Economics
Piers Plowman explores the relationship between the spiritual economy and the material economy. Throughout the poem the folk are offered pardons for their sins if they undergo penance and pay their debts. The connection between vocation, work, labor, and reward is tied to doing well and thus salvation. The economy at the time was changing due to the labor shortage caused by the Black Death, the plague that killed half of England's population. Surviving peasants realized that they could earn more on the open market in the money economy than as serfs tied to a lord. Landowners attempted to stop this practice through laws. The breakdown of traditional feudal systems was fraught. Miss Money is an allegorical character who embodies this new economy. She is not purely evil, but she causes those around her to become corrupt. Some of the main targets of the poem are false friars who, out of self-interest, disrupt the spiritual economy of penance in favor of the financial economy. Another target is urban merchants who make a living through buying and then selling at a marked-up price.
Truth (God, Love)
At the beginning of the poem, when Will asks Holy Church how to achieve salvation she directs him to Truth, and when he inquires how to acquire truth, she replies through love. This is the thesis of the poem, and although Will knows the answer at the beginning he must learn it over and over again through various experiences and teachers. For example, Piers Plowman offers to help the pilgrims find truth, which after the experience of plowing his field, turns out to be doing well, loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
Work
Piers the plowman is the ideal worker. He appears in the poem when the folk, now pilgrims, have embarked on their quest to find Truth (God) but have lost their way. Piers agrees to guide them, but first they must help him plow his field, for which they will receive shares of the harvest. That work is a metaphor for one’s religious duty. The literal pilgrimage gets replaced by the figurative pilgrimage contained within doing work for the good of the community. Each estate, or class, in medieval England has its calling and duty, the poem argues. Knights must protect their communities. The clergy must pray. And farmers must plow. But the peasants revolt, and won’t work until threatened by Hunger. This reflects the economic reality of the time, when the feudal system was breaking down in the labor shortage in the wake of the Black Death. The poem reacts to newly created classes as well: intellectuals and merchants. The character Will is an example of the new intellectual class, and defends himself from the admonition of Reason and Conscience, who accuse him of slothfulness, demanding to know what work he is doing for the good of the community. He replies that he is unfit for physical labor, and must work in London according to his calling.
Penance
Piers Plowman is the story of Will, a Christian who wants to save his soul by leading a good life. This means that a main theme of the poem is penance: the need for the individual, and by extension all members of Christendom, to make things right with God. Will’s name is an allegory for the human will, or desire. So, when the character Conscience interrogates him, this is an allegory for an internal process. In the Catholic Church, the sacrament of penance has a ritual order: the preacher preaches to move the conscience of the sinner, who confesses. The confessor then directs the penitent to undergo a temporal punishment, such as a pilgrimage, and grants a pardon. This is the way to enter grace, or union with God. So it is a serious problem to a devout Christian if this process is disrupted. The central concern of Piers Plowman is that corruption disrupts the penitential process.
Justice
Piers Plowman is committed to divine justice, a Catholic concept of the constant and unchanging will of God to give everyone their due. In the poem God and Truth are synonymous. The poem explores the relationship between justice and mercy; what is owed to the community (love, compassion, kindness, labor, money); and the proper relationship among those with spiritual power (the first estate, the Church), worldly power (the second estate, the nobility, and the monarchy), and those who work (the third estate, the peasants, and also the new classes of intellectuals and merchants). It seeks a just society through truth-telling.
Prophecy
Piers Plowman is, as a whole, a dream-vision. Will, the dreamer, is a vehicle for the prophetic voice of the poem. A prophet, as described in the Old Testament of the Bible, is one who calls his people to repentance and the straight path. The poem identifies urgent problems in Christendom and foretells, in the corrupt behavior of the clergy, the advent of the Antichrist. Some readers in the 16th century—some 150 years after Piers Plowman was written—thought that the poem predicted the Protestant Reformation in their time. And some contemporary readers see in Piers Plowman’s prophecies truths about our time, such as the need for social justice and the defeat of corruption with truth.
Salvation and Good Works
Will’s first quest is in search of salvation. He learns pretty quickly from Holy Church that Love is the way to Truth, which is synonymous with God. So, the path to salvation is through loving. The poem then explores the complex questions raised by this: how to love and who to love. Is it enough to love one’s neighbor, friends and enemies alike? In Step XI, Will learns that the emperor Trajan was saved through his love and leading a good life, even though he was unbaptized. The poem constantly emphasizes the importance of good works, represented by the character Do-well. Working for the good of the community is a critical part of the process of penance. This is why the poem is so critical of friars who grant of indulgences for a price: it eliminates the need for action. The plowing of a field is an essential metaphor for doing good works. The fact that the poem is named after Piers Plowman shows the central importance of this symbol.
