1.Morton W. Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth Century Apocalypse
(New Brunswick, 1962), p. 32.
2.Martin Irvine, "Medieval Textuality and the Archeology of Textual Culture," in
Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval
Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (Albany, 1991), p. 182.
3.Irvine, "Medieval Textuality," p. 182.
4.Irvine, "Medieval Textuality," p. 187.
5.Robert Worth Frank, Piers Plowman and the Scheme of Salvation (New Haven,
1957), p. 8.
6.See Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (Ithaca,
1979); also Priscilla Martin, Piers Plowman: The Field and the Tower (London, 1979).
7.Constantine Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1853), p. 377. All
citations from the Evangelium Nicodemi are taken from the "Latine A" text of this edition.
The author of the Evangelium here has conflated Isaiah 26:19 and Hosea 13:14.
8.Alexander Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, Acta, and Revelations, Ante-Nicene
Christian Library 16 (Edinburgh, 1870), p. 203. All translations of the Latin text are taken from this
translation of Tischendorf.
9.Tischendorf, Evangelia, p. 387.
10.In the Latin B version, the brothers are even forbidden by the Holy Ghost to speak to
their interrogators (Tischendorf, p. 421). For the legend of the Septuagint, see Moses Hadas, ed.
and trans., Aristeae to Philocrates (New York, 1951).
11.It should be noted that the Gospel was still included in Latin Bible codexes as late as the
twelfth century.
12.All citations from the text of Piers are taken from Walter Skeat, ed., The
Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1886).
13.Tischendorf, Evangelia, p. 316. See Skeat, Vision, p. 251, and A. V. C.
Schmidt, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, 2nd ed. (London,
1987), p. 350.
14.Schmidt, Piers, p. 350. See also Skeat, 2: 251.
15.James I. Wimsatt, Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English
Literature (New York, 1970), p. 117.
16.R. A. Waldron, "Langland's Originality: the Christ-Knight and the Harrowing of Hell,"
in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G.H. Russell, ed.
Gregory Kratzman and James
page 158
Simpson (Cambridge,
1986), p. 72.
17.Malcolm Godden, The Making of Piers Plowman (London, 1990), p. 141.
Godden also notes the motif of Christ as courtly lover in Grosseteste's Chateau d'Amour and
the Ancrene Riwle.
18.Tischendorf, Evangelia, p. 376.
19.Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, p. 202.
20.Tischendorf, Evangelia, p. 378.
21.The Descent is an unusual setting for this motif, commonly referred to as "the
Parliament in Heaven." For the definitive study of this motif, see Hope Traver, The Four
Daughters of God (Bryn Mawr, 1907).
22.James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London, 1990),
p. 213.
23.Simpson, Introduction, p. 209.
24.Derek Pearsall, Piers Plowman by William Langland: An Edition of the C-Text
(Berkeley and Los Angleles, 1978), p. 325n. The theme is rehearsed in the Hymn "Pangue Lingua
Gloriosi."
25.V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: the First Five Canterbury
Tales (Stanford, 1984), p. 255.
26.A. V. C. Schmidt, ed., The Vision of Piers Plowman, p. 352.
27.The transformational nature of Truth's character in Piers sets it apart from other
versions of the "Parliament in Heaven" motif. For example, in "The Castle of Perseverence," the
figures Justicia and Veritas are merely instructed by Pax to consent to Mankind's redemption, in
order to preserve peace in heaven. After being ordered to abandon their insistence on the Old Law
by God himself, Veritas finally consents, without comment as to the validity of the claim made by
Pax.
28.It is no coincidence that Ishtar's speech before the gates of hell includes phrases cognate
to Psalm 24:7 and Psalm 107:10-16. See Robert William Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old
Testament, 2nd ed. (New York, 1926), p. 122.
