Pierce The Ploughman's Crede - Textual History

Textual History

Surviving in two complete forteenth-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the Crede can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between 1393 and 1400. The two manuscripts both include Piers Plowman, and in the first, the Crede serves as an introduction to a C-text version of Piers Plowman. Additionally, BL MS Harley 78 contains a fragment of the Crede copied ca. 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 T. 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 nineteenth century; more recently, James Dean has edited the text for TEAMs, and Helen Barr has produced a generously annotated edition in The Piers Plowman Tradition (London: J.M. Dent, 1993) (ISBN 0-460-87050-5).