• Ancrene Wisse, Author's Preface

promised. 63 Ah, But. 64-67 eadmodnesse . . . Godes heastes, humility and patience, loyalty and the keeping of the ancient ten commandments, confession and penitence - these and such others, some of which are from the old law, some

• St. Jerome: Introduction

their incipits or opening words, Hieronymus noster and Plerosque nimirum, although each was attributed spuriously in medieval manuscripts to respectable ancient authors.6 While both offer some guidance as to Jerome's career as a writer, quoting copiously from the biographical information

• Sir Amadace

being like Judas, he's like the widow with her mite, which goes for charity. 260 B (p. 103) explains the ancient tradition, preserved in folklore, of punishing a debtor by refusing burial. The practice had long since disappeared by the

• Thomas of Hales, Love Rune

the woman's spiritual caretaker. Rosemary Woolf remarks that the narrator "acts as a paranymph for the divine bridegroom," fulfilling the ancient tradition of the friend who goes with the groom to fetch home the bride ([1968], p. 61). As such,

• The Northern Homily Collection: Introduction

Nativity, lines 65–66). The homily which follows the Gospel paraphrase takes the form typically found in medieval sermons, the so-called ancient form of sermon construction rather than the “modern” or university form. The latter began with a short scriptural phrase

• The Life of St. Benedict

let rere. Gregory (Dialogues 2.8.10-11) identifies Cassino as a castrum or fortified site half way up the mountain, with an ancient shrine (fanum) and temple of Apollo, and sacred groves of trees (luci). He explains how Benedict reconsecrated the temple

• Lydgate: Saint Austin at Compton

please; guide let my journey succeed to arrive at in good time goods; excess outstanding fitting In temples according to ancient custom many times; (see note) (see note) (see note) Gave his blessing to Jacob is appropriate their whoever withholds

• Caxton, The Game and Playe of the Chesse, Book Four

referred to here is the Biblical city, which is located in modern day Iraq, and not the Egyptian Babylon, an ancient city on the Nile. 40–41 The walles about the toure made a woman whos name was Semyramis, as sayth

• 23. The Last Philosophers

1. 10001 Kinge Cromesis. This may well be Croesus, the wealthy and powerful king of Lydia (r. 56047 BC), an ancient state in Asia Minor. His defeat at the hands of Cyrus the Great brought Lydia into the expanding Persian

• William Dunbar: The Complete Works: Introduction

Dickson, James Balfour Paul, C. T. McInnes, and Athel L. Murray. 13 vols. Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877-. Ancient Scottish Poems, Never Before in Print, but Now Published from the Ms. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland, of Lethington,

• Ancrene Wisse, Part Seven

Sermons on the Song of Songs (particularly sermons 1-8) (p. 401n32). 223 Grickisch fur. Greek fire was a kind of ancient napalm, a flaming liquid either sprayed onto enemy ships via hand-powered pumps or poured onto hostile armies from the

• Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love

his principal image. Nor, in one regard at least, should this surprise us. The image of the pearl is both ancient and vast in its dissemination. The reader will find entire, lengthy articles devoted to it listed in Appendix 1,

• Floris and Blancheflour

brought home by the crusaders. 147 Babyloyn. Probably not the Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar, but "the town of Bab-al-yun in ancient Egypt, which later became part of old Cairo" (Reiss, "Symbolic Detail in Medieval Narrative," p. 346). It is perhaps

• A Gest of Robyn Hode

sweetbreads of a doe very went; treasure-house locks; steel everyone Dishes, drinking cups, nor spoons pence; (see note) went straight ancient wood; (see note) watch over thee is (welcome) news greets thee (see note) Trinity (the sheriff's) good will These

• John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Volume 2: Introduction

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. Chaucer's Ghoast: Or, A Piece of Antiquity containing twelve pleasant Fables of Ovid penn'd after the ancient manner of writing in England. Which makes them prove Mock-Poems to the present Poetry. By a Lover of Antiquity.

• Lydgate, The Siege of Thebes: Prima Pars

(VII[B2]2792-93). The Monk's Tale is a de casibus tragedy that begins with the fall of Lucifer and Adam, moves through ancient figures like Alexander and Julius Caesar, and ends with some of Chaucer's contemporaries; its theme and tone complement the

• The Assembly of Gods

fantasy is to link him with dreams. Compare Chaucer's The Hous of Fame, lines 66-80. The term derives from an ancient Greek concept of showing or making visible. Phantasos, who according to Pierre Bersuire's fourteenth-century commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses (11.633),

• The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf

(and other beasts of burden) was very strong. See Bakhtin, Rabelais, p. 78: “The ass is one of the most ancient and lasting symbols of the material bodily lower stratum, which at the same time degrades and regen­erates”; see also

• Robert Henryson, Shorter Poems: Stronger Attributions

sorrow flock; cliff Among; (t-note) Bloodstained Shirt; (t-note) last year; heard it told There; honorable Dukes, earls; bold barons command ancient; old sixty years did reign daughter; embrace lovely young lady beauty she bore; flower And [was] also; father’s heir

• Robert Henryson, Shorter Poems: Stronger Attributions

sorrow flock; cliff Among; (t-note) Bloodstained Shirt; (t-note) last year; heard it told There; honorable Dukes, earls; bold barons command ancient; old sixty years did reign daughter; embrace lovely young lady beauty she bore; flower And [was] also; father’s heir