Chese, now,' quod sche, 'oon of these thinges tweye, To have me foul and old til that I deye, liketh.' 'My lady and my love, and wyf so deere, I do no fors the whether of the tuo, 'Than have I gete of yow the maystry,' quod sche, 'Kys me,' quod sche, we ben no lenger wrothe, For, by my trouthe, I wol be to yow bothe, This is to say, ye, bothe fair and good. I pray to God that I mot sterve wood But I be to yow al so good and trewe As ever was wyf, siththen the world was newe; And whan the knyght saugh verrayly al this, That is, Take your chance for the number of men who may resort to your house to pay their addresses to me. * The second Cambridge MS. reads, instead of this line: And so they slept tille the morwe gray; That sche so fair was, and so yong therto, And old and angry nygardes of despense, sterois fellow THIS THE PROLOGE OF THE FRERE. HIS worthy lymytour, this noble Frere, Ye han sayd mochel thing right wel, I say; 1 Auctoritas m It is applied no! the word. Thutranslation of the dit ceste auctorite the text, and expositio auctoritatis, the comment. to Scripture, but to any authority, as we still use in de Vignay, in his introduction to the French yenda Aurea, says, Monseigneur Saint Hierosme me That of a sompnour may no good be sayd; Our oste spak, 'A ! sir, ye schold been heende, Telleth your tale, and let the Sompnour be.' Oure host answerd, 'Pees, no more of this." THE FRERES TALE. [THIS tale was probably translated, as Mr. Wright conjectures, from some old fabliau, which also furnished the groundwork of the short tale entitled De Advocato et Diabolo, published by the Percy Society in a collection of Latin Stories, edited by Mr. Wright. Another version of the story, still closer to Chaucer's tale, has since been discovered in the British Museum (MS. 1 Citations, or summonses, addressed to those accused of breaches of the canons, to appear and answer in the Archdeacon's court. The officer charged with the duty of serving these was no doubt often visited with the same summary punishment which is said to have been often indicted on sheriffs' officers in Ireland in the last century. The sompnour, as his name implies, was the summoner, or server of summonses, answering to our modern apparitor. It is strange that St. Francis and St. Dominic should not have foreseen that their rule, requiring the friars to obtain their livelihood by begging from house to house, would necessarily impair their indes pendence of mind, and habituate them to the arts of flattery. Harl. MS., and said the sompnour this. • Harl MS., leve is omitted. Cotton. Cleopatra, D. viii., fol. 110), and published-by Mr. WHILOM there was dwellyng in my countre That boldely did execucioun, In punyschyng of fornicacioun, Of chirche-reves, and of testamentes, 1 Lak of sacraments' means the neglect of the Church's precept to communicate at Easter, to which sacramental confession was, in the medieval Church, practically, though not theoretically, a necessary preliminary. The system of ecclesiastical discipline upon which this tale is founded requires some further explanation. In the Church of the first three centuries ecclesiastical censures had the effect of depriving the offender of spiritual privileges only.--See BINGHAM'S Antiquities, &c., 16, 2, 3. But when the empire became Christian, under Constantine and his successors, a new principle was gradually introduced. It was thought that the State was bound to add its temporal, to the Church's spiritual, sanctions; and the contumacious or excommunicated person was coerced by civil disabilities. After the destruction of the Roman Empire, the same legal principle was adopted by the several states of Christendom founded upon its ruins, and therefore forms an important part of mediæval jurisprudence. See a very apposite illustration of this in the first part of DE JOINVILLE'S Memoirs of Louis IX., near the end. At the Reformation, the several reformed communities adopted the same principle. The Calvinists, or Presbyterians, at Geneva, in Scot land, and in England during their short term of power, were especially zealous in enforcing it.-See Preface to HOOKER'S Becles. Pol. The canons of the Church of England, passed in 1604, which still in many respects regulate the practice of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, bear witness to the system as enforced in the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts.-See particularly Canons 2, 65, and 112, in which the Questman seems to have performed many of the duties of Chaucer's compnour. These have now become obsolete, partly from being inconsistent with recent statutes, and partly by the tacit consent of all parties. Most of the communities of non-conformists, however, maintain a principle of discipline similar to that of the Ante-Nicene Church, their reading out of meeting' being exactly equivalent to the excommunication of the early ages of Clifistianity. Of usur, and of symony also; But certes lecchours did he grettest woo; The neglect to pay tithes and Easter offerings came under the archdeacon's jurisdiction, as the bishop's diocesan officer. The friar does not scruple to make an invidious use of this subject at the expense of the parochial clergy, because, being obliged by his rule to gain his liveli hood by begging, he had no interest in tithes. 2 An allusion to the bishop's pastoral staff, which was in the shape of a sheep-hook. Its form and symbolical meaning are thus described in the Vision of Piers Plowman :— • Dobest is above bothe, And berith a bischopis 'crois,' To halie men fro helle, Offenders were, in the first instance, summoned before the archdeacon, and afterwards, if found incorrigible, transferred to the bishop, who alone had the power of inflicting the greater excommunication. The religious orders, but particularly the mendicants or friars, were, by special dispensation of the pope, exempt from the bishop's jurisdiction, and placed under that of their general or superior only, with, of course, an appeal to the supreme pontiff. This was a fertile subject |