The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe

Last updated October 25, 2023

The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe after the yere of our Lorde. M. and three hundred is a short (14 pages), anonymous English Christian text, probably written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and first printed in about 1531. It consists of a prose tract, in the form of a polemical prayer, expressing Lollard sentiments and arguing for religious reform. In it, the simple ploughman/narrator speaks on behalf of "the repressed common man imbued with the simple truths of the Bible and a knowledge of the commandments against the mighty and monolithic conservative church".^[1] The pastoral-ecclesiastical metaphor of shepherds and sheep is used extensively as a number of criticisms are made about such things as confession, indulgences, purgatory, tithing and celibacy. The Prayer became important in the sixteenth century, when its themes were taken up by proponents of the Protestant Reformation.

History of the Prayer

The Prayer was probably written as a manuscript in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, but no manuscript copies survive.

It was first printed by a Protestant printer, Martinus de Keyser, in Antwerp, in about 1531, and then in London, by another Protestant printer, Thomas Godfray, in about 1532, although Godfray's name does not appear in the edition. A preface in both editions, "To the Reader", dates itself 28 February 1531 and claims (undoubtedly in error) that the Prayer was written "not longe after the yere of our Lorde A thousand and thre hundred."

John Bale included the Prayer, under the curious Latin title of Agricolae Praecatione in his bibliographic work, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytannie . . . Catalogus (Basel, 1557–59).

John Foxe included the text of the Prayer (identifying Tyndale as its editor) in his second (1570) edition of Acts and Monuments , but it was deleted in the third (1576) edition, and reinstated in the fourth (1583) and subsequent editions. Foxe's 1570 introduction dates the Prayer to the mid-fourteenth century and claims not to have changed any of it since the antique language gives "credit" to it and its "testimony." Marginal notes explicate the most difficult words as well as the points that square with Protestant attacks on Roman Catholicism.

An edition was edited and reprinted by the University of Toronto Press in 1997.

Author of the Prayer

In 1662, Thomas Fuller attributed the Prayer to "Robert Langland," then supposed by Robert Crowley and Bale to be the author of Piers Plowman , a poem whose author is now usually identified as William Langland). Fuller was familiar with Piers Plowman and with several separate editions of the Prayer, which he believed were printed by Tyndale and Foxe.

The preface to the published edition is signed "W.T.". Parker and others take this to mean that William Tyndale wrote it; Anthea Hume disagrees and suggests George Joye as the writer.^[2] Godfrey may indeed have printed the Prayer by or with the approval of Tyndale (as John Foxe indicates) ca.1532-6 in London or in 1531 in Antwerp. Tyndale could have been involved with the first edition, since he is known to have been in Antwerp that year, and Godfrey had printing connections with Tyndale and Antwerp.

Controversial content

The Prayer was highly controversial, owing to its questioning of some of the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas More (1478–1535) was probably referring to the Prayer when he attacked the "Ploughmans Prayour" in his preface to his Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (published in 1532 by More's nephew, William Rastell). In 1546, the Prayer was among the books banned by name in England, according to Robert Steele, along with all the works of John Frith, William Tyndale, John Wycliffe, John Bale, Robert Barnes, Miles Coverdale, and others.^[3]

The preface to the printed version (by "W.T.") underlines some of the controversial content, for example comparing the Protestant reformers to Christ. Both were attacked as "innovators" when, according to the preface, they were only teaching the true and ancient doctrines. In this way, the Prayer is mustered up as an old proto-Protestant English text showing the truth and putatively traditional basis of Protestant teachings. The text of the Prayer echoes other reformist texts, such as Rede Me and Be Nott Wrothe .

W.T., in his preface, also argues that those in positions of wealth and power are corrupted by self-interest, and only the poor commons can see the truth of scripture. Some of these criticisms are directed toward the king and other rulers; W.T. does explicitly denounce the murder of Archbishop John Fisher, whom the king had executed 1535 for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Helen White contends that the Prayer contains a "very radical theory of the nature of property".^[4]

Related Research Articles

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.

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<i>Piers Plowman</i> Middle English poem by William Langland

Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Langland</span> Fourteenth century English poet

William Langland is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem translated the language and concepts of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by a layman.

Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language including the King James Version and Douai Bibles. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to the need for Bibles in the vernacular with competing groups each producing their own versions.

John Frith was an English Protestant priest, writer, and martyr.

Robert Crowley, was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman among Marian exiles at Frankfurt. He seems to have been a Henrician Evangelical in favour of a more reformed Protestantism than the king and the Church of England sanctioned. Under Edward VI, he joined a London network of evangelical stationers to argue for reforms, sharing a vision of his contemporaries Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, Thomas Beccon and others of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth. He attacked as inhibiting reform what he saw as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy. Meanwhile, Crowley took part in making the first printed editions of Piers Plowman, the first translation of the Gospels into Welsh, and the first complete metrical psalter in English, which was also the first to include harmonised music. Towards the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as compromised and saw the dissolution of the monasteries as replacing one form of corruption by another. On his return to England after the reign of Mary I, Crowley revised his chronicle to represent the Edwardian Reformation as a failure, due to figures like Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Crowley's account of the Marian martyrs represented them as a cost mostly paid by commoners. The work became a source for John Foxe's account of the period in his Actes and Monuments. Crowley held church positions in the early to mid-1560s and sought change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. Against the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, Crowley was a leader in the renewed vestments controversy, which eventually lost him his clerical posts. During the dispute he and other London clergy produced a "first Puritan manifesto". Late in life Crowley was restored to several church posts and appears to have charted a more moderate course in defending it from Roman Catholicism and from nonconformist factions that espoused a Presbyterian church polity.

<i>Pierce the Ploughmans Crede</i> Medieval alliterative poem

Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars.

There are two pseudo-Chaucerian texts called "The Plowman's Tale".

The Pilgrim's Tale is an English anti-monastic poem. It was probably written ca. 1536–38, since it makes references to events in 1534 and 1536 – e.g. the Lincolnshire Rebellion – and borrows from The Plowman's Tale and the 1532 text by William Thynne of Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, which is cited by page and line. It remains the most mysterious of the pseudo-Chaucerian texts. In his 1602 edition of the Works of Chaucer, Thomas Speght mentions that he hoped to find this elusive text. A prefatory advertisement to the reader in the 1687 edition of the Works speaks of an exhaustive search for The Pilgrim's Tale, which had proved fruitless

The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem Piers Plowman. Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer but does not have his own tale, plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.

George Joye was a 16th-century Bible translator who produced the first printed translation of several books of the Old Testament into English (1530–1534), as well as the first English Primer (1529).

Merten de Keyser was a 16th-century French printer and publisher working mainly in Antwerp, who printed the first complete French and the first complete English Bible translations as well as a number of works by English Protestant authors.

Richard Whitford was a 16th century English Catholic priest known as an author of many devotional works.

William Tracy was an English justice of the peace and prominent early Lutheran convert. After his death both his will and his remains became caught up in the struggle around the Protestant Reformation in England.

William Thynne was an English courtier and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer's works.

The plowboy trope appears in Christian rhetoric and literature in the form of various bucolic, lowly or even unsavoury characters who would benefit from being exposed to Scripture in the vernacular. The plowboy trope is an anti-elitist trope dating back at least 1600 years.

References

↑ Douglas H. Parker (ed): Praier & Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe, University of Toronto Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8020-4268-6.
↑ Anthea Hume: Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
↑ Robert Steele: "Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525-1548", Transactions of the Bibliographic Society 11 (1911): 189-236.
↑ Helen C. White: Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Octagon, 1965.

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[1] Douglas H. Parker (ed): Praier & Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe, University of Toronto Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8020-4268-6.

[2] Anthea Hume: Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

[3] Robert Steele: "Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525-1548", Transactions of the Bibliographic Society 11 (1911): 189-236.

[4] Helen C. White: Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Octagon, 1965.

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