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Medieval alliterative poem

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

Surviving in two complete 16th century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the Crede can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between 1393 and 1400. The text in British Library MS Royal 18. B.17 appears before a C text version of Piers Plowman in the same hand; that in Trinity College Cambridge MS R.3.15 is by a clerk in Archbishop Matthew Parker's household, who added Chaucer related materials before a deficient 15th century Canterbury Tales manuscript, and the Crede at the end of the manuscript. Additionally, BL MS Harley 78 contains a fragment of the Crede copied c. 1460–70. The Crede was first printed in London by Reyner Wolfe, and then reprinted for inclusion with Owen Rogers's 1561 reprint of Robert Crowley's 1550 edition of Piers Plowman. The Crede was not printed again until Thomas Bensley's edition in 1814, based on that of 1553, and Thomas Wright's of 1832. The 1553 and 1561 editions were altered to include more anticlericalism and to attack an "abbot" where the original text had "bishop". This latter revision is a conservative one, undoubtedly motivated by the security of attacking a defunct institution following the Dissolution of the Monasteries rather than an aspect of Catholicism which survived in the Church of England. Nearly all modern critics have agreed that several lines about transubstantiation were removed. This excision was covered with a (perhaps interpolated) passage not found in any of the manuscripts. The poem exists in several modern editions: Thomas Wright and Walter Skeat produced independent versions in the 19th century; more recently, James Dean has edited the text for TEAMs, and Helen Barr has produced an annotated edition in The Piers Plowman Tradition (London: J. M. Dent, 1993) .

Some scholars believe it is very likely that the author of the Crede may also be responsible for the anti fraternal Plowman's Tale, also known as the Complaint of the Ploughman. Both texts were probably composed at about the same time, with The Plowman's Tale being later and drawing extensively on the Crede. The author/speaker of The Plowman's Tale mentions that he will not deal with friars, since he has already dealt with them "before, / In a making of a 'Crede' " W. W. Skeat believed that The Plowman's Tale and the Crede were definitely by the same person, although they differ in style. Others reject this thesis, suggesting that the author of The Plowman's Tale makes the extra textual reference to a creed to enhance his own authority. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Crede was usually attributed to Chaucer. The editor of the 1606 edition of The Plowman's Tale, possibly Anthony Wotton, explains his speculations with this gloss: "A Creede: Some think hee means the questions of Jack vpland, or perhaps Pierce Ploughmans Creede. For Chaucer speaks this in the person of the Pelican, not in his own person." This statement is ambivalent, suggesting that Chaucer could fictionally ("in the person of the Pelican") claim authorship for another text that he may not have actually written (i. e., the Crede), or Chaucer might be referring to one of his own writings (i. e., Jack Upland). Since Jack Upland was definitely (and wrongly) attributed to Chaucer in the 16th century, the editor is likely introducing the possibility of a fictive authorship claim to deal with the possibility that The Plowman's Tale refers to the Crede. In this way the editor may have thought that if Jack Upland is signified by the "crede" reference in The Plowman's Tale, then "Chaucer" is speaking; if the Crede is signified, then it is the "Pelican, not [Chaucer's] own person." The Crede might also have been attributed to "Robert Langland" (i. e., William Langland) because of its inclusion in the 1561 edition of Piers Plowman, although this edition dropped the preface by Robert Crowley that names Langland. One reader of the 1561 Piers Plowman (which appends the Crede) made notes (dated 1577) in his copy that quote John Bale's attribution of Piers Plowman to Langland ("ex primis J. Wiclevi discipulis Unum") in Bale's Index Scriptorum. Because of differences in language and his belief that Chaucer lived later than Langland, the reader concludes that the Crede alone (and not Piers Plowman) is Chaucer's.