Piers Plowman: Passus XX Summary & Analysis

Will meets the allegorical character, Need, outside of the context of his dreams. This is a fitting time for Will to meet Need, since Will spends his waking life wandering and hungry—which makes it more difficult for Will to resist the temptation of Need’s suggestion to embrace being a beggar. In other words, Need is advising Will to ignore the importance of labor and to be one of the “fakers” who ruined Piers Plowman’s perfect feudal state earlier in the poem. 

Will’s eighth and final dream vision begins. The Antichrist appears, just as Grace told the Christian community he would. Antichrist replaces Truth with Guile, who represents trickery and deception (suggestive of the “beguiling” done by the devils). At first it might seem confusing why Kind would send down Death, Old Age, and disease to humanity in its hour of need. That action hardly seems kind at all. But this moment is similar to when Piers Plowman called in Hunger earlier in the poem to try to get the people of his feudal state to work again. The poem, and the Christianity it inspires, holds to the idea that suffering can lead to enlightenment and improved virtue. And so the “kindness” here rests in the hope that the suffering sent down can shock people into being “proper Christians and, in so doing, save their souls from the Antichrist.

Simony was one of the two characters who conducted Meed’s thwarted wedding to False. His allegiance to Antichrist shows that the concept of simony (buying or selling Church offices, documents, or privileges, like indulgences) is immoral and corrupt.

Another moment of comedy arises in the accidental fight between Old Age and Will that leaves Will bald, toothless, and impotent. However, this brawl also shows that Will has been on this spiritual quest for so long that he’s now elderly. His quest in the poem has spanned his life. Meanwhile, Kind’s teaching mirrors one of Trajan’s earlier teachings to love “folk of all factions,” meaning that Christians must love all people from all walks of life, as represented by the “field full of folk.” 

The priests, overcome by pride, are dressed as dangerous, deadly soldiers, not religious leaders who should be committed to Christ and helping to community. This may suggest that in its current state, the priesthood is more of a danger to the community than a help. The detail that Envy instructs the friars to pursue higher education shows that the clergy is rife with ill intentions, emphasizing Anima’s earlier teaching that friars go to school “more for pomp” than to help people.

The people don’t like the doctor because he is too hard on them—suggesting that many people prefer the ease of indulgences (the “softer compress”) to the uncomfortable, guilt-ridden, spiritually difficult experience of actual rigorous penance, which includes contrition, confession, and satisfaction (prayers or deeds a person is instructed to do by a priest).

Friar Flatterer introduces himself in Latin as “Sir House-Penetrator,” referencing 2 Timothy 3:6: “For of these [men] are those who penetrate house and lead captive simple women burdened with sins, who are led to manifold desires.” In one simple phrase, Friar Flatterer reveals his ability to lead people directly to sin. Peace sees through the Friar to his evil motives, but Courteous Speech, more attuned to surface behavior than deeper intentions, has no such understanding.

Conscience and Contrition are related as cousins, showing how one’s conscience (integrity) is directly tied to the experience of contrition (guilt for sin). However, Friar Flatterer’s “drugged drink,” which represents indulgences, makes Contrition dazed and emotionless—meaning that relying on indulgences to ease punishment for sin makes people numb to the severity and consequence of sin. The story here is an allegory for the practices of the Church that the poem sees as plaguing Christian society.

Although Conscience is severely critical of friars throughout the poem, his closing thought suggests that what is needed is not to change the structure of society but rather some way to reform the friars from greed so that they perform their function as they are supposed to. It is easy to read this last section of the poem as being dark and pessimistic: here is Conscience, after all, fleeing a battle that seems to have been lost to Antichrist. At the same, time, though, the poem is offering hope. After all, despite the attack by the forces of Antichrist, Conscience still has the ability to tell right for wrong, and the conviction to go in search of Piers Plowman, who has the ability to destroy Antichrist. In this ending, the poem offers two allegorical meanings, one at the level of the individual and the other at the level of society. First, it suggests that any person through conscience can seek Christ and become a good Christian (as Will has demonstrated). Second, it suggests that despite the Church’s current corruption it also can be reformed and once again become a force for Christian virtue in the world.