Ninth Day of Lent: The Pardon from Truth

At the beginning of Passus IX, Truth hears of the good work Piers has done and sends him a pardon for his “pilgrimage at the plow.”  All levels of society are included in the pardon, however:  knights receive pardon for defending the community, bishops receive pardon for leading exemplary lives and fearlessly preaching the truth, and all who work honestly with their hands receive the same pardon as Piers.  There are some special cases, however.  Merchants and businessmen do not receive the full pardon the others do, but can receive a partial pardon if they turn all their profits to philanthropy and the good of the community instead of enriching themselves.  Likewise lawyers receive pardon only if they practice their trade not to enrich themselves, but in the service of the innocent and the poor,

            “For it is simony to sell what has been sent through grace,

            And that’s intelligence and wind and water and fire’s the fourth;

            These four should be free to all folk who need them.”

Lastly, as we have seen at other points in the poem, there is the question of those who beg.  The basic decree of the pardon is that those who beg out of need (like the blind, the old, the sick who cannot work) have pardon, but those who beg for other reasons (for example, because they have found they can make an easy life by it) do not.  However, the situation is more complex than that.  First, there are those of our neighbors who are deeply in need of help and yet are abashed to beg and instead “turn the fair outward” so people do not see they are in need—these are very worthy of alms and receive pardon.  Then there are others who beg because they are mentally disturbed, but they deserve alms and kindnesses all the more because they are specially beloved of God.  Finally, hermits who practice holiness of life and participate in the worship of the community are included in the pardon for those who beg.

After all this description of the terms of the pardon, a priest asks Piers if he can see it, since he reads Latin:

            “And Piers at his prayer unfolded the pardon,

            And I behind them both beheld the whole bull:

            It lay there, two lines, and not a letter more,

            And was written exactly thus, with Truth as witness:

            Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eternam,

            Qui vero mala in ignem eternum.

            “Peter!” Said the priest then, “I can find no pardon here

            But only Do Well and have well and God shall have your soul

            But do evil and have evil and hope for nothing else

            But whoso evilly lives shall evilly end.”

(The Latin of the pardon is a quote from the Athanasian Creed:  “And those who have done good will go into eternal life, but those who have done evil, into eternal fire.”)  Having found the pardon itself much simpler than the long explanation that had been given, Piers and the priest get to arguing over it and with that Will awakes.  After his waking he continues to muse on the meaning of his dream and of the pardon, concluding that to do well is better than any pardon.  Our dreamer will spend the rest of the poem searching for who or what this Do Well is.

Throughout the early part of Piers Plowman, various characters, including Will the dreamer, have placed their hope in a reform of society, whether it was bringing Lady Meed and her ilk to justice, a large-scale spiritual revival, or the communal cooperation in the plowing of the half-acre.  In Passus IX it seems at first that all these efforts are about to reach their culmination and be rewarded by Truth himself.  It begins to seem like a proper ordering of society could in fact lead the people to eternal life.

But it turns out the actual words of the pardon are very simple, and, furthermore, as the priest points out, it is difficult to see how they constitute a pardon—the word “forgive” doesn’t even appear!  Nonetheless they are from Truth and they are true:  we shall be judged by our deeds.  The way we act matters, eternally.  This is a truth we should have before us at all times, and especially in this season of Lent when we are to consider ourselves and confess our sin and our evil.  Nonetheless, Piers and the priest are confused for good reason: what kind of a pardon is this, that simply states what shall be?  Does this mean there is not pardon and forgiveness after all, just a cold accounting at the end of things?  We shall be judged by our deeds:  this is true and it is well worth meditating on.  But, as we continue in our journey through the world of Piers Plowman, we shall see how it is hardly the fullness of truth.

“But by your hard and impenitent hearts you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.  For he will repay according to each one’s deeds:  to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.”  (Romans 2:5-8)