- "The Simonie"
- "Above All Thing Thow Arte a Kyng"
- "In Erth It Es a Litill Thing (Sir Penny)"
- "London Lickpenny"
Due to their respective foci on the role of money in late medieval England, these four poems have been grouped together in this text under the heading "Simony and the Abuse of Money." As might be expected, each of these short poems takes a critical perspective on how money, or the desire thereof, affects society or subverts just power structures. As these poems are relatively short, I'm handling each of them in this post.
"The Simonie"
Predominantly, this poem is concerned about the extent to which church officials have, in their desire to increase monetary and worldly gains, strayed from their proper roles as God's representatives on earth. In many ways, this poem reads similarly to The Vision of Piers the Plowman, largely due to the anti-fraternal and anti-clerical sentiments expressed therein. Predominantly, "The Simonie" is concerned with apparent rampent commodification of clerical duties and services, to the extent where even the gleefully sinful can receive repentance as long as they are able to pay the proper authorities the improper amount. Beyond indulgences, the poet describes the overt comfort that monks live in, as compared to the poor, "In uch toun / I wot non eysiere lyf than is religioun" (155-156). As far as the poet is concerned, monks have drifted away from the contemplative, poor lives that they were meant to live and have, if anything, become overly caught up in worldly concerns. Several lines later, the poet even describes a scene where, after a man has died, the monks argue not over who should have the privilege of carrying out funeral rights but over who gets to keep his property (181-186). In sum, "The Simonie" is convinced that, stemming from the practice of simony, the Church has itself become a commodified institution more concerned with its bottom line than the salvation of men's souls.
"Above All Thing Thow Arte a Kyng"
As its title would suggest, this poem is concerned with the predominance of money over all other authority. Each of the poems stanzas tracks another aspect of society, from the king's court down through the rest of society. Here, money itself has replaced any estates model or other structure for societal functionality; instead, each member of society works solely for their own access to money. On this, however, two interesting components crop out. First, nowhere in the poem does the idea of money being spent come up, nor on what it could even purchase. The closest the poems comes to this is stating that money "maket justynges, pleys, dysguysynges," yet even here it is not clear if money is actually purchasing the services needed to carry this out or simply making them possible (15). Instead, money is sought out for money's sake rather than any commodity it can obtain. Secondly, the identity of each member of society in the poem is tied to their attempts to acquire money. As the poem concludes, "Yt ys allwayes sene nowadayes / That money makythe the man" (79-80). More than being "Kyng," money is itself the goal for all social identities, which has the final effect of blurring these social divisions as each individual seeks the same thing. This may be an interesting aspect to consider in the rise of an urban burgess class, one that has a liminal social position fueled by their growing economic power.
"In Erth It Es a Litill Thing"
In regards to its ability to lead to social subversion, this poem does not add much more to the conversation created by the above poems. There are, however, two interesting additions to the topic at hand. To begin with, the metaphor of "Sir Penny" throughout the poem creates an aristocratic identity for money and its function in late medieval England. The allegorical representation of money is thus a transgressive social figure that has both positive and negative effects, doing good and ill depending on those around him. This certainly demonstrates a more balanced perspective on money, and evokes the Lady Mede section from The Vision of Piers the Plowman. Secondly, the poem has a comment on the wake Sir Penny leaves behind him: "The more he es to men plente, / The more yernid alway es he, / And halden dere in horde" (58-60). Despite the balanced perspective on money's role, the poem is also clear to point out that the possession of money begets the desire for further wealth, emphasizing the avaricious aspect of money and calling up similar concerns as are present in Book 5 of Gower's Confessio Amantis.
"London Lickpenny"
The only of these four poems to have a narrative structure, "London Lickpenny" involves a poor man entering a city looking for justice and continuously being denied. Having his hood stolen from him at the beginning of the poem, the narrator of the poem seeks justice from various levels of authority and, when denied, even turns to sources of comfort only to meet with the same refusal. At each stage, the specific reasoning for this refusal is the same "For lacke of money, I may not spede" (8). In sum, this poem identifies that as sources of lay and clerical authority have become commodified they deny access and justice to the poor, creating a system that protects only the wealthy and ignores the existence of the poor. The economic inequality is such that the narrator, seeing his stolen hood for sale, cannot even purchase his own goods again. This sentiment in particular seems to echo the current economic and political climate in the U.S.; the Justice Department recently announced, for example, that it wouldn't pursue charges against HSBC because it was too important to the U.S. economy, functionally making that company, who has clearly and admittedly participated in trafficking money for drug cartels and terrorist organizations, too rich to prosecute. A system that has differing levels of justice for differing social/economic groups is problematic at best, and it is easy to sympathize with the narrator of this poem.
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