Holy Church: Sistine or Sixteen?: Piers Plowman the A Version: Passus 2, lines 1-30

Abstract

When first encountering the living embodiment of Holy Church in Piers Plowman Passus 2, one might expect divine insight or moral clarity. Instead, we meet a figure whose righteous posture quickly unravels into a petty, almost comical tirade. This contrast between her spiritual status and emotional immaturity sets the tone for one of the poem’s central themes: the tension be-tween surface righteousness and deeper hypocrisy. My translation of the A-Text highlights the hypocrisy of Holy Church through a blend of critical and adaptive strategies. By rendering Middle English into present-day youth slang, I expose Holy Church’s tone for what it is: less moral sermon, more hallway gossip. This approach draws out the poem’s social dynamics in a way that resonates with modern day readers, especially students encountering medieval literature for the first time.