Plowboy trope
Christian rhetoric and literature
The plowboy trope appears in Christian rhetoric and literature in the form of various bucolic, lowly, pious or even unsavoury characters who would benefit from being exposed to Scripture in the vernacular. The plowboy trope is an anti-elitist trope dating back at least 1600 years.
Appearances
Jerome (386)
The trope starts with St. Jerome's letter eulogizing the region of Bethlehem, where he lived, remarking on how the local popular songs' lyrics were from the Psalms:
in the village of Christ all is rusticity: and, except for the chanting of psalms, silent. Whereever you turn the ploughman holding his plough sings alleluia, the sweaty reaper rouses himself with psalms, and the vine-dresser sings David. These are the songs of this country; these, in the popular phrase, its love ditties: these the shepherd whistles; they arm the tiller.
John Chrysostom
St. John Chrysostom (c. 400) invokes a related set of characters who can understand Christ's few and plain words to love God and neighbour:
And these things even to a ploughman, and to a servant, and to a widow woman, and to a very child, and to him that appears to be exceedingly slow of understanding, are all plain to comprehend and easy to learn.
Amalarius
Amalarius's Liber officialis (c. 830) does not supply a cast of characters, but makes the cantor of the Mass, by analogy, into a ploughman, and so utilizing the trope's the other elements of ploughing, singing and simple sincerity:
The earth is furrowed as the oxen drag the plough when the cantors, drawing their innermost breath, drag forth a sweet voice and present it to the people. They goad their own hearts, as well as the hearts of others, to tears and the confession of sins, as if laying bare the hidden parts of the earth.
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This entry incorporates text from “Plowboy trope” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.