• Croxton Play of the Sacrament

representing the church, unless an actual church could be incor­porated into the playing area. Tydeman (English Medieval Theatre, p. 59) and Scherb (Staging Faith, p. 68) suggest the possibility of the play’s having been performed before the church of All

• Henryson, Complete Works: Appendix

recalls the dying earl of Angus’ celebratedly godly rebuff of a seemingly helpful wizard (John Spottiswood, The History of the Church of Scotland [London: Flesher, 1655], p. 372; David Hume of Godscroft’s History of the House of Angus, ed. David

• Item 23, The Incestuous Daughter: Introduction

Item 23, The Incestuous Daughter: Introduction Return to Menu of TEAMS Texts Copyright Information for this edition though there are equally titillating exempla fea­turing even greater amounts of violence, depravity, and miraculous intervention, The Incestuous Daughter features an

• Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham

Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham Return to the Robin Hood Project Return to Menu of TEAMS Texts Copyright Information for this edition Robin Hood hee was and a tall young man, Derry derry down And fifteen winters old,

• St. Katherine, from Speculum Sacerdotale

St. Stephen, calls on the faithful to keep the saint's feast day (by refraining both from earthly labors and from sins and by coming to church) and to pray for God's forgiveness and grace through the merits of the saint.

• Siege of Jerusalem: Introduction

where the history of Christ's church is projected; the Temple is razed and the Church raised in its place."120 Nicholson's term "lapidary" is particularly apt: the poem is not only a monument to the Church, representing a microcosm of Christian

• Item 7, Stans Puer ad Mensam: Introduction

be the author of a popular treatise on manners.5 Grosseteste would have dined fre­quently with the elite of both the Church and the gentry, and both circles required polite behavior from those who hoped for advancement. Grosseteste’s Stans Puer ad

• Codex Ashmole 61: Item 18, The Knight Who Forgave His Father’s Slayer

the first miracle of the kissing crucifix, the forgiving knight makes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem another crucifix bows down to him, and he must explain the miracle to

• The Life of St. Benedict: Introduction

s, St. Benedict died not as a martyr but of natural causes, and was venerated in the medieval church calendar as a "confessor." Also like Jerome, he was an ascetic and a monk. But whereas Jerome, although born a Latin,

• The Martyrdom of St. George

eighth century, when Pope Zacharias (741-52) transferred what was believed to be George's head from the church of St. John Lateran to the church of St. George in Velabro, that the saint began to be culted in Rome and the

• Complaint of a Prisoner against Fortune: Introduction

his sins and buy himself a shortened stay in Purgatory. The poet ends with a prayer to God and the Church to aid all who are unjustly punished and who repent of their sins (lines 119-40). Despite first creating and

• Poems of Political Prophecy: When Rome is Removed

each man is a priest and each priest a pope, then strife and sorrow ensue, the land becomes lawless, the Church disrespected, etc. The solution to the riddle depends upon how one understands it. 3 Betuix thre and sex. Between

• Why I Can't Be a Nun: Introduction

Katerine's modesty simply prohibits her from saying. Nonetheless, she makes a strong statement against corruption within the institutions of the church and the need for individual attention to personal belief, particularly for women, who may take strength from each other

• Part Four

(distribute) it to foes of holy church, know you well, which [foes] are they that dwell in deadly sin here, not otherwise. Friends of holy church may win pardon for they are within [the church], [and] without and free from

• The Shewings of Julian of Norwich

this time God shewid me none other. But in al thing I leve as Holy Church levith, preachith, and teachith. For the feith of Holy Church, the which I had afornhand understonden and, as I hope, by the grace of

• Introduction

also suggested other candidates, including Jean d’Outremeuse, a notary of Lige, and Brother Jean de Long of the Benedictine Abbey Church of St. Bertin.10 It seems unlikely that we shall ever be certain about the authorship of the Book. Indeed,

• The Trials and Joys of Marriage, Introduction

Neither would it have been performed in the church at any time during the liturgical year. Instead, it might better be understood as a crossover, hybrid genre that has left the church door behind, even slammed it shut since the

• The York Corpus Christi Plays: Play 16, Herod Questioning the Three Kings and the Offering of the Magi

York, especially on the city churches and the Minster, until the 1530s, which more or less marked the end of church building in York on account of the Reformation. The Goldsmiths, who tended to live and work in the liberties,

• Richard Maidstone, Concordia: Introduction

was right because authority - popes and lesser officers of the hierarchy, fathers of the church and other saints, and the established tradition of church practice - said it was right: "quod non solum quattuor ordines mendicancium sunt approbati in

• The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament: Introduction

categorized under five basic rubrics: the nature of the Church, the rights of the papacy, the duty of the priesthood, the doctrine of Tran­substantiation, and the use of Scripture. The Church Wycliffe considered to be the body of the Elect,