Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Piers Plowman" During the Western Schism

Author/Editor
Stone, Zachary E.

Title
Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Piers Plowman" During the Western Schism

Published
Stone, Zachary E. "Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Piers Plowman During the Western Schism." Yearbook of Langland Studies 33 (2019): 69-110.

Review
At 41 pages without illustrations, Stone's argument is lengthy, complex, and difficult to summarize succinctly. He offers an attempt in his attached abstract: "This article triangulates John Gower's revisions to the 'Mirour de l'Omme' and 'Vox Clamantis,' William Langland's revisions to 'Piers Plowman,' and English responses to the Western Schism. The Schism forced Gower to rework portions of the 'Mirour' and 'Vox,' and influenced Langland's depiction of the papacy in the B-text of 'Piers.' Recovering Gower's and Langland's representations of the Schism not only brings these two poets into direct dialogue, but it also illuminates an undertheorized set of religious, political, and imaginative discourses centered on the institutional nature and shape of the church . . . . scholars [should] understand these discourses as a loose but recognizable 'vernacular ecclesiology' common to both the poetical works of Langland and Gower as well as [a] much broader spectrum of later medieval literature." As this abstract suggests, in addition to substantial material providing background to the Schism (clearly on the assumption that most know little about it), its most salient points center around dating those passages in the MO, VC, (and incidentally the CA and "In Praise of Peace") and "Piers" which can be thought to address the Schism--not ever easy, since in no case do Gower and Langland confront it directly. For Gowerians, perhaps Stone's most enduring effort is tracing what he argues were parallel arcs of Gower's and Langland's thinking regarding "ecclesiology" (which Stone defines, quoting Paul Avis, as "the comparative, critical, and constructive study of the dominant paradigms of the church's identity" [101]), prompted by the Schism: "By 1377, Gower and Langland had, like many of their contemporaries, had already begun to think about the spiritual, political, and aesthetic consequences of ecclesia" (99). In 1378, the Schism caused Gower to revise the MO and the "A-text" (borrowing from Maria Wickert) of the VC, which "focused on the sins of the Avignonese papacy." With the Schism in 1378, which "c. September 1378-summer 1379" Gower configured "as a monstrous new birth in the 'Mirour'" (94). VC B1 adjusts to critique the chaos during "the torrid first few years of the Schism while B2 registers the situation after Despenser's Crusade" (95). The CA's remarks on the Schism reflect the period "between Despenser's Crusade and the death of Clement VII in 1394" (95); and in "In Praise of Peace" he "exhorts the Henrician regime to support inchoate conciliar efforts to end the Schism" (95). Stone finds Langland's revisions to "Piers" at B.19-20/C.21-22 obeying a similar chronology in pursuit of a remarkably similar reaction to the Schism (95-101). In a coda, he opines about how thinking through an "English ecclesiology" might benefit analyses of late medieval literary work. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1]

Date
2019

Gower Subjects
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis
In Praise of Peace