University of Virginia Library

VERSES IN SERMONS AGAIN: THE CASE OF CAMBRIDGE,
JESUS COLLEGE, MS QA.13

by
Ralph Hanna

Even ninety years after the fact, Carleton Brown's contributions to the study
of the early English lyric remain monumental. Not only did he produce
the only attempts at comprehensive, historically conceived editions of many texts
(primarily short religious verse), but through his extensive bibliographical efforts
he largely set the agenda followed by all subsequent scholarship. Whatever the
limitations I will discuss below, his immense investment in the manuscript record
of short verse and in its presentation to the scholarly community in organised
form cannot be faulted.

Brown's great monument, actually the second of his major bibliographi-
cal contributions, is Index of Middle English Verse, which appeared in 1943. Co-
authored with Rossell H. Robbins, at the time a Cambridge graduate, it was the
culmination of a quarter century of work.[1] Brown had begun surveying verse in
manuscripts before the first World War—at a time when large numbers of texts
were known only 'accidentally', on the basis of their presentation in print from a
single copy. Moreover, in the absence of comprehensive modern catalogues and
indexes, knowledge of library collections was equally haphazard.

In this context, Brown went about the task of finding Middle English texts
with considerable rigour. He did not try to survey everything but generally lim-
ited himself to manuscripts he believed would include English. But within these
limits, he made reasonably scrupulous folio-by-folio surveys of numerous selected
books. Further, he relied on similar surveys from correspondents he believed
trustworthy (e.g. Col. R. B. Haselden, curator of manuscripts at the Hunting-
ton Library) for information about collections he could not visit personally. His
exemplary manuscript bibliography, however partial its survey, performed an
extremely useful service by demonstrating, most particularly to North American
scholars who lacked continuous access to the British archive, precisely where
verse of all sorts might be found.

One of Brown's greatest supports in his search for verse was provided by past
manuscript cataloguers. Preeminent here was the greatest manuscript scholar of
the early twentieth century, M. R. James, who had carefully described nearly all
the manuscripts in Cambridge college libraries in a series of magisterial cata-
logues. As James saw, in a customarily informative description, Cambridge, Jesus

College, MS Q.A.13 (his MS 13) is a composite manuscript of sermons, at least
portions of Franciscan origin.[2] Latter parts of the book are joined by a medieval
foliation (not replaced by any modern one). This begins at modern fol. 60, and
one set of Latin sermons in double columns, copied in the second half of the
fourteenth century, ends on medieval fol. 33v fol. 91v in the continuous modern
foliation (which shortly ceases). This is succeeded by a set of sermons in long
lines, written in what an English palaeographer would describe as a secretary
bookhand of the mid fifteenth century; these sermons cover the medieval fo-
lios 34–149v, with folios 149v–157v (the end of the manuscript) a table of topics
treated in them.

The volume's second, fifteenth-century set of sermons may well represent a
collection from diverse sources. But within this section of the book, James noted
English bits on folios containing a consecutive block of three sermons:

• 1. Fols 79v–83v: 'Ingredere ciuitatem Actuum 9[:6] et in epistola hodierna
  Reuerendi mei dicit Egidius De regimine…', for inclaustrating a recluse;
• 2. Fols 83v–90v: 'Quid fecit quare morietur, primo Regum 2o[:cf. 32] Wat hath
  ye man do yat he schal dy3e 300 [l. þ00] Karissimi narrat Augustinus 10o. De
  ciuitate dei capitulo 19….', for Good Friday;
• 3. Fols 90v–94v: 'Tv es qui venturas es Matthei 11 [:3] Karissimi Virgilius 6o.
  Eneidorum docet quod tria principaliter requiruntur in rege…', for (?the first
  Sunday in) Advent?

As is customary in books of this sort, the English, which inspection proves to
be rhymed verse, has been written consecutively within the Latin prose of the
sermons.

Within these sermons, the scribe copies seven separate sets of verses. Follow-
ing James's notice, Brown surveyed the manuscript; as will emerge, this study did
not form one of the triumphs of his indexing. Following his notice, several of the
poems have been printed (although most usually from another source). The ma-
gister macaronicorum, Siegfried Wenzel, has published two items Brown overlooked
completely and has discussed the manuscript helpfully on several occasions. On
the basis of such published notice, the Edinburgh linguistic atlas briefly refers to
the book as containing 'East Anglian (? Suffolk)' English.[3]

In manuscript order, Jesus MS 13 contains the following English verse:

• (a) fol. 83: a seven-line lyric, ignored in Brown's Index and first published by
  Wenzel, with errors, Anglia 92 (1974), 74–75 (no. 79), and in a corrected version,
  Preachers, 228–229.

---

65




• (b) scattered among the Latin, fols 85–86v: Index 2240, ed. from National Li-
  brary of Scotland, MS Advocates' 18.7.21, Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of
  the XIVth Century (Oxford, 1924), 88–89, 268nn.
• (c) scattered among the Latin, fols 86v–87: Index 4185, ed. from Cambridge Uni-
  versity Library, MS Ff.v.48, Henry A. Person, Cambridge Middle English Lyrics
  (Seattle WA, 1953, 1962), 10–11; and R. T. Davies, Medieval English Lyrics: A
  Critical Anthology (London, 1963), 207–208.
• (d) fol. 87: Index 1307; Brown, ed., Register, 1:212.
• (e) fol. 89, a pair of couplets, ignored in Brown's Index; Wenzel, ed., Preachers,
  154 and n.
• (f) fol. 90: Index 2074, ed. from British Library, MS Harley 7322, Frederick J.
  Furnivall, Political, Religious, and Love Poems, Early English Text Society 15
  (1866), 235.
• (g) scattered among the Latin, fols 92v–93v: reported by Brown as Index 3210 on
  fol. 92, described as three couplets, unpublished; and as Index 3937 on fol. 93,
  described as 'a single couplet in a Latin treatise'; Brown, ed., Register, 1:212;
  but in fact forty-two lines of verse, an allegorisation that shifts tenors at lines
  16/17.[4]

Before passing on to consider these verses and Brown's various handlings of
them in more detail, one might note some further codicological details about the
Jesus College manuscript, necessarily ignored in Brown's summary presentation
of verse contents. The volume remains in probably its original binding, whit-
tawed leather with a partial chemise over bevelled boards on five thongs, two
sets pegged to a single hole (a specifically fifteenth-century technique). It has an
intact pair of straps with metal fittings and staple clasps on the leading edge of the
lower board (but no evidence of chaining). The medieval front flyleaves survive,
with an indication of contents (including notation of a second folio, a gesture
standard in careful institutional library catalogues) and a library pressmark 'N.ii'
(later fifteenth century). Although the centre of this leaf, presumably with an in-
stitutional ex-libris, has been cut away, James saw (and Neil Ker confirmed) that
the book had been in the fifteenth-century library of Durham Cathedral Priory.
It passed to Jesus College, with at least forty-six other volumes (another twenty-
nine of these medieval Durham books), in 1685 as the donation of Thomas Man,
MA and fellow.[5]

Above I have identified the hand that copied the sermons with verses as 'what
an English palaeographer would describe as a secretary bookhand'. However,
both script features and peculiarities of textual rendition indicate that the hand
would be more properly be identified as 'continental cursive'. In particular, the
scribe regularly writes a v-shaped continental variety of short r, and routinely
reproduces t in the same form as c, particularly in final position. (This distribu-
tion I normalise in the texts presented in the Transcriptions below.) The writer
also displays features that continental scripts share with English secretary, e.g. an
open flat lower lobe on g, a bean-shaped form of final -s.

Further, the scribe is plainly unused to copying English, and he appears to
be doing it literatim, without any real comprehension. He shows persistent dif-
ficulty with word-division in his English (see n. 30), and he rather frequently fails
to recognise distinctively English letter forms (erratic distinction between y and þ,
þ and 3, as well as c and t). He makes at least one error in transcription because
he fails to identify a long anglicana r in his exemplar ('I an' for 'ran', verses c/3).
One might possibly specify, on the basis of his frequent reliance on apostrophe-
like suspensions for r (as well as er) that he was an individual of Dutch or south
German training.

Whatever this continental scribe was up to, both the contextualisation of
the first verses he transcribes (item [a]) and the affinities of various remaining
items of the manuscript, for much of which information one is in Brown's debt,
permit fairly narrow placement of the texts. Wenzel points out that the woman
whose enclosure provides the occasion for the first of the sermons (and for the
first Jesus verses) is identified by the preacher. Although he reports her name,
Alice Huntingfield, Wenzel ends his researches there, perhaps because there is
no reference to Alice in Rotha M. Clay and Ann K. Warren's standard studies
of enclosed women.[6]

However, the indefatigable collector of Norfolciana, Francis Blomefield,
provides information indicating a provenance for the sermon. He describes a
Huntingfield family, who came from a better known Huntingfield, the place four
miles southwest of Halesworth, east Suffolk. In spite of these origins, they held
the manor of East Bradenham, Norfolk, from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds and
the dukes of Leicester and Lancaster, a tenure extending from the late twelfth
century until the late fourteenth.[7]

The last Huntingfield lord, William (app. 1331–77), a companion of the Black
Prince in Gascony from 1357, left as his next heir a 'kinswoman' (sister?) Alicia.
(The name appears earlier, in the late thirteenth century, in Blomefield's account
of the family.) Blomefield describes this Alice as aged thirty and the widow of Sir
John de Norwich kt. in 1377. But Alice did not inherit, and the estate had passed
out of the family by 1404.

It is presumably this Alice's inclaustration as pious widow that the sermon
marks (and this is presumably the reason she did not, as next heir, inherit from
'her kinsman'). But the occasion is only datable by its biblical text as having oc-
curred on a 25 January (the sermon-text is from the epistle for the Conversio
Sancti Pauli), and the sermon does not stipulate where Alice was enclosed. East
Bradenham, strikingly, falls into an area where one of the manuscript's most
distinctive English forms, 'qwow' (how)(verses b/15, 23), would not seem outré;
LALME records the form (or related 'qwou') only from seven west, west central,
or central south Norfolk linguistic profiles.[8]

Congruent west Norfolk provenance for the Jesus manuscript is implied by
such transmission histories as one can uncover for the verses included in its
sermons. Two sets of Jesus verses (b, f) appear elsewhere in National Library of
Scotland, MS Advocates' 18.7.21, a preacher's notebook incorporating frequent
lyric scraps—no surprises here—for use in sermons. All the snippets of verse in
the Advocates' manuscript have very narrow recorded circulations; their editor,
Edward Wilson, finds no more than five of them in any other manuscript—in
this case, British Library, MS Harley 7322, also including Jesus's verses (f). There
is every likelihood that the compiler of the Advocates' manuscript, a Franciscan
named John of Grimestone, came from the village of that name just east of King's
Lynn; LALME places the language of the lyrics in extreme southwest Norfolk, a
localisation in accord with the last recorded reference to Grimestone, a license
to hear confessions in Ely diocese in 1338.[9]

However, the two poems the Jesus manuscript shares with Grimestone's
preaching book (enough of a conjunction for Wilson to mention the book imme-
diately after Harley 7322) are not the full account of possible relationship. It is
not particularly clear why Brown chose to assign Jesus verses (c) a separate Index
entry, as item 4185. As his cross-reference implies, the poem is simply the sepa-
rately indexed Index 4200, with an extra concluding stanza and different order

for the stanzas.[10] But one should notice that the Jesus version closely follows a
standard order for presenting the Seven Sins (Envy is misplaced), a testimony to
the learnedness of the preacher who included it in this form in his sermon. Index
4200 has a fairly wide dispersal, mainly in the later fifteenth century, but the
only particularly relevant example, to which I will return momentarily, occurs in
British Library, MS Additional 37049.

Whatever the case about its ordering, the poem appears a derivative of one in
Grimestone's book, Index 3356 (Wilson 49–51, no. 199), seven eight-line stanzas
in corresponding order. In the Jesus presentation, the poem has been edited, cut
to half the length of Grimestone's version; but the language of the two presen-
tations remains fairly close at both head and end of the text (and considerably
more proximate than Index 197, Wilson 56–57, no. 218). The poem shows the
Jesus preacher potentially as redacting an earlier Franciscan text for a particular
pulpit context.

Harley 7322, although it includes no notation of clerical provenance, is cer-
tainly a preacher's book comparable to the Advocates' manuscript. It includes
numerous exempla for pulpit use, especially a few accompanied by verse, and a
few sermons. Its extensive illustrative narratives (to one of which, Herbert's no.
138, Jesus verses [f] is appended), provide the type of material always seen as
typifying mendicant sermons (and a frequent target of antimendicant invective).
McIntosh suggests placing the Middle English of the Harley verses on the Ely/
Suffolk border just south of the two counties' juncture with Norfolk; the localisa-
tion is adjacent to that assigned John of Grimestone's book.[11]

If books like Advocates' (certainly) and Harley (putatively) imply a west Nor-
folk Franciscan ambit for the verses available to the Jesus preacher, some more
attenuated references may help solidify the case. Grimestone includes in the
Advocates' manuscript a copy of Index 1523 (Wilson 42–49, no. 198), an ABC of
the Passion. The poem appears in this form elsewhere only at British Library, MS
Harley 3954, fol. 87, among a set of lyrics, many (but not this one) shared with
Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.iv.9. Both these books, although likely lay
productions, are localised by LALME in south central Norfolk.[12]

However, Harley 3954 does not provide the only example of Norfolk circula-
tion of these verses. Index 1523 underlies a macaronic Good Friday sermon with

alphabetical development in the preaching book, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th.
d.1, fols 123v–126v. There the sermon is marked as having been preached 'Noui
Castri [Newcastle upon Tyne], 1433'. However, both Nicholas Philip, who made
this preaching book, and William Melton, four of whose sermons are included
here, were Franciscans of King's Lynn. This is the only Franciscan house in west
Norfolk, and it is surely significant that proximate Franciscan preachers show
some evidence of recycling materials like Grimestone's for their mission.[13]

More attenuated Franciscan connections appear in the Jesus manuscript
itself. As Wenzel notes, it shares three sermons with Arras, Bibliothèque mu-
nicipale, MS 184.[14] This large book of sermons was certainly collected (probably
from various sources) and copied in England at the opening of the fifteenth cen-
tury, as its anglicana hand indicates. But whatever the common source Jesus and
Arras manuscripts are drawing upon here, the Arras scribe certainly had access
to other Franciscan sermons of narrow dispersal. For the book also includes three
items at least associated with the Oxford career, inferentially 1378x83, of one
Henry 'Chambron' (i.e., Champernon) OFM.[15] Production of Jesus 13 within the
context of such an international order would go some way to explaining the non-
English features (and unfamiliarity with English) evident in the scribal handling
of the verses I discuss.

Although general Franciscan connections, and specifically those with (west)
Norfolk establishments, appear prominent, one should note a few examples of
comparable verses escaping into a more general (but apparently still limited) cir-
culation. Above I mentioned the copy of Index 4200, a variant rendition of Jesus
verses (c), in British Library, MS Additional 37049. This famous 'Carthusian
Miscellany' has typically been associated with the Charterhouse at Axholme,
in extreme northwest Lincolnshire; its contents, however, materials associated

with veneration of Richard Rolle and 'The Desert of Religion', have a distinctly
southwest Yorkshire flavour, one partly confirmed by (one component of) its
scribal language.[16]

Similar examples of Grimestone's materials in peripheral areas of Yorkshire
and in adjacent counties can be multiplied. Jesus verses (c), for example, ap-
pears elsewhere only in Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.v.48. The hand of
this portion, who signs as 'Gilbert Pylkyngton', is placed by LALME in western
Derbyshire; a second scribe, responsible only for the single quire fols 79–85v,
with excerpts from The South English Legendary, displays language of extreme West
Yorkshire along the Lancashire border.[17] Similarly, Tokyo, Toshiyuki Takamiya,
MS 15, in a series of short texts following Speculum Vitae, reproduces two of
Grimestone's lyrics, their unique appearances outside the Advocates' manu-
script, a versified Ten Commandments (Index 1129) and 'Ecce sto ad ostium'
(Index 3825). The language of this manuscript implies copying in the Barnsley-
Rotherham(-Sheffield?) area, although there is some possibility that others of its
exemplars similarly reflect transmission from more southeasterly parts. Perhaps
significantly in this context, the book includes a note dated 1486, directing that it
be donated to the Franciscans of Lichfield in return for requiem masses.[18] Finally,
British Library, MS Additional 45896, a roll now misplaced, uniquely agrees with
the Advocates' manuscript in transmitting Index 212; the roll, although probably
copied in Shropshire, contains a series of Yorkshire texts, and the Grimestone
verses here head a more extended lyric certainly of Northern provenance.[19]

All these examples perhaps testify to circulation from western Norfolk to
another Franciscan centre, most likely, given the distribution of such survivors,
the house at Doncaster in south Yorkshire. It is worth recalling that Nicholas
Philip's sermon indicates a mission to the North (a possible indication of how the
Jesus manuscript might later have ended up at Durham?). Moreover, there is also
evidence of his colleague, William Melton, preaching in York City, c. 1426.[20]

Providing such a contextualisation for Jesus MS 13 was, of course, foreign
to Carleton Brown's efforts with the manuscript, designed simply to list its verse
items. But his (mis)reportage of these verse scraps deserves more detailed con-
sideration for what it reveals about the literary status of these materials. Brown's
persistent reference to all Jesus materials as 'in a Latin treatise' indicates that,
not only did he never examine the context of the verses, he had no notion of
the generic affinities of the texts they accompany (or that these were multiple
sermons and, thus, scarcely of the writerly sort 'treatise' implies).

Moreover, the particularly dire report of verses (g) as four separated couplets,
not the forty-two lines that actually occur, is telling. Brown, it would appear,
could only recognise verse on the basis of rhyme. Given its failure in the inad-
equately represented first couplet of the poem (see the edition in the Transcrip-
tions), Brown could only identify as verse the second couplet and what followed.
When rhyme failed again, in what is clearly supposed to be a couplet but is
reported as a simple English tag at lines *9–10, Brown assumed there was no
more poetry. In this, he was materially aided by the scribe, who dropped the
obvious rhymeword 'smerte' from the subsequent couplet. One can only guess
how Brown managed to turn up Index 3937, actually the fifteenth couplet in the
sequence, while ignoring both intermediate (and following) materials.

At least one possibility is worth considering. Brown adopted as a convention
not to index the ubiquitous rhyming English triplets that routinely mark divi-
sions within sermones moderni in both Latin and English. (Through an inattention
to context, like that I describe here, a certain number of them did get into his
Index and more still into later 'corrected versions' of the Index.) Thus, Brown has
properly, by his conventions, ignored verses like the unindexed incipit of the
second sermon in the sequence I have described above and the transitional mo-
ment of the same text:

• Pro processu, sciendum est quod triplici de causa Cristus pro nobis mortuus est:
  primo for to destruyyn ye deuelys my3th
• 2o. for to makyn vus strong in fy3th
• et 3o. for to restoryn vus to owr ry3th. (fol. 84v)

In the scrappy bits describing the armour of the Christian knight Ratio in
verses (g), especially given their alternation with English prose phrases in the
Latin, Brown may have felt he was dealing with similar materials to be ignored.
Since he seems to have been immune to the surround of the verses and to their
integration within an ongoing argument, in which they translate similar Latin
rhymes (the internal ones of the leonine hexametres the preacher cites), this may
appear a rational decision.

Yet such inattention was to substantially influence Brown's behaviour as an
editor of verse. Having, through his careful manuscript searching, discovered
multiple copies of texts like these, Brown found himself routinely faced with
choices between recorded versions. Willing to print only a single one, he typi-
cally made decisions on a vaguely 'aesthetic' basis. For example, having chosen

to present Grimestone's version of Jesus verses (b), he defended the decision by
referring to the Jesus copy as 'a later and much corrupted text of the present
version'. After drawing attention to the different stanza order in Jesus (whilst
ignoring that the text is more extensive than that Grimestone provides), he went
on to characterise the poem as 'degenerat[ing] into ballad metre through the loss
of the rimes uniting the first and third lines'.[21]

Had Brown attended to the text in which the verses had been dispersed, he
might have come to different conclusions. He correctly saw that the opening of
the poem restates Micah 6:3–4; because he paid no attention to the Latin sur-
round, he failed to see in what interest this biblical locus had been cited. The
preacher's immediate introduction to the verses states it:

Thus, the poem appears here only to anglicise the liturgy for the sermon's occa-
sion, persistendy marked as Good Friday. As a result, one could argue the most
pressing aesthetic questions the lines raise should concern the liturgical moment
at issue and how well the verses convey the preacher's report of that liturgical
occasion.

As Wenzel is well aware, what is being versified here are the 'improperia' or
'reproaches' central to the Good Friday service. These include the biblical open-
ing Brown recognised and a sequence of three additional clauses:

Or so the reported English Uses, which scarcely respond either to the profusion
of verses in the Jesus version or to the preacher's claim that ignoring ten benefits
produces ten different reproaches for Jewish Good Friday behaviour.

The liturgical practice the poem reports offers further grounds for associat-
ing it with an international religious order, like the Franciscans. For whatever
English liturgical uses report, those more widely used in the universal church
(and thus by its orders), that of Rome for example, provide extensive materials
analogous to, although not identical with, the Jesus verses. These typically have
eight to ten reproaches, following on a general opening like that reported in Eng-
lish Uses; and these extras, at least broadly, fill in the Sarum Use introduction in
ways corresponding with the progress of the argument in Jesus.

Moreover, the Roman presentation corresponds exactly to the handling in
an earlier English Franciscan version of the 'reproaches', composed by (and pre-
served in the autograph of) William Herebert, of the Hereford convent. Here-
bert's version pretty precisely renders the Sarum Use introduction (verses 1–17),
followed by eight reproaches in the continental form, two of them separate in
modern rites but fused by Herebert in a way analogous to the Jesus presentation
(verses 18–34).[23]

Brown's difficulty here was generated out of the way in which the project of
collecting 'English poetry' was initially and continues generally, even in Wenzel's
fine studies, to be conceived. Brown's work, and that of others after him, seeks
to prioritise English vemacularity, every last scrap of it.[24] There are difficulties
inherent in the nationalistic bases of this enterprise; one could well object that
Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Norman are English too. But the project, significantly
undertaken well in advance of any comparable effort with prose, also rests on
a Victorian/modernist perception of verse as a uniquely evocative, imaginative
form.[25] I doubt this a property most readers today would attribute to the ma-
terials printed in the Transcriptions below—or indeed to the majority of items
enumerated in Index of Middle English Verse, a statement not intended to denigrate
the value of such works for any variety of nonaestheticised purposes.

Most troublingly, the procedure often reifies English texts as selfsubstantial
in ways that severely belie their actual forma vivendi in manuscript. Indeed, as
Wenzel ceaselessly reminds one, English verse in these contexts is integral to
polyglot tendencies widespread in medieval English culture.[26] Whether or not
Jesus's Good Friday sermon was delivered in Latin (and with such texts, language
of record and language of performance may well differ), the verses it includes
depend upon at least a rudimentary understanding of their imbrication in and
distanced reproduction of Latin ritual language.

The importance of such contextualisation of verse is perhaps even clearer in
Jesus verses (g), which I here resuscitate from Brown's handling. Brown's missteps
are salutary to consider: in failing to recognise English before his eyes as precisely
what he was seeking, Brown essentially proved that the verses can only exist im-
bricated in a Latin context. In any conventional sense, there is scarcely a poem
here at all—rather a Latin allegorisation of a temple of virtue and of the armour
appropriate to its guardian/doorward, Ratio. This temple and ruler are imag-
ined pictorially, as if a medieval memory map, each architectural or armourial
feature adorned with a scroll with explanatory leonine hexametre (perhaps a sign
that this sermon was delivered in Latin). The English verses, which lack either
English introduction or English explanation of what they map, are sensible only
as vernacular renderings of a comprehended Latin surround. In isolation (as the
consecutive English text Brown liked to print), they are very nearly senseless,
the odd bits that Brown presumably rejected as sermon tags, maybe even as
prose. Perhaps, rather than just indexing and editing such things, one might
more carefully consider the context—fihere west Norfolk Franciscan sermons—
that grants them their exiguous circulation.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

Jesus verses (a)

[fol. 83] 4o. reddunt ciuitatem fortem: primo quod sit bene murata et aquis
circumdata ad resistendum inimicis exterioribus; 2o. quod sit pacifica interius;
3o. quod sit bene staurata victualibus; et 4o. quod sit bene situata ad bonam
suscepcionem aeris, ut vitetur melius pestilencia, quia pestilencia plus nocet in
ciuitate quam alibi propter vicinitatis contagionem. Ad loquendum ergo de ciui-
tate celesti: ista ciuitas primo est ita bene murata et aquata quod non potest ab
aliquo inimico lutari. Dicebatur enim aliquando in cantico wlgari:

Istud castellum supra ilium [b]ank[29] est castellum ciuitatis celestis de qua Eze-
chielis 40o[:2] super montem excelsum nimis erat edificatum….

Jesus verses (b)

[fol. 85] Recordatur enim ecclesia hodierna die in officio ac sacra scriptura quod
deus decern solempnia beneficia contulit Iudeis contra que hodierna die maleficia
ei reddebant. Primum beneficium fuit quod de Egypto eos eduxit…. Et videre
quantum gratitudinem pro isto beneficio hodie ostenderunt ipsum qui liberauit
eos ab inimicis: emerunt hodie a Iuda traditore pro 30. denariis ut traderent
morti et inimicis…. Quam ingratitudinem iure reprehendit hodie mater ecclesia
in persona Cristi cantans in hunc modum, 'Popule meus, quid feci tibi, etc.':

[fol. 85v] Secundum beneficium Iudeis a Deo collatum fuit quod eos vbique
duxit ut ductor eos precedendo…. Istud beneficium hodie reddiderunt quia
ipsum hodie omnes negauerunt, dicentes 'non habemus regem nisi Cesarem'
[John 19:15]; et cum ipse duxisset eos per viam rectam per desertum, ipsi eum
duxerunt ad Annam et Pilatum. Et ideo ecclesia lamentatur in persona Cristi,
'Popule meus etc.', My folk, ansuere me:

3m. beneficium a Deo collatum fuit quod mare sicco pede transierunt, Pharaone
et exercitu eius in mare dimerso…. Sed Iudei ut ingrati homines pro isto ben-
eficio Cristum ad columpnam hodie ligauerunt, flagellauerunt, et in faciem eius
conspuebant, et ideo lamentat ecclesia, My folk,

4m. beneficium quod per 40. annos[32] pauit eos per manna in deserto et pluit eis
de celo. Sed contra istud pecierunt instanter Iudei ut crucifigeretur, et ideo dicit
ecclesia, My folk,

5m. beneficium fuit quod illorum aduersarios vbique deuicit, quia contra omnes
preualuerunt. Sed hodie male retribuebant sibi, quando ipsi illudebant eum, si-
cut fatuum deridebant, et ignominiose tractabant. Et ideo conqueritur ecclesia,
My folk,

6m. beneficium fuit quod deus dedit eis precepta et ceremonias, quibus obseruan-
dis terram promissionis repromissit. Sed Iudei hodie fecerunt et contra eum et
contra precepta sua…. Et ideo dicit ecclesia, My folk,

7m. beneficium, quod duxit illos in terram promissionis que manauit lacte et
melle, vbi vixerunt in omni habundancia et in omni fertilitate. Sed Iudei hodie
male sibi reddiderunt, quando in cruce ipsum clauis ferreis confixerunt, quod
in lege erat vilissimum genus tormenti. De quo conqueritur mater ecclesia in
persona Cristi, Mi folk ansuere me:

8m. beneficium fuit quod cum in deserto non haberent aquam ad bibendum et
siti fere deficerent, Dominus precepit Moysi ut percuteret virga bis cilicem et
egresse sunt aque largissime, et in alio loco aquas eorum amaras dulcorauit. Sed
hoc beneficium sibi male hodie retribuebant, quia acetum cum felle mixtum sibi
ad bibendum dabant. De quo dicit ecclesia sic, My folk etc.,

9m. beneficium fuit quod cum fuerunt ducti de captiuitate, fecit eos reges et li-
beros eciam de genere proprio ut Saulem et Dauid etc. Sed male retribuebant
tamquam ingrati pro coronis aureis coronam de spinis hodie imponentes super
capud eius. De quo conqueritur ecclesia, My folk etc.,

10m. beneficium fuit quando in columpna ignis eos precessit in nocte et in
columpna nubie per diem, ita quod vbicunque fuerunt filii Israel lux erat et tran |
[fol. 86v] quillum. Sed istud beneficium male reddiderunt cum ipsum verum
lumen occiderunt et vilissime tractauerunt. De quo conqueritur mater ecclesia,
Mi folk etc.,

Sicut ergo isti Iudei multa beneficia acceperunt a Deo et false retribuebant, ita
et Cristiani multo peius retribuunt….

Jesus verses (c)

[fol. 86v] 2o. et principaliter dixi quod Cristus mortuus est ut nos fortificaret in
bello, ut enim tetigi prius: dyabolus ante mortem Cristi hominem impugnabat
7ci. hoste, scilicet a peccatis. Contra que ad roborandum hominem Cristus sus-
tinuit penitenciam in 7. locis. Et ideo quidam deuotus loquens humano generi
in persona Cristi sic dicit:

Contra iram sustinuit clauum in manu dextera, et ideo sic dicit:

Contra auariciam sustinuit clauum in manu sinistra, et ideo dicit sic:

Contra accidiam sustinuit clauos in pedibus, vnde dicit sic:

Contra inuidiam que radicatur in corde sustinuit lanceam que cor apperuit,
vnde sic:

Contra luxuriam sustinuit in toto corpore flagellacionem, vnde dicit sic:

Contra gulam sustinuit sitim, vnde dicit sic:

Ita quod Deus plenarie vicit exercitum dyaboli per istas septem sanguinis ef-
fusiones, quarum si homo bellum reminisci[46] nunquam peccaret in aliquo 7.
peccatorum….

Jesus verses (d)

[fol. 87, separated from the preceding only by a moralisation of a new inner
temple based upon Heb. 9:12–14] Narratur quod dominus quidam et rex erat
qui habuit filiam pulcherrimam quam multum amauit. In cuius signum heredem
suum eam constituit sub condicione tali, quod quam cito carnaliter peccaret,
perderet. Que quia postea voluptate peccauit, hereditatem perdidit et pro fuga
extitit. Accidit autem ut hoc factum auribus cuiusdam militis valentis insonuit
qui sibi compaciens, propriam patriam reliquid et ad ipsius patriam peruenit vir
ut mulierem hereditati restituret, campum pro ea pugnaturus contra inimicos in-
trauit. Quos quamuis vicit et hereditatem mulieri restituit, in campo tamen san-

guinolentus interijt, quod considerans mulier ne ex leui occasione iterum etiam
consilem demeritum incideret, militis arma et tunicam sanguinolentam in cam-
era sua pependit, ut ex recordacione gratitudinis huius militis nunquam recidi-
uaret et ut constancius idem perficeret. Ista uerba cuicunque in camera scripsit:

Per que uerba semper adulatoribus ad malum ipsam prouocare volentibus re-
spondit et sic hereditatem suam custodiuit….

Jesus verses (e)

[In the tercium principale, the preacher relates the Good Friday Passion hour by
hour; the last two hours discussed include English verse:]

[fol. 89] Hora 6a., quando Cristus fuit cum latronibus conclauatus, cum felle et
aceto saturatus, tunc clamauit ad huc voce alciori, sic dicens generi humano,
'deficit in salutare tuum anima mea' [Ps. 118:81]:

Hora 9a. ita alte clamauit ista philomena quod emisit spiritum. Sed quis tunc fuit
vltimus cantus huius philomene? Certe mirabilia testimonia tua, 'ideo s[crut]ata[48]
est eo anima mea' [Ps. 118:129], quasi diceret patri:

ita in amaritudine mortis, et isto modo philomena nostra mortua est….

Jesus verses (f)

[As the sermon nears its end, the preacher describes the passion as resembling a
harp like that Orpheus used in hell:]

[fol. 90] In ista autem cithera Cristus cantauit 7. dulcissimos cantus confortatio-
nis peccatorum, que fuerunt 7. uerba que locutus est in cruce. Primus cantus fuit,
'Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt quid faciunt' [Luke 23:34]. In quo datur magna
consolacio peccatori, videndo clemenciam Dei, quando pro persecutoribus et
peccatoribus exorauit. Pro quibus non solum orauit in cruce, sed iugiter eis orat
in celo, vnde verum securum accessum habes homo ad Deum. Mater ostendit
filio pectus et vbera; filius ostendit patri latus et wlnera. Nulla ergo omnino po-
terit esse repulsa vbi tot concurrunt caritatis insignia:

Jesus verses(g)

[fol. 92v] Nunc autem, karissimi, ita est quod Deus et dyabolus nequeunt co-
habitare. Deus vellet habere templum cordis et eciam dyabolus. Ut ergo re-
cipiamus Cristum[51] et excludamus dyabolum, erigemus sibi templum in anima
quod ipsemet erexit merito passionis sue. Fundamentum huius templi erit
viua fides que ut firmius fundet; diuiditur in 12. lapides, scilicet in 12. articulos.
In isto fundamento scribitur iste versus, 'viua fides fundat set mortua nil tibi
donat',

Super isto fundamento debent eleuari, sicut predixi, 4or. muri, scilicet 4or. virtutes
cardinales. Primus erit fortitudo, in quo scribitur iste versus, 'sta miles cristi quia
iam certamen inisti',

2us. muras erit temperancia, in quo scribitur iste versus, 'ammodo lasciuis ne des
tua corpora curis',

3us. murus erit iusticia reddere Deo, scilicet quod proprium (?) est proximo et tibi
ipsi, vbi scribitur iste versus, 'pelle procul fraudes iustas queras tibi laudes',

4us. murus erit prudencia naturalis, in quo scribitur iste versus, 'tanta mala caueas
que sunt bona prendere discas',

Tectum huius domus erit paciencia, | [fol. 93] ut predixi, in quo scribitur iste
versus, 'quidquid obest animo pacienter ferre memento',

Hostium huius templi erit bona consciencia, in quo scribitur, 'me claudat rite
quoniam s[um][56] ianua vite',

Ianitor erit racio qu[i] dicit ipse, 'menbra permutas hostis seeludo cateruas',

Et quia racio est ianitor cordis, ideo ut forcius resistat dyabolo, armabimus eum
spiritualiter a uirtute usque ad talos. Primo ergo armabimus eius pedes cum
sabatunnys of good affeccion & good thenkyng, quia per pedes intelliguntur af-
feeciones in scriptura. Quid scribitur in hac armatura iste versus, 'per pedum
cura affeccio sit tibi pura',

Armabimus insuper eius tibias inferius cum greuys pacis et concordie vbi scribi-
tur iste versus, 'da finas ocras pacis concorda venustas',

Armabimus genua cum poleynys humilitatis, quia quando homo wlt se humili-
are, primo flectit genua, vbi scribitur iste versus, 'genua cum curues, sic mentem
flectere debes',

Armabimus crura cum cruschewys & voydein[59] of chastyte & clenes, vbi scribitur
iste versus, 'astringat crura lumborum cinccio pura',

Virilia debent armari cum bractis croilorum ferreorum bryth of mayl timoris
pene, scilicet gehennalis, vbi scribitur hic versus, 'si retrahas membra, fugies
dyabolica septa',

Ad armandum ergo corpus huius hominis spiritualis primo ponenda est lorica
pietatis, vnde versus, 'cum tibi lorica pietas probitatis amica',

Super loricam primo debet poni vnum brestplate timor dei, vnde versus, 'pectore
dum sistit timor omnia feda refellit',

Huic pectorali debet ligari vnum pawns circa renes que erit sobrietala,[60] vnde
versus, 'llene fluant renes sibi sobria singula dones',

Brachia debent armari cum vawnbras & rerebras bone operacionis et bone oc-
cupacionis, versus, 'actibus irriguis tua brachia pandere velis',

Super manus debent poni seretece ferree clemencie, vnde versus, 'sit tibi larga
manus, Dominus reddet tibi munus',

Caput debet armari galea discrecionis, quia in capite vigent omnes sensus, vnde
versus, 'quod caput obumbrat[62] discrecio tollere curat',

Super istam galeam debet poni vnum vmbreer bone prouidencie, vnde versus,
'actus principio finis semper memor esto',

Debet esse eciam isti galee supponi vnum ventayl perseu(er)ancie, vnde versus,
'perfer et obdura restat tibi vita | [fol. 93v] futura',

Super omnia ista proice vnum cotearmure of charite, vbi scribuntur duo
versus,

[No English equivalent is given, and the text continues in Latin:] In uiam ad
defendendum se habebit ensem memorie dominice passionis; hunc enim ensem
timet dyabolus, quia cum isto interfectus fuit….