In later fourteenth-century England, the persistent question of how to live the “best life” preoccupied many pious Christians, and new answers proliferated for enterprising laypeople. The literate might read the catechism or monastic meditations translated from Latin into English; the prosperous could participate in administering religious guilds and chantries or perhaps retire to monasteries. During this period, religious reformer John Wyclif argued controversially that perfection was to be found in the life of biblical reading, preaching, and teaching, a priestly discipline that should be accessible in some measure to every Christian. Meanwhile the instabilities and contingencies of religious identity offered ready material for poetic satire. Piers Plowman, Langland's great, inconclusive meditation on the complexity of Christian life, begins as narrator Will dons a shepherd's clothes, “in habite as an heremite, vnholy of werkes,” assuming a new religious role even as he acknowledges its falseness. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, monks persistently flout the Benedictine vow of stability, appearing in taverns, manors, and ladies' beds: everywhere but in their cloisters.

During a period when many forms of professional religious life were subject to lay interest and emulation, as well as doubt and critique, vernacular authors responded in varied ways to the question of how lay Christians should seek spiritual fulfillment. This book analyzes some of these textual formations of lay piety in an age of social change and religious upheaval, drawing upon a largely neglected body of religious guidance together with reformist discourses and contemporary poetry.