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The Layman's Complaint and the Friar's Answer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Francis Lee Utley
Francis Lee Utley
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
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Extract

The two poems which I shall here transcribe and discuss have been often noticed but never printed. They appear as additions in a fifteenth century hand to a version of the late fourteenth century treatise Poor Caitiff, preserved in MS. St. John's College, Cambridge, G. 28 (195), itself of the fifteenth century. Besides our two poems, which appear on the front fly leaves, the margins contain numerous scribbles in one or more sixteenth century hands. The manuscript possesses marks of ownership by one John Graunge, who also owned another fifteenth century collection containing such Latin pieces as Expositio Symboli, Peter of Blois's De Amicitia Christiana, Speculum St. Eadmundi, and Decretum Abbreviatum, now preserved in the same library. The donor of our manuscript was Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who gave it to the College in 1635.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 1945 , pp. 141 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1945

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References

1 James, Montague R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of St. John's College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1918), pp. 230–231Google Scholar. I am indebted to the Librarian of St. John's for permission to secure photostats and to edit the poems.

2 James, pp. 212–213.

3 James, p. xiii.

4 Page 231.

5 Allen, Hope Emily, MLR, XVIII (1923), 3—4Google Scholar. The information might have appeared in “ρe book of lay mennys bookis,” if Pecock ever wrote the Latin work by that name which he mentions in The Follower to the Donet, ed. Hitchcock, Elsie V. (London [EETS 164], 1924), p. 7Google Scholar.

6 See Allen, p. 4, and also her Writings Ascribed to Rolle, RichardHermit of Hampole (New York, 1927), pp. 406–407Google Scholar. Pfander, H. G., “Some Medieval Manuals of Religious Instruction,” JEGP, XXXV (1936), 251Google Scholar, says “it seems to have been a manual popular among the Wyclifites.” Poor Caitiff has never been printed in full. James and Miss Allen refer to an edition promised by “Mr. Peake” for the EETS, but the last appearance of this title in the Society's prospectus was in 1917.

7 The Lollard Bible (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 346–348Google Scholar.

8 Since the medieval prohibition of the vernacular to laymen has often been questioned, it is convenient here to refer to the evidence set forth by Miss Deanesly, pp. 326–333 and passim.

9 Rev.Forshall, Josiah and SirMadden, Frederic, ed., The Holy Bible … Made from the Latin by John Wycliffe and his Followers (Oxford, 1850), IV, 468Google Scholar. The Authorized Version reads “For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.”

10 For other poems of this sort see Brown, Carleton and Bobbins, Rossell H., The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943)Google Scholar, nos. 808, 871, 1148, 2026, 2663, 2777, 3328; and also Flügel, Anglia, XII (1889–90), 268. On the whole subject see Schneider, Rudolf, Der Mönch in der englischen Dichtung (Leipzig [Palaestra155], 1928)Google Scholar, where our two poems are not mentioned.

11 First Supplement to A Manual of the Writings in Middle English (New Haven, 1923), pp. 957, 1009Google Scholar.

12 A Register of Middle English Religious & Didactic Verse (Oxford, 1916–20), I, 231Google Scholar, II, 356 (no. 2387). The revision, Brown and Robbins' Index, correctly describes them as two poems (nos. 3697 and 161).