‘IS Piers in this place?’ I called up, and he stopped me with a wink.*
‘This Jesus shall out of chivalry joust in Piers’s coat-of-arms,
Wearing his helm and wearing his habergeon: human nature.*
So that Christ be not known for what he is, perfect God,*
This armed knight shall ride in Piers’s tunic;
For no blow shall harm him, who is in the Father’s Godhead.
‘Who shall joust with Jesus?’ I asked, ‘Jews, or Scribes?’
‘Nay’ said Faith, ‘but the Fiend, and the false judgment to die.*
Death says that he shall condemn and bring down
All that lives or looks in land or sea.
Life says he lies, and stakes his life on this,
That despite all that Death may do, within three days he will walk,
And fetch from the Fiend the Fruit of Piers the Ploughman,
And set them where it please him; and bind Lucifer,
And shatter and bring down the destroyer Death forever!
“O Death, I shall be thy death!”’*
From ‘The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman’ Volume II (1887), by William Langland (?1330-?1400), edited by Thomas Wright. This passage comes from Passus XVIII. Translation adapted from ‘Piers Ploughman: the Vision of a Peoples’ Christ (1912) by Arthur Burrell; ‘William Langland: Piers Ploughman (selections) at Harvard University.
* In the B version ‘preynte on me’ (‘winked at me’), in the C version ‘printe on me’ (‘made an impression on me’). In Passus XIII, we find: ‘Thanne Conscience curteisly / A contenaunce made, / And preynte upon Pacience / To preie me to be stille.’ Traugott Lawler in ‘The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman,’ Volume 4, concludes that ‘preynte’ indicates a wink but with more weight. Faith, it appears, rather wishes Langland would keep his voice down.
* A habergeon is a sleeveless coat of mail or scale armour. Langland implies that Christ’s humanity deceived the devil into thinking that he was ‘just another prophet’, the latest in a line he had successfully despatched with the help of Israel’s malcontents. See Luke 11:46-51.
* See 1 Corinthians 2:8, where Paul remarks that if the ‘princes of this world’ had known who Jesus was they would not have crucified him.
* The judgment of death was predicted by God in Genesis 2:17, and duly fell on mankind in Genesis 3:1-7. However, the way that the devil uses it is wholly false. He pretends it means that he has rights over mankind, and that mankind has no hope and nothing to live for, except whatever selfish pleasures can be wrung out of this short life on earth. As Langland emphasises, it means nothing of the sort. See also Hebrews 2:14-15 and 1 Corinthians 15;12-34.
* Antiphon on Holy Saturday in the Latin rite. See Hosea 13:14. In the East, this forms the triumphal and much-repeated Easter acclamation ‘Christ is risen from the dead / By death trampling down death, / And granting life to them that are in the tombs!’