Lombardi Parisiensis episcopi Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 3rd ed.,
2 vols. in 3 (Grottaferrata, Roma: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1981),
lib. 4, dist. 25, chap. 25 (2:15254).
45 The first two lines more or less repeat XIX.18485. The final lines allude to the image
just expounded of the Trinity as a torchwax, wick, and the flame of the Holy
Ghost.
46 Augustine, On Grace and Free Will (De gratia et libero arbitrio) 14.29, 15.31, and
23.45, in The Teacher; The Free Choice of Will; Grace and Free Will, trans. Robert P.
Russell, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 59 (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1968), 243308. Further citations are given in
the text by chapter and paragraph numbers.
47 See W. W. Skeat, ed., The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, in Three
Parallel Texts, 2 vols. (1886; repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), 2:263.
48 Be hit enythyng abouhte [If it be at all adequately paid for (by penance)] (430). I
cannot see how abouhte can mean moderated, as Watson suggests (Visions of
Inclusion, 159 n. 57).
49 The text from Vulgate Psalm 37 at line 435a is just a preachers parallel, where David
urges God to restrain his wrath; it is not part of Christs speech.
50 See Kerby-Fulton, Books under Suspicion, 98. Both Watson (Visions of Inclusion,
177 n. 21, 183 n. 60) and Kerby-Fulton (Books under Suspicion, 38182) suggest that
Langland is here imitating the Gospel of Nicodemus. Elsewhere, Pauls experience is
cited as the basis for attributing to him the apocryphal Visio Pauli, which is however
bleakly orthodox: Paul, visiting hell, makes intercession for the damned and wins for
them the so-called Sabbath repose (Hill, Universal Salvation, 74).
51 Presumably no one will be brought out without strict adherence to the law, as stated

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in lines 43234 (in other words, hell will not be left unpeopled, as is made further
clear in lines 44344).
52 Davis, too, in Fullynge Nature, comments on the limitation implied in monye
and also discusses the imprecision of Christs speech (63). Compare Kerby-Fulton,
Books under Suspicion, 38283.
53 George Kane, Piers Plowman Glossary (London: Continuum, 2005).
54 In Dante, too, the virtuous pagans are in limbo, not purgatory (Inferno 4.4142, Pur-
gatorio 3.43). Watson (Visions of Inclusion, 182 n. 58) suggests that Langland some-
times includes purgatory under hell.
55 As Watson says, In light of the common view that C is more cautious than B, it
is notable that Cs universalist theology is even more explicit than Bs (Visions of
Inclusion, 183 n. 59). It is worth noting further, as perhaps another example of this
ameliorative tendency in C, that the passage in B referring to the fate of unbaptized
children is removed in C.

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