578 Pierre d’Ailly
church of San Francesco at Arezzo. It was inspired by the
frescoes of Agnolo Gaddi (d. 1369) and by JAMES OFVOR-
AGINE’s GOLDENLEGEND.In these paintings and frescoes,
he showed the influence of Flemish art, combining geo-
metrical styles and perspectives with light and natural-
ism. In 1465 he was at the court of FEDERICO DA
MONTEFELTRO, the lord of Urbino, for whom he painted
portraits of Federico and his wife, Battista Sforza.
Between 1472 and 1474, he created the Brera altarpiece
in MILAN, depicting the Virgin gazing at the sleeping
Christ Child. Piero wrote treatises on geometry, perspec-
tive, and PAINTING. He stopped painting in the early
1470s; however, there is a reference to yet another lost
fresco in 1478. Although Vasari reported that his sight
might have failed, he probably devoted his attention to
writing until he died in 1492.
Further reading:Perry Brooks, Piero della Francesca:
The Arezzo Frescoes(New York: Rizzoli, 1992); Kenneth
Clark, Piero della Francesca,2d ed. (1969; reprint, Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981); Carlo Ginzburg, The
Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca,trans. Martin Ryle
and Kate Soper (London: Verso, 2000); Anna Maria Maet-
zke and Carlo Bertelli, eds., Piero della Francesca: The Leg-
end of the True Cross in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001); Jeryldene M. Wood,
ed., The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Pierre d’Ailly SeeAILLY,PIERRE D’.
Piers Plowman The allegorical work called The Visions
of Will Concerning Piers Plowman existed in many
manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries and in sev-
eral printed versions from the 16th century. They were
linked with an author named William LANGLAND, who
referred to himself as Will several times in the
manuscripts. There were three versions, known as A, B,
and C, all said to have been composed between about
1360 and 1395. They were allegorical accounts of the
corruption of society and an attempt to purify it through
a certain Piers the Plowman, the personification of the
ordinary man. He sought goodness through humility,
honest endeavor, and obedience to the law of GOD. This
didactic, somewhat satirical, and alliterative poem could
be read in several ways. There have been numerous dis-
putes about the relationships of the different versions and
whether they were written by one person.
Piers Plowmanwas a long dream allegory describing
aspects of social and religious conditions in ENGLAND
that needed reform. The author used the techniques of
the dream and allegory for a moral and religious pur-
pose, to examine the natures of heavenly love and
virtue, at both the literal and figurative levels. This view
of the world left little room for sympathy for conditions
as they were. The world had been corrupted by love of
money and by vice pretending to be virtue, especially
among the CLERGY. Its concern for the poor, the
oppressed, and the wretched was obvious and credible.
Piers Plowman was contemporary with the Peasant
Rebellion of 1381, built on popular religious ideas, anti-
clericalism, and contemporary exemplars or didactic
stories common in sermons.
See also JUSTICE; SOCIAL STATUS AND STRUCTURE
VISIONS AND DREAMS.
Further reading:William Langland, Piers the Plow-
man,trans. J. F. Goodridge (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Classics, 1959); David Aers, Chaucer, Langland, and the
Creative Imagination(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1980); John A. Alford, ed., A Companion to Piers Plowman
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Morton
W. Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century
Apocalypse (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1962); Charlotte Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman:
The Evolution of the Text(Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996); Derek Pearsall, An Annotated Critical
Bibliography of Langland (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1990).Pietro of Morrone SeeCELESTINEV, POPE AND THE
CELESTINE ORDER.pilgrimage and pilgrimage sites In Christianity,
JUDAISM, and ISLAM,a pilgrimagecould be defined as “a
journey to a holy place done out of religious piety.” The
pilgrimage was supposed to be a manifestation of piety
and was one of the five pillars of Islam. The HAJJto
MECCAwas required sometime during the life of every
Muslim. The pilgrim was one who devotedly, perhaps
penitentially, certainly voluntarily, exiled him or herself
to break with the world, purifying his or her souls by
the very fact of departure. Some Christian pilgrims
even wandered perpetually, seeking pardon for their
sins. Pilgrims were directed to the temple in the Jewish
BIBLEthen to the holy places that had been sanctified
by the passage of Christ or the presence of RELICS.
There were two main sites for medieval Christianity:
Christ’s tomb at JERUSALEM and the tombs of Saints
Peter and Paul at ROME. In the ninth century another
was added, the tomb wrongly considered to be that of
Saint James the Great at Compostela in SPAIN. Eventu-
ally it became possible to hire another to perform a
meritorious pilgrimage.
The number of local places of pilgrimage grew as a
result of intense popular piety and the realization by the
CLERGYthat such visits could produce considerable rev-
enues while helping people save their SOUL. The relics at
these locations could supposedly produce the MIRACLES
that seekers hoped for, so sanctuaries abounded all over
Europe, especially as more relics and saints’ bodies were
found or discerned. Papal jubilees or HOLY YEARS in