7554. Luc. vi, 38.
7567. John iii, 8.
7572. John iii, 11.
7582. John iii, 8.
7600. _thorugh caractes._ It was the popular belief in the middle ages,
that while the Jews were accusing the woman taken in adultery, Christ wrote
with his staff on the ground the sins of the accusers, and that when they
perceived this they dropped their accusation in confusion at finding that
their own guilt was known. See this point curiously illustrated in Mr.
Halliwell's Coventry Mysteries, pp. 220, 221. These are the _characters_
alluded to in Piers Ploughman.
7624. Luke vi, 37.
7701. 1 Cor. iii, 19.
7709. Luke ii, 15.
7714. Matth. ii, 1.
7721. Luke ii, 7.
7779. Psalm xxxi, 1.
7795. Luke vi, 39. The ignorance and inefficiency of the parish priests
appear to have become proverbial in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In the latter century a canon of Lilleshul in Shropshire, named John Myrk,
or Myrkes, composed an English poem, or rather metrical treatise, on their
duties, which he commences by applying to them this same aphorism of our
Saviour:--
God seyth hymself, as wryten we fynde,
That whenne the blynde ledeth the blynde,
Into the dyche they fallen boo,
For they ne sen whare by to go.
So faren prestes now by dawe,
They beth blynde in Goddes lawe, etc.
_MS. Cotton. Claud._ A. II.
It had previously been applied in the same manner to the parish priests by
the author of a long French poem (apparently written in England in the
fourteenth century) entitled _Le Miroir de l'Ome_ (Speculum Hominis), as
follows:--
Dieus dist, et c'est tout verité,
Qe si l'un voegle soit mené
D'un autre voegle, tresbucher
Falt ambedeux en la fossée.
C'est un essample comparé
As fols curetz, qui sanz curer
Ne voient pas le droit sentier,
Dont font les autres forsvoier,
Qui sont après leur trace alé.
Car fol errant ne puet quider,
Ne cil comment nous puet saner,
Qui mesmes est au mort naufré.
_MS. in the possession of Mr. J. Russell Smith._
The following picture of the corrupt manners of the parish priests at this
time is extracted from a much longer and more minute censure in the same
poem:--
Des fols curetz auci y a,
Qui sur sa cure demourra
Non pour curer, mais q'il sa vie
Endroit le corps plus easera.
Car lors ou il bargaignera
Du seculiere marchandie,
Dont sa richesce multeplie;
Ou il se donne à leccherie,
Du quoy son corps delitera;
Ou il se prent à venerie,
Qant duist chanter sa letanie,
Au bois le goupil huera.
7802. Psal. xv, 5. We might be led to suppose that this was the "neck
verse" in the time of Piers Ploughman. In later times the text which was
given to read to those who claimed the benefit of clergy is said to have
been the beginning of Psal. lv, _Miserere mei, &c._
7840. Eccl. v, 5.
7846. _Trojanus._ See the note on line 6859.
7854. Matth. xvi, 27. Filius enim hominis venturus est in gloria Patris sui
cum angelis suis: et tunc reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus.
7915. _his flessh is foul flessh._ Yet in spite of the "foulness" of its
flesh, the peacock was a very celebrated dish at table. For an account of
the use made of the peacock in feasts, see Le Grand d'Aussy, Histoire de la
Vie privée des Français, tom. i, pp. 299-301, and 361. In the Romance of
Mahomet, 13th century, it is said of Dives--
Et dou Riche qui _tant poon
Englouti_ et tant bon poisson,
Tante piéche de venison,
Et but bon vin par grant delit, &c.
_Roman de Mahommet_, l. 301.
7944. _Avynet._ In the 14th and 15th centuries, as any grammar was called a
_Donet_, because the treatise of Donatus was the main foundation of them
all, so, from Esop and Avienus from whom the materials were taken, any
collection of fables was called an _Avionet_ or an _Esopet_. The title of
one of these collections in a MS. of the Bibl. du Roi at Paris is,
_Compilacio Ysopi alata cum Avionetto, cum quibusdam addicionibus et
moralitatibus_. (_Robert, Fabl. Inéd. Essay_, p. clxv.) Perhaps the
reference in the present case is to the fable of the Peacock who complained
of his voice, the 39th in the collection which M. Robert calls _Ysopet_, in
the morality to which are the following lines:--
Les riches conteront
Des biens qu'il aront
En ce siecle conquis.
Cil qui petit ara,
De petit contera
Au Roy de paradis.
Qui vit en povreté,
Sans point d'iniquité,
Moult ara grant richesse
Es cieux, en paradis,
O dieux et ses amis
Seront joyeux et aise.