1 The Sybil and Merlin: Political Prophecy in the French and English Royal Courts

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The term “Ricardian Poetry,” first used by J.A. Burrow, has primarily functioned as a name of convenience, referring to four authors who produced now-famous works during the reign of Richard II: William Langland, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Gawain-poet.1 Although these authors wrote their major works around the same time, few studies have shown meaningful connections among them, especially as they relate to the reign of Richard II. The king has proven a challenging contact point to use when studying the literature produced during his time in power. Derek Pearsall and V.J. Scattergood have both raised questions about the degree to which Richard II patronized literature at all.² To counterbalance, Joyce Coleman has presented evidence that Richard’s wife, Anne of Bohemia, spurred on royal literary patronage.³ Because of gaps in historical records, we know very little about how Richard II encouraged the production of literature in his court. As Richard Firth Green has put it, “Even with an author who has been as thoroughly studied as Chaucer, we are left with inference and conjecture when we seek to discover whom precisely he was writing for; it is easier to call him a court poet than it is to decide what we mean by this term.”⁴ Nevertheless, the term “Ricardian poet” is helpful in the current study insofar as it calls attention to the unusual circumstances facing authors who adopted a prophetic voice during Richard II’s reign.

Authors working in the Valois court of France, where the Sibyl’s political prophecies had been most popular, prominently likened themselves to her in their works while producing their own political prophecies. Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pizan integrated Sibyllic political prophecy about monarchs directly into their poetry because it promoted the sacral kingship of their royal patrons. In contrast, authors working in Ricardian England did not adopt such a straightforward approach. If Richard was patronizing authors at all, he would have had little inclination to encourage them to promote political prophecy. This is because unlike France, where prophecies of the Sibyl had flourished, England had developed a more volatile prophetic tradition revolving around Merlin during the reigns of Edward III and Richard II. This chapter will outline the history of Sibyllic political prophecies and their impact on French authorial identity before tracing the related but diverging history of Merlinic political prophecies in England. This story of two prophets and their political influence illuminates the political pressures that Ricardian authors faced when incorporating prophecy into their work. These political pressures account for the unexpected and diverse approaches to prophecy that Ricardian authors took.

The Origins of the Sibyl as Prophetic Author

In ancient Greece and Rome, sibyls were prophets who spoke words inspired by Apollo. They became the symbols of various Hellenistic cities; Erythrae and Cumae both dedicated grottos to their respective sibyls.5 The first-century BCE Roman scholar, Varro, created a catalogue of ten sibyls, named by their location. The list survives in the writing of Lactantius, who explains that none of the Sibylline writings (save one by the Erythraean Sibyl) is attributed to a specific author, so he will refer to the author of all of them as “the Sibyl” (1.6.13).⁶ Referring to one Sibyl despite the purported existence of many has remained a standard practice.

The Roman Senate established the Sibyl as an important authorial figure. Varro wrote of how the Cumaean Sibyl attempted to sell nine books of prophecies to Tarquinius, Rome’s last king before it became a republic.⁷ Tarquinius refused to pay the Sibyl’s requested fee, so she burned three of the books and then asked once again for compensation. When Tarquinius refused a second time, the Sibyl burned three more books, spurring the king to purchase the three that remained. These libri Sibyllini resided in the Temple of Jupiter in Rome. At special times, the Senate called upon a group of men known as the (quin) decemuiri to interpret the Sibyl’s oracles and devise a course of action.⁸ From a practical standpoint, the Senate used these prophecies to reassure the public that they were taking the appropriate actions, in accordance with divine authority. This practice presumably ended during the fourth century, and the contents of the once-extant libri Sibyllini are unknown.⁹ Rome’s use of the Sibyl’s writing established her reputation as a special kind of author who possessed direct divine inspiration in her composition of the written word.

The Sibyl was therefore a convenient pseudonym for anonymous authors with religious agendas. The most comprehensive collection of classical books attributed to the Sibyl, the Oracula Sibyllina, was compiled by a Byzantine scholar in the sixth century, collecting explicitly Jewish and Christian reworkings of Sibylline prophecies.10 The oldest and most famous of these books, Or. Sib. 3, was composed in the first or second century BCE by a Hellenistic Jewish author.¹¹ It is written from the perspective of Noah’s daughter-in-law, who claims that she came to be known as the Erythraean Sibyl to the Greeks when she traveled from Babylonia to their land.¹² In this way, the anonymous author unites the pasts of pagan and Jewish people while attributing the pagan Sibyl’s powers and wisdom to the Jewish god. The prophecy in Or. Sib. 3 imitates the style of Daniel’s prophecy to Nebuchadnezzar in Jewish Scripture. Adopting the persona of Daniel himself would have been counterproductive to an author attempting to win a pagan audience over to Judaism, so the author simply transfers stories associated with Daniel to the respected pagan Sibyl.

For the author of Or. Sib. 3, Daniel’s story was a convenient way to offer a religious model of history, but it later became an opportune vehicle for political predictions as well. In the second chapter of the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, consults Daniel about a dream that he had about a statue. Its head was gold, its breast and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were brass, and its feet were iron and clay. Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed that a stone struck the statue, destroying it. Then, only the stone remained, but it grew into a mountain. Daniel interprets the dream to Nebuchadnezzar and says that the head of gold represents his Babylonian empire. The various other metals represent the increasingly inferior empires that will follow. All of these empires will crumble, but the rock, representing God’s church, will remain. Although the Sibyl’s prophecy of Or. Sib. 3 does not include a dream analysis, it imitates Daniel’s structure of explaining the world as a series of empires that will ultimately crumble, leaving only faith in the one true God. When describing the reign of Augustus Ceasar, the Sibyl alludes to the birth of Jesus, which later, more explicitly Christian Sibylline works like Or. Sib. 1 would expand upon.¹³ Early Christian authors like Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, and Lactantius quoted these passages of the Sibyl’s prophecies of Jesus and claimed her as a Christian prophet.¹⁴ Augustine famously quotes the Sibyls in De civitate Dei, leading to his conclusion that Virgil was quoting the Erythraean Sibyl in his fourth Eclogue.

The Sibyl’s classical past as the Roman Senate’s textual authority and her early Christian tradition as an alternate Daniel gave her voice political authority that the anonymous author of the sixth-century Byzantine Oracle of Baalbek exploited. The highly influential Oracle of Baalbek draws even more inspiration from the book of Daniel by presenting the Sibyl’s prophecy as an explanatio somnii – the interpretation of a dream – and having the Sibyl function as a similar governmental advisor.15 The text details how, upon the Tiburtine Sibyl’s visit to Rome, one hundred judges summon her to explain the identical dream that they all had of nine suns, each with a different appearance.¹⁶ The Sibyl then explains the suns in the way that Daniel explained Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, claiming that each one represents a generation of humanity (31–172). During the explication of the fourth sun, the Sibyl predicts the coming of Jesus, born to Mary, maintaining her tradition as a Christian prophet (59–75). The later predictions are of future emperors, most of whom are presented via vatincinium ex eventu, the practice of predicting events that have already happened in an effort to build credibility before predicting events that have not happened yet. In the pseudonymous mouth of the ancient Sibyl, a recapitulation of the past is a prediction of future events. For instance, the Sibyl predicts the coming of the Emperor Anastasius I and the Persian War – both events that had already happened in the sixth century, when the Byzantine Oracle of Baalbek was composed. The author of the work uses the Sibyl’s prediction to criticize Anastasius, saying that he will “hate all the beggars” and “ruin many from among the people” (168). She goes on to predict the end of time after the reign of Anastasius, during which a “King from the East” will rise, slay his enemies, forgive all public taxes, and restore the cities in the east and Palestine, expressing the anonymous author’s hopes for what an ideal ruler would do. The Oracle of Baalbek explicitly politicized the Sibyl’s predictions in a way that would remain influential for several centuries.

The Medieval Sibyl and Her Role in French Poetry

The eleventh-century Latin prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl (sometimes attributed to the Cumaean Sibyl) was based on the Greek Oracle of Baalbek, but it notably added a prediction of the Last Emperor to the end of its predictions of future rulers. The Last Emperor is a figure who will conquer all of Europe and the Holy Land before turning his crown over to the second coming of Christ, who will in turn defeat the Antichrist.¹⁷ Latin versions of the Tiburtine Sibyl were produced during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (983–1002) but were also copied a great deal over the course of the twelfth century, when the list of kings was periodically updated to promote or critique a number of then-contemporary leaders.18 The Sibyl names leaders by their initials, presumably to make her predictions more believably like hazy forecasts of the future. Because of the book’s appeal as a retelling of history, the prophecies remained well known even among readers who were not reading the work for its prophetic content.¹⁹ The Sibyl’s reputation was therefore widely associated with the concept of a Last Emperor. Various authors began to cite the Sibyl as the source of their predictions of a great ruler’s future victories in war. For instance, both Otto of Freising and Godfrey of Viterbo claimed that the Sibyl had predicted victories for Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I.²⁰

Sibylline prophecies promoting a French Last World Emperor, otherwise known as the Second Charlemagne, were written for Charles VI upon his accession to the throne.²¹ This version of the prophecy, promoted by the Valois court, circulated throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.²² During this time, French poets adopted the politically powerful persona of the Sibyl while retaining their own authorial personae. Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pizan are the most salient examples of this phenomenon. Eustache Deschamps was Charles V’s huisser d’armes, which placed him in charge of the king’s security, and he served in various administrative capacities for Louis, Duke of Orleans. His ballades were often addressed directly to the king, whom he could assume would read his work and consider his opinions.

Deschamps began several of his ballades with the phrase, “Je, Sebille.”²³ Unlike the anonymous authors of prophecies like Or. Sib. 3, the Oracle of Baalbek, and the Tiburtine Sibyl, who attribute their predictions to the Sibyl, Deschamps melds his own authority with that of the famous prophet. Deschamps never clarifies whether he is quoting a particular Sibyllic prediction or composing his own, but in using the phrase, “Je, Sebille” to begin poems that he has presented to his royal patrons as his own, Deschamps implies that he is doing both at the same time. Deschamps is known for employing voices other than his own in his poetry, and one in thirty of his poems takes on the voice of a woman.²⁴ In adopting the voice of a Sibyl, Deschamps is emulating predictions that she has famously made while crafting his own prophecies, addressed to the king. This narrative stance is quite possibly Deschamps’ emulation of that of the Venerable Bede. Perhaps because he had written about the Christian prophecies of the Sibyl in his Sibyllinorum Verborum Interpretatio, Bede was sometimes erroneously identified as the true author of the Tiburtine Sibyl.²⁵ In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, people began to cite Bede himself as a prophet. Deschamps’s citation of the historian alongside Merlin and the Sibyl in his Contre l’Angleterre (1385) is one of the earliest-known mentions of a prophetic Bede.26 Deschamps’ decision to refer to Bede in such a way may have been based on his own perception of what constitutes a prophet. After all, his ballades cite the same prophecies as coming both from Bede and the Sibyl. Since Deschamps seems to have believed that Bede wrote the famous predictions of Tiburtine Sibyl, his assertion that Bede was a prophet implies that the act of assuming the role of Sibyl – interpreting and applying her predictions to public events – makes one a prophet in one’s own right.

Rewriting a prophecy is not necessarily a deceitful act. While some readers clearly accepted certain Sibyllic texts as genuine (especially as they related to Christian prophecy), others seem to have understood their political predictions to be a combination of folklore and artistic license that was nevertheless authoritative. The scribes who updated the names of the kings in the Tiburtine Sibyl knew that they were altering the previous predictions, and they surely did so knowing that a series of scribes before them had done the same. To these scribes, the alterations may have seemed to be corrections rather than forgeries, making the sanctified predictions more likely to come to pass when applied to a still living leader. Deschamps’s adoption of the Sibyl’s authorial identity is at once symbolic and literal. The opening phrase, “Je, Sebille,” draws attention to the fact that Deschamps is not an ancient authority but a contemporary individual with timely concerns. Yet, at the same time, the phrase announces that Deschamps’s predictions express the longstanding and oft-repeated collective hopes of a nation. The Sibyl is a mask that Deschamps wears, but in presenting the poems beginning “Je, Sebille” as his own, he puts on the mask in front of his audience, acknowledging what we all know – that the mask and the face behind it are speaking as one voice only for the space of a poem.

The Last Emperor was a prediction that Deschamps used repeatedly to encourage Charles VI’s battles, and Deschamps at once knew this as the prophecy of the Sibyl, Merlin, Bede, and himself. In Ballade 67, which is written in honor of Charles VI, Deschamps predicts the coming of the “cerf volant” (1) [flying deer].²⁷ This symbol was taken from Merlin’s prophecy in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, which Deschamps interpreted as predicting the Last Emperor. Charles VI had adopted the flying deer as his own personal emblem.²⁸ Deschamps makes his prophecy in propria persona while also referring to what “ce dist la lettre escripte” (6) [it says in the written letter]. Like his predictions that begin with “Je, Sebille,” Deschamps acknowledges that the poem’s prediction is at once borrowed and newly crafted. The poem predicts that when the deer is thirteen “cors fera craindre son nom” (4) [hearts will fear his name] and that when he is fifteen “Qu’il destruira, ce dist la lettre escripte, / L’isle aux geans et l’asne” (6–7) [he will destroy, it says in the written letter, the Isle of Giants and the Donkey]. The fear that Charles will invoke at the age of thirteen refers to his defeat of the English-allied Flemish forces at the Battle of Roosebeke in 1382.29 The Isle of Giants represents England, and the Donkey signifies Richard II, Charles VI’s opponent in the Hundred Years War.³⁰ Deschamps combines familiar prophetic symbols like the “cerf volant” with his own newly invented predictions to advance his own agenda and version of the Last Emperor prophecy. He most likely penned this poem in late 1382 or early 1383, after the Battle of Roosebeke, so the prediction of his victory there is vaticinium ex eventu.³¹ Charles VI did not end up taking on battles with the English in the same manner that his father had, but Deschamps advances his hope that Charles would, by emphasizing that his victory is both certain and preordained by God. The poem goes on to predict the stag’s future victory over the followers of “Mahom” (17) [Mohammad]. This reiteration of the Second Charlemagne prophecy implies that if Charles were only to continue battling the English, he could eventually unite and convert the rest of the world.

Deschamps’s close relationship with the royal family allowed him to write political prophecies to argue for specific political actions. Christine de Pizan, who shared a mutual admiration with Deschamps, also made the Sibyl central to her authorial self-representation. However, she could not expect Charles VI to take strategic war advice from her in the same manner. Even in her treatise on war, the Fais d’armes et de chevalerie (1410), Christine spends the first several pages apologizing for her gender. She acknowledges that writing a war treatise is unusual for “femme qui communement ne se sieust entremettre ne mes de quenouilles, fillaces et choses de mainaige” [women, who generally are occupied in weaving, spinning, and household duties] but assures her audience that she understands the subject through her scholarship.³² Although Christine’s gender more generally placed her at a disadvantage in offering political advice to the king, it gave her a much stronger link to the respected authority of the Sibyl.

The Sibyl appears repeatedly in Christine’s works. Emulating the Aeneid, Christine makes the Sibyl her own guide along the Chemin de long estude (1402–3). Christine lists all ten sibyls before telling the story of the Erythrean and Cumaean Sibyls in the book of the Cité des dames (1405). The older, wiser friend whose advice punctuates the book of the Duc des vrais amans (1405) is even named Sebille de Monthault – a nod to her prescience in predicting the downfall of the lead character’s relationship and reputation. The legends surrounding the authorial persona of the Sibyl would have been valuable to Christine. For instance, the Sibyl’s efforts to seek recompense from Tarquinus for her written work and the Roman Senate’s subsequent reverence for her books’ wisdom emphasized the importance of paying for and heeding the advice of a wise female author. While Deschamps had cause to call attention to the Sibyl as a kind of mask for wise authors like Bede (supposedly) or himself, Christine had every reason to affirm the Sibyl’s historical reputation as one of the most authoritative writers of all time.

Therefore, when she adopts the mantle of the Sibyl in her final poem, the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (1429), she begins not with “Je, Sebille” but with “Je, Christine,” using her own voice to make predictions of the Last Emperor. The Ditié, dated 31 July 1429, after Joan of Arc’s victory at Orléans and Charles VII’s coronation at Rheims, is explicit political propaganda, urging public support for Joan and French unification under the leadership of Charles VII. The Ditié celebrates Joan of Arc’s triumphs as a sign of providential grace and makes two connected prophesies – the first foreseeing a great ruler of France who may or may not be Charles VII and the second prophesying Joan’s defeat of the English and the conquering of the Holy Land in aid of this great ruler. Between these two prophecies of her own, Christine mentions prophets often cited in political prophetic verse – Merlin, the Sibyl, and Bede.33 She offers their testimony in support of Joan’s validity as an agent of God, arguing:

Car Merlin et Sebile et Bede,

Plus de Vc ans a la virent

En esperit, et pour remede

En France en leurs escripz la mirent,

Et leur[s] prophecies en firent,

Disans qu’il pourteroit baniere

Es guerres françoises, et dirent

De son fait toute la maniere. (XXXI, 241–8)

[For more than 500 years ago, Merlin, the Sibyl, and Bede foresaw her coming, entered her in their writings as someone who would put an end to France’s troubles, made prophecies about her, saying that she would carry the banner in the French wars and describing all that she would achieve.]³⁴

The Sibyl’s appearance in the poem is a brief reference, confirming predictions that Christine otherwise presents in her own voice. Yet, as Kevin Brownlee has noted, “In this context the figure of the sibyl has a privileged status, for her appearance here is, as it were, overdetermined as a result of her singular importance in Christine’s earlier works.”35 Christine’s mention of the Sibyl anticipates her own assumption of this role within the poem. The prophecy that Christine does not cite but delivers herself is that of the Second Charlemagne, a variant of the Last Emperor prophecy:

Car ung roy de France doit estre

Charles, filz de Charles, nommé,

Qui sur tous rois sera grant maistre.

Propheciez l’ont surnommé

“Le Cerf Volant,” et consomé

Sera par cellui conquereur

Maint fait (Dieu l’a à ce somé),

Et en fin doit estre empereur. (XVI.121–8)

[For there will be a king of France called Charles, son of Charles, who will be supreme ruler over all kings. Prophecies have given him the name of ‘The Flying Stag,’ and many a deed will be accomplished by this conqueror (God has called him to this task) and in the end he will be emperor.]

In repeating the prophecy without attributing it to the Sibyl, Christine is stepping into the role of the Sibyl herself. Furthermore, in tenuously applying the prophecy to King Charles VII, Christine is taking on the Sibyl’s traditional role as a woman using her wisdom to advise a potentially misguided male leader. Christine warns Charles, “Je prie à Dieu que cellui soies” [I pray to God that you may be the person I have described] (XVII.130). Rather than simply citing the prophecy as a known fact, Christine plays with the ambiguity of prophetic discourse to emphasize the importance of Charles VII’s decisions. Furthermore, she continues her Last Emperor prophecy, applying it only to Joan:

En Chistienté et l’Eglise

Sera par elle mis concorde,

Les mescreans dont on devise,

Et les herites de vie orde

Destruira, car ainsi l’acord

Prophecie, qui l’a predit,

Ne point n’aura misericorde

De lieu, qui la foy Dieu laidit.

Des Sarradins fera essart,

En conquerant la Saintte Terre.

Là menra Charles, que Dieu gard!

Ains qu’il muire, fera tel erre.

Cilz est cil qui la doit conquerre.

Là doit-elle finer sa vie,

Et l’un et l’autre gloire acquerre.

Là sera la chose assovye. (XLII–XLIII, 331–44)

[She will restore Christendom and the Church. She will destroy the unbelievers people talk about, and the heretics and their vile ways, for this is the substance of a prophecy that has been made. Nor will she have mercy on any place which treats faith in God with disrespect. She will destroy the Saracens, by conquering the Holy Land. She will lead Charles there, whom God preserve! Before he dies he will make such a journey. He is the one who is to conquer it. It is there that she is to end her days and that both of them are to win glory. It is there that the whole enterprise will be brought to completion.]

Any reader familiar with the Last Emperor prophecy would know that these predictions go with the ones of the “cerf volant” and “Charles, filz de Charles” that Christine has just addressed to Charles. Yet, Christine applies these predictions solely to Joan, essentially implying that if Charles wishes to fulfil his destiny as a great ruler, he must do it with her aid. Anne D. Lutkus and Julia M. Walker have suggested that Christine composed this at a time when Charles VII disagreed with Joan about the invasion of Paris, which was under the control of the Duke of Burgundy, and they have argued that Christine gave the poem an earlier date in order to lend the predictions authenticity through vaticinium ex eventu.36 Regardless of when Christine composed the poem, she apparently expected that Charles might cease his affiliation with Joan and hoped to dissuade him and his followers from doing so.

The Last Emperor prophecy (and its various offshoots, like the Second Charlemagne prophecy) is a call to battle. It encourages a leader to consider the next battle as his stepping-stone to divinely ordained world domination. The political goals of Deschamps and Christine differ little from the goals of the people who copied these political predictions under the pseudonym of “Sibyl.” However, beyond those political goals, Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pizan use their moments of Sibylline prophecy to comment on the nature of their own authority. Adopting the Sibyl’s voice aligns Deschamps with authorial figures like Bede and Christine with the Sibyl herself. Their declarations of prophetic futures remind their royal audience of why they are fit to make predictions in the first place and how special their insight is.

The Origins of Merlin’s Political Prophecies

Having outlined the history of the Sibyl’s role in political prophecy and her appearance in medieval French poetry, this study now turns to England, where Merlin was the most dominant figure in political prophecy. Merlin’s prophetic legacy is not completely separate from that of the Sibyl. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influential prophecies of Merlin within his Prophetiae Merlini (1130) and Historia regum Britanniae (1137) were modeled on those of the Tiburtine Sibyl and therefore often cited alongside them. Continental prophecies making predictions about the French kings or the Holy Roman Emperor frequently mentioned Merlin as someone who corroborated the Sibyl’s prediction of the Last Emperor. In England, however, Merlin became an independent figure – one whose prognostications allowed the people glossing them to launch fierce critiques against those in power.

The references to Otto I, II, and III in the Tiburtine Sibyl indicate that an earlier version of the prophecy was intended to praise Otto II and complain about the reign of Otto III.37 However, the appended Last Emperor portion of the prophecy eventually elicited the most references from people who were using the Tiburtine Sibyl to make contemporary political predictions. The Last Emperor prophecy was, at its heart, a cry to battle with an external foe. It could be used to warn a ruler, as when Christine tells Charles VII, “Je prie à Dieu que cellui soies” [I pray to God that you may be the person I have described] (XVII.130) in the Ditié, but the worst threat that the prophecy offered was merely that the king may not be the Last Emperor after all. In contrast, Merlinic prophecies in England latched onto the earlier kind of prophecy found in the Tiburtine Sibyl, which criticized the current king in favour of the next. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Merlin fueled an unusually volatile strain of political prophecies, and this happened for several reasons. First, the Merlinic tradition, which pre-dates Geoffrey by at least five centuries, was born out of internal struggles among the Welsh, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. Second, Geoffrey’s dramatic depiction of Merlin as a prophet who admonishes kings in the manner of the Old Testament Daniel or Samuel influenced how his legacy continued. Finally, certain anti-monarchical interpretations and imitations of Merlin’s prophecies became popular through a series of historical accidents – largely their inclusion in popular literary works like the prose Brut.

As Victoria Flood has underscored, most English political prophecies have their roots in ethnic conflicts at England’s borders with Wales and Scotland.38 Geoffrey of Monmouth wished to legitimize Norman rule of England, and to do so he appropriated longstanding Welsh prophecies associated with the Welsh poet, Myrddin.³⁹ One of the oldest poems attributed to Myrddin, Armes Prydein (c. 930), predicted the unification of the Welsh, Bretons, Cornish, Scots, and others to drive the Saxons out of Wessex. The prophecy was still being copied in the twelfth century but was revised to predict the unification of these groups to overthrow the then-ruling Normans and their king, Henry I. This reflects just how malleable political prophecies can be. A prediction once used to unite Celtic people against the Saxons could be repurposed to unite them against the Normans. Just as the Welsh were adapting the prophecies of Myrddin to spread this anti-Norman message, Geoffrey of Monmouth composed the pro-Norman Prophetiae Merlini (1130), which were also included as the seventh book of the Historia.⁴⁰ Internal English strife is central to the prophecy. Although each version of Myrddin or Merlin’s prophecy has predicted the unification of England, it is a unification under a leader of a particular ethnic faction. Merlin’s prophecies do not end with a Last Emperor figure. Instead, he simply predicts a number of atrocities before the end of the world. Because of this, Merlin’s prophecies are more nationally focused and ultimately pessimistic than the Sibyl’s.

Much like the Sibyl, Geoffrey’s Merlin is patterned after Old Testament prophets. Within Geoffrey’s Historia, a young Merlin gives a lengthy prophecy to the soon-to-be ousted Vortigern about the future kings of England. He metaphorically represents a series of kings as different animals in order to foretell the wars between the Britons and the Saxons, the coming of Arthur, the arrival of the Normans, and the eventual return of England to Celtic rule. Most of the over one hundred prophecies in a row that Merlin speaks have no apparent meaning, so they were easily adaptable to a number of political situations. Geoffrey had released these prophecies independently as the Prophetiae Merlini in 1130, several years before he finished the Historia, and chroniclers were immediately interpreting its contents to reflect on matters of their own time.⁴¹ For instance, in his Historia Ecclesiastica (1135), Ordericus Vitalis argues that the “leo justicie” [the Lion of Justice] mentioned in the Prophetiae Merlini referred to Henry I, who will “roar at the towers of Gaul.”⁴² Although this comparison was flattering to Henry I and straightforward in its prediction of his successful battles against France, later applications of Merlin’s prophecy were often extremely critical of those in power. The “Vae tibi, Nuestra” portion of Merlin’s prophecy, found in some versions of Geoffrey’s Historia but not others, was appropriated as an anti-Norman prophecy during Henry II’s reign.43

Merlin in Early Versions of the Brut

It is no wonder then that the poet Wace chose to exclude Merlin’s prophecy from his Norman translation of the Historia, the Roman de Brut, which he presented to Henry’s wife, Eleanor, in 1155.⁴⁴ As Jean Blacker notes, Wace was courting the patronage of Henry II and could not afford to alienate him.⁴⁵ Yet, Wace had other reasons to avoid repeating the prophecy – namely that he wished to establish a prophetic authorial persona more in line with that of Virgil than that of Geoffrey. Geoffrey of Monmouth had modeled the Historia on the Aeneid, inventing the fictional King Brutus, a Trojan fugitive like Virgil’s Aeneas, who flees Troy to found Britain. Wace translated Geoffrey but also consulted the Aeneid himself. As John Watkins has astutely observed, “The Brut presents itself as a Norman Aeneid and exalts its author as a Norman Virgil.”⁴⁶ One of the ways that Wace frames himself as the Norman Virgil, unmentioned by Watkins, is by resituating the prophetic elements of the Brut. When he comes to the portion of the story containing the prophecy, Wace distinguishes himself from his source, Geoffrey of Monmouth:

Dunc dist Merlin les prophecies

Qu vus avez, ço crei, oïes,

Des reis ki a venir esteient,

Ki la terre tenir deveient.

Ne vuil sun livre translater

Quant jo nel sai interpreter;

Nule rien dire nen vuldreie

Que si ne fust cum je dirreie. (7535–42)

[Then Merlin made the prophecies which I believe you have heard, of the kings who were to come and who were to hold the land. I do not wish to translate his book, since I do not know how to interpret it; I would not like to say anything, in case what I say does not happen.]⁴⁷

Wace is aware that his audience may be expecting Merlin’s popular predictions and therefore needs to offer reasons for excluding them. His reason – that he is wary of misinterpreting them – acknowledges the complex nature of translation. Wace implies that he could not present a straightforward translation without some amount of interpretation involved. Yet, in refusing to include the easily reinterpreted prophecies, Wace also exerts control over his authorial prophetic reputation. Had Wace simply translated all or any of Geoffrey’s Merlinic prophecies about future kings, he would have fueled endless political speculation as Geoffrey had, rather than asserting himself as an inspired and wise authority. Authors like Eustache Deschamps would later appropriate the Last Emperor prophecy because it was simple, straightforward, and serviceable to their own political situations. To Wace, this list of over one hundred prophecies may have seemed unwieldy and unprofitable as a means of establishing his authority. Instead, Wace includes one classic, memorable prophecy in a more Virgilian vatic fashion.

Wace contributes his own memorable prophecy to the end of the poem by transforming an ambiguous line within the Historia into a firmer prediction of Arthur’s return. Geoffrey of Monmouth had written: “Sed et inclitus ille rex Arturus letaliter uulneratus est; qui illinc ad sananda uulnera sua in insulam Auallonis” [The illustrious king Arthur too was mortally wounded; he was taken away to the island of Avalon to have his wounds tended].48 Although Geoffrey states that Arthur’s wounds were mortal, he curiously explains that they were still being treated – and on a mystical island, no less. This invites speculation that Arthur could still be alive. Wace elaborates on Arthur’s possible return:

Arthur, si la gest ne ment,

Fud el cors nafrez mortelment;

En Avalon se fist porter

Pur ses plaies mediciner.

Encore i est, Bretun l’atendent,

Si cum il dient e entendent;

De la vendra, encore puet vivre. (13275–81)

[Arthur, if the chronicle is true, received a mortal wound to his body. He had himself carried to Avalon, for the treatment of his wounds. He is still there, awaited by the Britons, as they say and believe, and will return and may live again.]

Wace embraces a connection to Merlin at this moment, as both a prophet and storyteller:

Maistre Wace, ki fist cest livre,

Ne volt plus dire de sa fin

Qu’en dist li prophetes Merlin;

Merlin dist d’Arthur, si ot dreit,

Que sa mort dutuse serreit. (13282–6)

[Master Wace, who made this book, will say no more of his end than the prophet Merlin did. Merlin said of Arthur, rightly, that his death would be doubtful.]

Here, Wace compares himself to Merlin in the way that Virgil compares himself to the Sibyl in the Aeneid.

In Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, the Sibyl uses the word “vates” to refer collectively to the prophets and poets dwelling together in the Elysian Fields, showing them to serve the same important societal function of honoring Phoebus. After this, in Book VII, Virgil famously uses the term to refer to himself when invoking the Muse, praying, “tu vatem, tu, diva, mone” [You, goddess, prompt the prophet/poet].49 Furthermore, as several scholars have noted, Virgil uses the Sibyl as a proxy for himself, especially insofar as she embraces ambiguity in her prophesying.⁵⁰ Virgil’s Sibyl writes her prophecies on oak leaves, but she will not help to reorder them if the wind leaves them in disarray. Similarly, Virgil’s Aeneid includes several ambiguous predictions about the future of Rome.⁵¹ In imitation of Virgil’s use of the Sibyl, Wace employs Merlin to remind the audience that he has the poetic power to at once reveal and obscure England’s future. By referring to himself as “Master Wace” in this moment, he carefully frames his own prophetic legacy – not as one who translates obscure predictions but as one who crafts his own. Wace’s new prophecy is only political on the surface level in that it predicts a future king. More strikingly, it is a supernatural prediction of a savior who will return from the dead – akin to Virgil’s purported foretelling of the coming of Christ in his fourth Eclogue. By restructuring the prophecy in his Roman de Brut, Wace asserts himself as more than Geoffrey’s translator. Rather, he transforms himself into a Norman Virgil. Laȝamon’s English translation of the Brut in 1190 likewise excludes Merlin’s extended prophecy, but it also magnifies the prophecy of Arthur’s return by ending the entire work with the promise “that an Arthur should yet come to help the English.”⁵²

In Wace’s and Laȝamon’s twelfth-century versions of the Brut, the prediction of Arthur’s return temporarily surpassed Merlin’s litany of future English kings as the dominant prophecy of the work. A variety of political verses adapted from Merlin’s prophecy in Geoffrey’s Historia still circulated independently, but they did not reinter the Brut tradition until the fourteenth century, when the Prophecy of the Six Kings was worked into the Long Version of the prose Brut. This prophecy was significantly narrower than the over one hundred prophecies of Geoffrey’s Prophetiae, making it memorable and easily applicable to contemporary politics.

The Prophecy of the Six Kings

The Prophecy of the Six Kings had been circulating independently of the prose Brut as early as 1312 as a way of promoting the deposition of Edward II and the accession of Edward III.53 The prophecy can be referred to as Galfridian because it imitates the animal symbolism of Merlin’s prophecies in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini and Historia regum Britanniae. It describes six kings: the Lamb, the Dragon, the Goat, the Boar, the Ass, and the Mole.⁵⁴ The first known version of this prophecy was written during the reign of Edward II, represented by the Goat. The prior reigns of Henry III and Edward I are represented as those of the Lamb and the Dragon, respectively, through the practice of vaticinium ex eventu. The prophecy “predicts” the Lamb’s/Henry III’s building of Westminster Abbey and the Dragon’s/Edward I’s reign over England, Scotland, and Wales in order to make Edward II recognizable as the third king, the Goat, who will bring “graunt damage famine et mortalite des gentz et perte de terre” [great damage, famine, and death of the people and loss of land].⁵⁵ The young Edward III, the Boar, is the hero of the prophecy – a kind of second Arthur who will gain back Scotland and Wales and go on to conquer France, Spain, Aragon, Germany, and eventually Jerusalem. The Boar was the symbol that Merlin had used to represent Arthur in the Historia, so this prediction of Edward III as the Boar who will make England prosper transforms Edward into a figure similar to the subject of Wace and Laȝamon’s prediction of Arthur’s second coming. By creating hope for Edward’s reign, the prophecy gives its audience permission to abandon loyalty to Edward II. Although the Boar resembles the Sibyl’s prediction of the Last Emperor or Second Charlemagne, this is ultimately not a Last Emperor prophecy. Instead of ending with the Boar’s reign, the prophecy describes the ensuing rule of the less-promising Ass and Mole. The Mole abandons England, leaving it to be divided into three parts, which Victoria Flood has interpreted as “the breaking away of Wales and Scotland from English rule, and the establishment of three independent kingdoms.”⁵⁶ More than straightforward political propaganda, the Prophecy of the Six Kings is also a reflection on the supposedly impending fall of the English nation – a national apocalypse.

The Prophecy of the Six Kings was appended to a later version of the anonymously authored prose Brut by an anonymous reviser. Unlike Wace’s and Laȝamon’s Brut, which ended with the death of Arthur, the prose Brut attempted to bridge the history between Arthurian times and more contemporary events. Even before the addition of the Prophecy of the Six Kings, early versions of the prose Brut drew from historical material postdating Wace’s Roman de Brut (namely Geffrei Gaiman’s Estoire des Engleis) to describe the reigns of English kings through the thirteenth century.57 The Oldest Version of the prose Brut had ended with the death of Henry III in 1272, but the Short Version and Long Version that were adapted from it added material so that the histories ended in the early 1330s.⁵⁸ The Long Version notably also added the Prophecy of the Six Kings to the moment corresponding to Merlin’s prophecy to Vortigern in the Historia regum Brittaniae, and this addition, although it enters the text as a prognostication, continues the prose Brut’s project of linking past kings to present ones. Wace and Laȝammon’s had understandably wanted to avoid becoming retrospective prophets of contemporary politics and therefore avoided Geoffrey of Monmouth’s all-too easily adaptable political prophecies in the Brut. Being anonymous, the reviser of the already-anonymously authored prose Brut had no such constraints and had specific political motivations for adding the prophecy to the work.

The Prophecy of the Six Kings had begun as a prediction of Edward III’s greatness as a way of promoting Edward II’s deposition but was added to the Brut with new purpose during the reign of Edward III, after Edward II had already been deposed.⁵⁹ As Lister M. Matheson has surmised, comparisons between Edward III and Arthur in the prophecy would have been helpful in garnering enthusiasm for his war campaigns in Scotland and France.⁶⁰ The fact that it was an already-established prophecy, perhaps familiar to some of its audience, only added to the illusion that the Prophecy of the Six Kings had genuinely predicted Edward III’s rule. Its inclusion as Merlin’s prediction within the Brut made it look much older than it was. The version of the prophecy within the Brut updates the vaticinium ex eventu portions to add events that had occurred during Edward II’s reign, such as the rebellion of Thomas Lancaster (represented as a bear) and the Despensers (represented as owls). The depiction of Edward III, the Boar, as a second Arthur remains the same, and especially within the context of the Arthur-centred Brut it appears as if Edward III will be the fulfilment of the prophecy of Arthur’s return. The addition of the Prophecy of the Six Kings to the Brut made it the most widely read prophecy in England. The Middle English prose Brut chronicle was one of the most popular works of the late fourteenth century. More manuscripts of it survive than any other work in Middle English, save two versions of the Wycliffite Bible.61

Prophetic Anxiety in the Courts of Edward III and Richard II

Through his foundation of the Order of the Garter, Edward III emphasized parallels between his own reign and Arthur’s, but he was not responsible for the Six Kings prophecy or its inclusion within the prose Brut, nor did he encourage prophecies about his reign in the manner of the Valois court of France.⁶² Given the prophecy’s role in supporting the deposition of his father, one can understand why Edward III never promoted it himself. The prophecy continued to take on other meanings related to deposing kings. For instance, a revision of the Prophecy of the Six Kings in rhyming couplets would flourish in the early 1400s as a hopeful prediction of a purportedly still-living Richard II’s return from exile to conquer his usurper, Henry IV.⁶³ Although this version of the prophecy involved Richard II in a positive role, it only came into being after his death. During Richard’s reign, it was a politically dormant prophecy, still read within the Brut but not actively reinterpreted in light of his kingship. Like his predecessor, Edward III, Richard must have viewed such prophecies with caution because of their strong associations with deposition. This association is amplified within the prose Brut because Merlin delivers the prophecy to Vortigern, the king whose political descent he has just foretold. While the prose Brut made this strain of Galfridian prophecies popular with the English people, it did not make it popular with the English kings.

Edward III’s reluctance to embrace political prophecies was almost certainly fueled by his knowledge that for every positive prophecy about himself he could find a handful of extremely critical ones. Most prominently, the Vaticinium Roberti Bridlington condemned Edward III after his success in the Hundred Years War had waned. It is a Latin poem, accompanied by a lengthy Latin prose commentary, and its survival in at least thirty-seven manuscripts indicates that it was one of the more popular written prophecies of its time. Internal evidence places the composition of the prophecy and the commentary sometime between November 1362 and April 1364.⁶⁴ The commentary was completed by John Ergome, a fourteenth-century Augustinian friar who studied at Oxford, collected occult literature, and had familial ties to the town of Bridlington.⁶⁵ Although not attributed to Merlin, the prophecy follows the Galfridian use of animal symbols as well as Merlin’s stance of boldly decrying the current king in favour of a greater future one, established in Geoffrey’s Historia. Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, several manuscripts attributed the prophecy to the prior of Bridlington, John Thwenge, but there is no internal or external evidence suggesting that he composed it.66 Although early scholars, most notably M.R. James, had suggested the Ergome himself composed the prophecy in addition to the commentary, Paul Meyvaert and A.G. Rigg have argued that Ergome could not have been the prophecy’s author due to differences in his vocabulary and minor errors in his interpretations of the prophecy’s probable intended meaning.⁶⁷ The Vaticinium uses a great deal of what Lesley Coote has termed “precious language” – metaphors, puns, and other inventive devices to disguise (while also making obvious) the names of places and people mentioned in the prophecy.⁶⁸ This precious language gives the vaticinium ex eventu portions of the prophecy an air of authenticity because it looks to the reader as if the person predicting these events could only see them partially. Nevertheless, it is written to be transparent enough to convey a certain message to those who interpret it – in this case, the message of complaint against Edward III.

The Vaticinium “predicts” Edward II’s death and then goes on to deal with the disappointments of Edward III’s reign. Some of the “predictions” about Edward III are positive, like his victory against the Scottish at Halidon Hill, but many are negative, like his marital affairs. Ergome’s commentary on the prophecy claims that the return of the plague has been due to “peccata luxuriae vel regis vel papae” [sins of lust of the king and pope].⁶⁹ The prophecy expresses frustrations with Edward III’s decision to cease wars with France by signing the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and ultimately predicts that Edward III will not gain control over France but that a future leader, signified by the Cock, will win France back for England.⁷⁰ The Cock corresponds to Edward, the Black Prince, who was still alive at the time of the prophecy’s composition, holding Aquitaine and Gascony as principalities. Ergome’s commentary is addressed to Earl Humphry Bohun of Hereford, and both the prophecy and commentary are aimed at an aristocratic audience that would have been dissatisfied with Edward III’s decision not to pursue the Hundred Years War further.⁷¹ Like the Prophecy of the Six Kings, the Vaticinium expresses frustration with the current monarch and then looks forward to a future king who will conquer and unite lands for England. Nevertheless, as Lesley Coote notes, Ergome’s commentary of the Vaticinium tempers criticism of Edward III with optimistic predictions about his upcoming jubilee year in 1377, making the prophecy “politically acceptable” and able to be widely circulated beyond Bridlington.72 Like the Prophecy of the Six Kings, the Bridlington prophecy resurfaced during Henry IV’s reign with new interpretations that presented hope that the deposed Richard II was still alive and would reclaim his throne. In 1402, a friar minor from Leicester was hanged quoting it in such a context.⁷³

This popular English tradition of prophesying a series of monarchs of varying quality lent itself to simultaneous monarchical critique and praise, leading rulers like Richard II to be reasonably sceptical of embracing prophecies as a method of self-promotion. At least one chronicle describes Richard II as being unsettled by specific verses of the Vaticinium.⁷⁴ English variations on the more-flattering Last Emperor prophecy of the Sibyl did exist, but Richard II’s advocacy for peace with France meant that he was loath to embrace those as well. Aristocrats who stood to profit from wars and wished to spur Richard II into supporting them appropriated such prophecies to promote battles. For instance, in 1383, Bishop Henry Despenser preached in favour of a Crusade against the French in Flanders, but he likely did so to protect English wool interests.⁷⁵ A manuscript owned by Despenser, British Library MS Cotton Vespasian E.VIII, begins with three prophecies, “Catulus lincieus,” “The Holy Oil of St. Thomas,” and “Lilium regnans,” all predicting the English king’s eventual victory in France and the Holy Land.⁷⁶ There is no indication that this manuscript was ever presented to Richard II. Rather, it seems that Despenser was using Richard II as a rallying figure for the Crusade to inspire support for the war among his supporters. Richard II remained sceptical about the value of such controversial Crusades and bade his chancellor, Michael de la Pole, to attempt to negotiate provisional peace with France in the conflict.⁷⁷

Political prophecies about the monarchy proliferated in Ricardian England, but Richard had little reason to support them in general, much less in the work of poets. Charles VI was patronizing Eustache Deschamps to compose, among other things, prophecies that advised him to engage in battles that he had no wish to enter. Richard’s court honored no such enterprise. He was under far too much pressure and scrutiny from Parliament as it was, and the dominant prophetic discourse in England was focused on deposition. Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pizan knew that they could liken themselves to the Sibyl and speak their political prophecies in their own voices because they would be rewarded (or at least heard) by the king and his court. If Richard did patronize literature, he clearly did not care to patronize works that included prophecies about him, as Charles VI of France did. It was not until Henry IV took the crown that English authors like Gower had the incentive to write prophecies of their king in their own voices.

Ricardian Poetic Prophecy

Although Ricardian authors found little encouragement to adopt the political prophetic voices of the Sibyl or Merlin, they nevertheless cultivated prophetic personae, drawing from a variety of extant literary prophetic traditions. Broadly speaking, a prophet is an intermediary between a deity and an audience. A prophet always has a message, but that message may or may not involve prognostication, the prediction of future events. Even if prophets do not prognosticate, they often speak with admonitory voices, warning of potential outcomes that may befall those who fail to heed good advice. Like prophets, medieval authors were interpreters as well as advisors. Modern audiences often consider originality to be one of the foremost attributes of a talented author, but in a time before copyright laws and book contracts, medieval authors could be just as (if not more) prized for their roles in compiling, translating, and interpreting pre-existing texts.78 As an intermediary figure, the prophetic subject position allowed medieval authors to comment on their own roles as creative messengers of earlier stories and wisdom. Developing their personae also allowed authors to convey advice more convincingly.

The structure of the dream vision, newly popular in late fourteenth-century England, gave Ricardian authors a straightforward way to develop and elaborate upon their own prophetic poetic identities as artistic mediators. The dream vision has its roots in classical literature, but The Romance of the Rose, written first by Guillaume de Lorris in the 1230s and then completed by Jean de Meun forty years later, established new conventions of the medieval genre. The Romance of the Rose was the second-most-copied vernacular medieval work, after Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, which was itself inspired by the dream-vision format.⁷⁹ In a medieval dream vision, the narrator begins the poem by describing a problem had before falling asleep. The narrator then typically describes a dream of an allegorical landscape and an enlightened guide who leads the narrator through it. In some way, the dream usually answers the narrator’s problem, and the guide sometimes directs the narrator to write about the dream when it concludes. Although the narrator of the dream is not always named, the tradition of aligning the persona of the dreamer with the identity of the poet gave authors the possibility of naming themselves as the first-person speakers in their dream visions, thereby developing aspects of their authorial personae.⁸⁰ For instance, the narrator of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House of Fame identifies himself as “Geoffrey” and even has the character of the eagle comment on how much he weighs, bringing the author’s name and physical presence into the poem through alignment with the dreamer. The dream vision not only invites authors into their own works as characters; it also allows them to define their own artistic identity through the narrative subject position of the prophet.

The dream vision is inherently prophetic insofar as it is a work written in the first person that claims to be an inspired vision that sheds light on life events. Dante boldly expands the theological elements of the dream vision, representing himself as a second Paul who was granted a vision of the afterlife. The degree to which Dante was claiming actual divine inspiration and physical transportation remains a debated subject.81 Langland, Gower, and Chaucer take a more symbolic approach to amplifying the prophetic aspects of the dream vision. All three of them compare themselves to biblical prophets in strategic ways that highlight their own authorial identities and messages. Michael C. Kuczynski has illuminated the importance of the Psalms within Piers Plowman and the ways in which William Langland gestures to their author, David, as a prophetic poet who strove, as he strives, towards moral reform.⁸² Alistair Minnis has also examined the manner in which John Gower draws comparisons between himself and the apocalyptic prophet, John of Patmos, in order to assert similar auctoritas – a special kind of authority only ascribed to great thinkers of the past.⁸³ Russell Peck has drawn attention to Gower’s prominent use of Daniel as a double for himself in both the Vox clamantis and the Confessio Amantis.⁸⁴ As I will argue in chapter 4, Chaucer also likens himself to Enoch and Eli in The House of Fame. Beyond comparing themselves to biblical prophets, these authors all creatively work within several prophetic and paraprophetic traditions in ways that have yet to be fully appreciated. In each case, one can see the prophetic subject position as allowing authors to clarify their relationships to their sources and their audiences. In the prophetic role, authors can address the nature of their inspiration, whether it is Langland’s thorough deconstruction of a variety of ecclesiastical authorities, Gower’s attention to the vox populi, or Chaucer’s intimate knowledge of both the classics and court gossip. Likewise, their prophetic positions emphasize the importance of their moral and ethical messages to resolving the problems of their times.

Despite their similar explorations of prophetic authorial personae in dream visions, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer took distinct approaches to adapting political prophecies from the traditions of the Sibyl and Merlin. Langland mimics political prophecy to ridicule and revise its purpose. Gower only works with political prophecy via vatincinium ex eventu in the Visio of the Vox clamantis until he more earnestly adopts the mantle of political prophet during the reign of Henry IV. Chaucer stands out as the Ricardian author least apt to engage with any form of political prophecy whatsoever. Rather, he delves deeply into the classical roots of the dream vision to use the prophetic subject position as a place to emphasize his inspiration from previous authors. Regardless of the disparity of their approaches to political prophecy, all three authors have been subject to misleading retrospective prophetic interpretations by later readers. The prophetic registers that Langland, Gower, and Chaucer claimed for themselves, combined with their status as canonical authors, made them ideal voices to appropriate for political purposes.

Furthermore, once the appropriation occurred, the retrospective prophecies that were applied to Langland, Gower, and Chaucer influenced subsequent readings of their works. Because they have their own discreet beginnings and endings, predictions are easily lifted out of a lengthy text. They can become the subject of their own discussions, redefining or even sometimes eclipsing the literary work that contains them. Such was the case with Piers Plowman, which was not published in full between 1561 and 1813.85 Because the lengthy and complex text remained out of grasp for several centuries, its reputation and, by extension, Langland’s, was solely based on political interpretations of its short prognostications. When readers rediscovered the whole work of Piers Plowman, the parodic nature of the political prophecies within it became practically imperceptible to an audience primed to see them as genuine foresight.