Apokalypse und Antichrist in der englischen Literatur des 14. Jahrhunderts: William Langlands Piers Plowman Joachim von Fiore und der Chiliasmus des Mittelalters., Joachim von Fiore und der Chiliasmus des Mittelalters.

The appearance of Lady Meed, modelled on the Whore of Babylon, corresponds to the appearance of the Antichrist in B.19-20. Although she is commanded to subject her actions to synderesis, the failure of Piers, who must call on Hunger to institute his ideas of a just order, means that she triumphs over that which is represented by the king and his advisors, Reason and Conscience. The conclusion of the poem forces consideration of how much importance should be ascribed to the perfected world order of B.3 in the context of history as conceptualized in B.20, given the absence in the latter of discussion of the Resurrrection and of any Kingdom of God of 1000 years duration. Only in the depiction of a perfected world order in B. 10 does the viewpoint of salvation appear, in the prophesied arrival of the king who will conquer the Antichrist – an idea absent from B. 3. Compared with Joachim of Fiore, WL is more fully committed to a christocentric view of history, and Joachim’s “intelligentia spiritualis” is unrelated to WL’s Reason, which derives from the scholastic concept as found in Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.