Marginalia -- The Journal of the Medieval Reading Group at Cambridge


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Sins of Tongues, Pains of Members: Speech, Division and Sacrament in Late Medieval Exempla


Late medieval exempla teem with burned and chewed tongues, cleaved bodies, engorged genitals and rotting corpses. Designed both to engage and instruct, effective exempla 'removent taedium' and 'somnolentiam fugant'1 in the visceral details of the pains and sufferings of sinners. While exempla occur throughout the classical period and the earlier Middle Ages, it is generally agreed that the genre changes around the thirteenth century.2 In translating abstract sins into compelling and memorable tales, the late medieval exemplum reflects the proliferation of the mendicant orders and the widening audience for instructive tales.

Many late medieval exempla concern peccata linguae, or sins of the tongue. As categorised by pastoral writers, peccata linguae include such sins as backbiting, lying, blasphemy and idle speech.3 In the pastoral tradition, this bad speech implicitly balances the priest's positive speech in administering the sacraments and instructing the laity.4 This ambivalence is illustrated in the exemplum of the servant sent to buy the worst and best meats. He returns with tongues to meet both categories.5 Given this duality, Robert Mannyng sets out to balance his salvatory words against damning 'talys & rymys' and 'troutale' in his confessional manual.6

Illustrations of negative and positive speech took on an obvious urgency with the Fourth Lateran Council and related synods. Lateran IV asserts the prominence of institutions, the Church and its priests, in administering the sacraments. Article 21, the omni utruisque sexus clause, requires Christians to perform auricular confession and to receive the Eucharist once a year.7 The outpouring of penitential manuals, exempla, and compendia of vices and virtues after Lateran IV reflects an impulse to categorise and define sins so that they might be avoided. In this body of writing, peccata linguae either fall under the headings of other sins; e.g., turpiloquium under lechery; form their own category; or with gluttony, constitute the sins of the mouth.8 Those guilty of these sins suffer dismemberment and other forms of bodily mutilation in late medieval exempla.

Owing to their didactic purpose and simple narrative structure, late medieval exempla are often seen by modern critics as simple tools for generating fear and submission. As Jacques Le Goff writes, Le nouvel exemplum... est au service d'une rhétorique de la peur'.9 In exempla concerning peccata linguae where backbiters chew their tongues into morsels and demons cleave idle speakers in half, fear is likely an effect. However, the punishments of the tales suggest a more sophisticated theological tradition than mere terror.

The punishments for these sins not only relate to pastoral writers' concerns for the sacraments of the Eucharist and Confession, but also draw upon medieval theories of language inherited from Augustine.10 In sum, due to original sin, man is cut off from the wholeness of God's Word. This wholeness is restored by the Johannine 'Word made flesh' and the hope of resurrection offered by the sacraments. However, sinners of the tongue suffer from literal dismemberment in exempla, signifying their spiritual separation from the body of Christ and the sacraments.

In order to unravel how language operates in a sacramental context, it is necessary to turn to Confessions, arguably the first penitential manual. Though ostensibly Augustine's private communication with God, Confessions by its own theory of language and that developed in his other writings is anything but this. According to Augustine, man communicates with God internally without the diminution inevitable in the conversion of thoughts and feelings into words.11 'Non opus est locutione, cum oramus, id est sonantibus uerbis.'12

Verbal exchange between men, however, is imperfect, because human speech is temporal and fragmentary. This is demonstrated in the physical act of hearing: 'Nos loquimur uerba uolantia et transeuntia; mox ut sonuerit ore tuo uerbum tuum, transit, peragit strepitum suum et transit in silentium.'13 Language is also partial in human understanding. Once translated into words, thoughts must pass through the speaker's mouth and into the ears of listeners, being confused by various ambiguities such as connotations formed by personal experience.14 The ontological, whole idea man conceives in his thoughts can never be expressed to another person. The individual is separated from others by language.

Linguistic exile is punishment for original sin and Babel. In the beginning, humanity was imbued with the wholeness of God's Word. However, the Fall created a fissure between God and man, introducing the temporality of death.15 As original sin was precipitated by a sin of the tongue (the Devil's lie to Eve), Augustine represents this fissure in terms of language:

Quidquid per illam sentis, in parte est et ignoras totum, cuius hae partes suntsed si ad totum comprehendendum esset idoneus sensus carnis tuae ac non et ipse in parte uniuersi accepisset pro tua poena iutstum modum, uelles ut transiret quidquid existit in praesentia, ut magis tibi omnia placerent.16

Augustine compares this desire for totality to human language. Though we desire the whole, we can only experience the part. 'Sonat et transit; uerberato aere aurem percutit, postea non erit.'17 With the introduction of death, language, too, becomes characterised by temporality. Furthermore, as punishment for pride in the construction of Babel, men are divided from each other further by multiplicity of languages. Augustine interprets this to mean not only separation of languages, but of sign from signifier.18 'Ita uoces oculis ostenduntur, non per se ipsas, sed per signa quaedam sua.'19

Using this exegetical framework, Augustine traces his own spiritual development through his relationship to language in Confessions.20 The sins he commits as a vendor verborum results in his feeling divided and incomplete. God, in contrast, is whole and unified. 'Et conligens me a dispersione, in qua frustatim discissus sum, dum ab uno te auersus in multa euanui.'21 His miserable spiritual state is characterized by illness. Before his salvation, Augustine is literally and figuratively unwhole. 'Et ideo non bene ualebat anima mea et ulcerosa proiciebat se foras...'22 God makes his body whole, suggesting the promise of the resurrection. 'Recreasti ergo me ab illa aegritudine et salvum fecisti filium ancillae tuae tunc interim corpore, ut esset cui salutem meliorem atque certiorem dares...' Nevertheless, Augustine struggles with what will be categorised in the later Middle Ages a sin of the tongue, excusing sin, or defensio peccata. This act divides himself from himself and from God: '...sed excusare me amabam et accusare nescio quid aliud, quod mecum esset et ego non essem. Verum autem totum ego eram et aduersus me impietas mea me diuiserat, et id erat peccatum insanabilius...'23 For Augustine, unity signifies virtue and vice division.24

The gap between God and man is healed in Christ as 'Verbum caro factum est.'25 He destroys death, the punishment for the Fall, through the promise of resurrection, and heals the division of languages, the punishment for Babel, through the institution of the Church: '...humilitas Christi congregauit diuersitates linguarum. Iam quod illa turris dissociauerat, ecclesia colligit.'26 For Augustine, Christ is 'the verbal and actual reconciliation of God and man.'27 Man secures resurrection through membership in the Church and membership in Christ by partaking of the sacraments.

By dismemberment and conditions that destroy the body's wholeness, such as ulcers and leprosy, the punishments for sinners of the tongue literally depict Augustinian linguistic theory and mirror his feelings of division and unwholeness that he experienced for his own sins of the tongue. Similarly for the pastoral writers, the Fall resulted in linguistic division. In the Northern Homily Cycle, for example, Adam is symbolically dismembered from God through language: 'To here Goddes word his eres reft/ Goddes cumandment whan țat he left.'28 As well as evoking this original linguistic fall, the punishments meted out to sinners of the tongue in exempla also suggest their separation from the body of the Church and of the sacraments. The dangers depicted of peccata linguae focus on their corrupting influence as the impact of bad speech assumes a community, a body of listeners. As man does not communicate to God through this medium, speech concerns man's relationship to other men, his corporeal community.

In this respect, one the most odious of the sins of the tongue is29 blasphemia. Blasphemers are punished with the destruction of the body. In the Alphabet of Tales, one blasphemer is punished with leprous spots, another with a sword through his mouth and another with an ulcer.30 Their punishments signify their disunity with God and their lack of hope for resurrection. These ideas are given visceral power in the tale of the two 'gossops' in the31 Alphabet of Tales. At a feast, two friends speculate on the eternal fate of their chicken dinner. One guesses that because he has chopped the bird into pieces it has no hope of resurrection. The chicken, however, is reassembled and revivified before their eyes. The sprinkles of pepper and mustard with which it was seasoned transform into leprous spots on the two men as punishment for their blasphemy. In an interesting inverse to these exempla, a knight with one eye is restored when he defends Jesus against blasphemy.32

Blasphemy also impacts the body of Christ. In many exempla, false oaths 'dysmembre Ihesu'33 Himself. Oath swearers are thought to lay sin upon Him by bringing Him as false witness. As explained in Fasciculus Morum, 'quia secundum Augustinum iurare est Deum testem adducere, et quantum in illo est, magic gravat Deum et ledit inponendo sibi malum culpe quam Iudei Christum occidendo et inponendo malum pene.'34 Thus the typical punishment for sinners of the tongue, dismemberment, is enacted on the body of Christ. 'Whan a man seiț it for wrațțe and for despytțat so vileynly to-draweț and brekeț Goddis body, and so vileynly mysseyn Ihesu Crist and his holy modre'35 In the popular exemplum of the bloody child, oath swearers recognize their sin in visions of a dismembered Christ.36 In the version in Handlyng Synne, Mary presents her child to the swearer: 'Al to-drawe were țe țarmys/ Of handys, of fete, țe flessh of drawyn,/ Mouțe, y3en, & nose, were all to-knawyn,/ Bakke & sydes were al blody.'37 The verbal act of blasphemy is given social importance in the physical destruction of the body of Christ, the means to life everlasting for the community of believers.

In patristic theology and late medieval pastoralia, man becomes a member of the body of the Church and of Christ by participating in the sacraments. 'Est enim ecclesia corpus eiuscorpus ergo suum multis membris diuersa officia gerentibis, nodo unitatis et charitatis tanquam sanitatis adstringit.'38 Bad limbs or members threaten the corporate body and must be healed or amputated. Ideally, bad members, or bad tongues, are healed through the good speech of good members and the sacraments of the Church. As Ayenbite of Inwit explains, 'yef țe on leme is zik oțer y-wonded: alle țe oțre him helpeț to țet he by held. Ine țises we onderstondeț țe uirtue of dom and of amendment. wiț-oute huam țet body of holy cherche ne may yleste. Vor țe leme uorroted ssolde ssende țe hole.'39 If chiding and teaching does not persuade the sinner to amend his ways, 'țanne behoueț come țet zuord hit uor to dele oțer be manzinge oțer be hotinge out of contraye.'40 As a last resort, the Church must amputate the bad limb with the sword of excommunication. The sinner of the tongue is thus institutionally dismembered from the Church and its sacraments. Medieval excommunicates were excluded from benefits of the Eucharist, which included 'pardon of sins, spiritual union with Christ, and liberation from the devil.'41

Various forms of spiritual amendment by physical dismemberment are represented in late medieval exempla. In the tale of Pope Silvinus, the reformed idolater serves as an exemplary member of the Church. When he realises his error, he amends himself by dismemberment.42 The holy man 'smyten of fro his body alle hys membrys, oon after an-oțer, wherwyth he had worschepyd țe feend.' Better to cut off the offending members in life than be dismembered eternally from the body of Christ. Through his self-amendment and confession, the pope is saved.

Others are warned with temporary dismemberment before death. In a story of Jacobus de Voragine, which was translated and printed by Caxton, Peter the Carter is struck by lightening after cursing his oxen. He is punished for his cursing with 'cruele tormentes'. The fire of the lightening 'brente the senewes and the flessh fro his thye, and the bone appered, and that the thye and legge fyll of.'43 However, Peter is able to amend himself whilst still alive. He prays to the Virgin and St. Hyppolitus, and his leg is 'restablysshe[d]'. However, the leg is not made completely 'hool' for one year, so that his example might be 'publysshed', presumably for the good of the community.

The severity of these punishments reflects the perceived impact of bad speech on the community. Speech posed harm to the physical and spiritual bodies of listeners and subjects of speech. For example, speech is often listed under the sins of murder in penitential literature. Under the fifth commandment, the author of Dives and Pauper, warns against murder of a fellow man committed through the agency of the tongue by 'hunderynge & procurynge his deth... fauour3euyngbe... false witnesse-berynge... lesygis-makynge... bi diffamynge... backbytyng, for bacbyteris & wyckyd spekerys ben manquelleris...'44 Flattery is also considered manslaughter. The author of Dives and Pauper cites Augustine in saying, 'țe tunge of țe flaterere doth more harm țan țe swerd of țe enmy pursuynge...'45 As A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen explains, flattery is dangerous, because it impedes the process of amendment. If a man hides or glosses over the sins of his fellow, then he does not know to amend himself.46 That backbiters are guilty of two or three murders is a common axiom in pastoral writing.47 The compiler of Fasciculus Morum cites Augustine in attributing guilt to both the speaker and the listener: 'qui, inquit, detrahit aut detrahentem libenter audit, quid horum dampnabilior fuerit, non facile dixerim. Nam secundum Augustinum numquam esset detractor si non esset auditor.'48

As these definitions suggest, those subject to punishment may have been pure in action but impure in speech. Their peccata linguae condemn them to eternal separation from God. In several versions of the dirty-talking nun and the quarrelsome maid, the mispeakers are cleaved in half after life.49 While they were chaste in their actions, their unchaste words led others into sin. In the exemplum found in the Middle English prose translation of Le Manuel de Pechiez, the nun is 'kyt in țe mydle wyth a swerd and țe to parti brend in țe fyr.' Thus, they suffer eternal separation of their own body and from that of Christ. They will not be re-assembled and resurrected.

In a system of aural penance, the words of clergy are given the most currency. The nun of the aforementioned exemplum is chastised especially for her religious role. 'For fylthe in holy mowthe is sacrilege for soth. Prestre and clerkes of chirche, but religeous above al țyng, țey shculde kepe wel here tonges...' Instead 'al here lemes byth halwod to worschipe almy3hti God.' Verbal misbehaviour in priests is also punished. In preaching of false miracles and idolatry, bad priests are portrayed as thieves of God's Word. 'And in țat ței withdrawyn Godys word & țe trewțe of Godis lawe țat longyth to men of holy chyrche to techyn & țe peple to connyn & to knowyn & so deceyuyn țe people, in țat ței ben țeuys of Godis word.'50 Because of their threat to the community of believers and their hopes of salvation, which rest upon their words, they 'schul ben punchyd wol harde of God for swyche țefte of Goddis word...'.51 Priests must only speak of what is 'profytable and nedfull to țe soule' lest they poison their own tongues and 'envenomyth oțir țat heryn hym.'52 In Festial, John Mirk writes of an Irish priest who is punished for 'rybawdy and iapys țat turnyd men to lechery.'53 His punishment is a body full of 'choynus as a erthyn.' The literal cracks in body represents his fissure from God's Word.

Due to the damning effects of delivering and hearing bad speech, man must constantly be on guard: '...țe mouț țet is mayster gate of țe castele of țe herte țet țe dyeuel asayleț ase moche ase he may.'54 Pastoral literature urges men to stop up the gate of the mouth and ears. Openings allow the penetration and leaking of peccata linguae. What is pious and pure is whole and discrete. What is sinful is open and amorphous. Fasciculus Morum, for example, constructs an image of the mouth as prison: 'et ideo ad designandum quod bene deberet custodiri, posita est quasi in carcere et murus dencium ante eam atque labia pro antemuralibus.'55 Likewise, the ears must be stopped up. 'Stoppe țin eeren wiț țornes and herken not țe wikked tonge.'56 The text continues to recall original sin and linguistic fall, 'țat is țe tonge of țe addre of helle țat țe euel spekere bereț, țat enuenymeț hym țat hereț hem.'57 Peccata linguae and their speakers continue to be agents of the Devil, and man must guard closely against them. 'A3ens suche tonges schal a man stoppe his eeren wiț țe țornes țat God was corouned wiț, bi remembraunce of țe passion of Ihesu Crist.'58

The guarding of one's mouth and ears is the individual's attempt toward bodily unity. Man's unity with God, lost due to original sin, is secured in the sacraments. In a passage on Lent, the author of Jacob's Well describes the unshriven congregant as 'dysfyguryd & dysformyd in alle ți gostly & bodyly membrys.'59 However, after forty days of penance and the Eucharist taken at Easter, these limbs 'my3ten encresyn & reformyn a3en in-to here ry3t schap be penaunce & grace.'60 The Devil works through speech to inhibit man from the sacraments and his hope of resurrection. One of the most insidious ways is through shame resulting in refusal to confess, a form of indiscreta taciturnitas. In a tale found in English versions of the Gesta Romanorum, a woman refuses to be shriven for shame of telling the priest a sin she committed in youth.61 The devil claims to keep her dismembered tongue in his purse. Overhearing the devil's claim, a priest seeks out the woman and urges her to confess if not with words, with signs. Through the salvific speech of the priest and the contrition of the woman's private communication with God, the woman is granted speech and she communicates her sin before the priest. No matter how grievous the sin, man can be reformed in Christ through the power of confession.

He who is not a member of the Church does not participate in the sacraments and has neither unity with the Church nor hope of eventual unity with God: 'In hac eccelsia qui non est, nec modo accipit Spiritum sanctum. Praecisus enim et diuisus ab unitate membrorum, quae unitas linguis omnium loquitur...'62 In this theological construction, nothing is to be feared more than disunity. 'Nihil enim sic debet formidare christianus, quam separari a corpore Christi.'63 Those who are cut off are antichrist. Just as illnesses caused by a sick humour, the body is relieved when they are vomited out: 'sic sunt in corpore Christi, quomodo humores mali. Quando evomuntur, tunc relevatur corpus: sic et mali quando exeunt, tunc Ecclesia relevatur.'64

The dismemberment of the sinner from the Church and the sacraments is gruesomely enacted in the tale of the backbiting monk. As discussed above, pastoral writers thought of backbiting as manslaughter. The sins of the backbiter are further destructive in their perversion of the system of penance. The backbiter does not speak directly and privately to the subject of his criticism. In the popular exemplum found in many English manuscripts,65 the backbiting monk is punished, because 'leof he was his mouț to spille/ Of his felawes he space euer ille.' Meaning to kill, to cause the damnation or financial ruin, or to distort, 'spille' connotes the murderous and linguistic aspect of backbiting. For his sin, the monk bites his flaming tongues into 'morselles' and eats it, evoking the fate of the backbiters of Revelation. Cut off from the body of Christ, the backbiter enacts his own perverse ritual of the Eucharist. However, after eating the tongue, he vomits out his loathsome member, like the antichrist of Augustine, and re-enacts the process. In one version of the tale, the listeners are exhorted to learn by his example. If a man sees his fellow fall into sin, he should admonish him privately as pastoral literature advises. Thus 'rihtful lymes of holi chirche' will they be in life and members of Heaven for eternity.66

This dual power of speech to save and to damn, to praise and to condemn, affirmed the need for rigorous definitions of good speech and bad speech and the institutions that maintained them. Pastoral writing and late medieval exempla concerning peccata linguae depict the impact of bad speech upon the community of listeners, the body of Church, and ultimately the fate of the speaker's resurrected or dismembered body. Drawing on both pastoral concerns for the sacraments and Augustinian theories of language, the punishments of the exempla warn against eternal corporal and corporate dismemberment.

V. E. Langum (MPhil), Magdalene College, Cambridge


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Works Consulted

Primary Sources

An Alphabet of Tales. Mary Macleod Banks, ed. 2 vols. rpt. as 1. EETS o.s. 126 and 127. London: Oxford University Press, 1904, 1905.

Augustine. Confessionum: Libri XIII. CCSL 27.

---. De Doctrina Christiana. CCSL 32.

---. De Magistro. CSEL 50.

---. In Iohannis Euangelium: tractatus CXXIV. CCSL 36.

Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience. Pamela Gradon and Richard Morris, eds. 2 vols EETS o.s. 23. London: Trubner, 1866; revised Oxford University Press, 1965-79.

The Book of Vices and Virtues. W. Nelson Francis, ed. EETS o.s. 217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942.

Ci Nous Dit: Recueil d'Exemples Moraux. Vol. 1. Grard Blangez, ed. Paris: Socit des Anciens Textes Franais, 1979.

Dives and Pauper. Priscilla Heath Barnum, ed. Vol. 1. 2 parts. EETS 275, 280. London: Oxford University Press, 1976 and 1980.

Fasciculus Morum. Siegfried Wenzel, ed. London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.

Jacob's Well. Arthur Brandeis, ed. EETS o.s. 115. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, & Co., 1900.

London, British Library MS. Addit. 9066

London, British Library MS. Addit. 22283

London, British Library MS. Harl. 2391

'Latin Vulgate'. Mark Olsen, ed. The ARTFL Project. 21 December 2006

Mannyng, Robert. Robert of Brune's Handlyng Synne. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. EETS o.s. 119, 123. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, & Co, 1901.

Mirk, John. Mirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies. Theodor Erbe, ed. EETS o.s. 96. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co., 1905.

A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen. Venetia Nelson, ed. Middle English Texts 14. Heidelberg: Winter, 1981.

The Northern Homily Cycle: The Expanded Version in MSS Harley 4196 and Cotton Tiberius E vii III: From the Fifth to the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. (Vol. 3) Saara Nevalinna, ed. Helsinki: La Socit Nophilologique de Helsinki, 1984.

Of Shrifte and Penance: The Middle English Prose Translation of Le Manuel des Pchs. Klaus Bitterling, ed. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1998.

A Selection of Latin Stories From Manuscripts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Thomas Wright, ed. London: The Percy Society, 1842.

Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend. William Caxton, trans. F. S. Ellis, ed.. London: Temple Classics, 1892. Reference Works

Hartug, Albert E., Ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500. Vol. 9. New Haven, Conn.: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993.

Herbert, J. A. Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Vol. 3. London: Longmans, 1910.

Tubach, Frederic C. Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Akademia Scientarium Fennica, 1969.

Secondary Sources

Allen, Judson Boyce. The Friar as Critic: Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971.

Blythe, Joan Heighes. 'Sins of the Tongue and Rhetorical Prudence in Piers Plowman.' Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages: Philological Studies in Honor of Siegried Wenzel. Richard G. Newhauser and John A. Alford, eds. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995. 119-142.

Boitani, Piero. English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Joan Krakover Hall, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Boyle, Leonard. 'The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology.' The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Thomas J. Heffernan, ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. 30-43.

Casagrande, Carla and Silvana Vecchio. I Peccati Della Lingua: Disciplina ed Etica della Parola Nella Cultura Medievale. Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1987.

Cheney, C. R. English Synodalia of the Thirteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Colish, Marcia L. The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968.

Craun, Edwin D. Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Jager, Eric. The Tempter's Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Lawton, David. Blasphemy. London: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Le Goff, J. 'L'Exemplum et la Rhétorique de la Prédication aux XIIIè et XIVè siècles.' Retorica e Poetica tra I Secoli XII e XIV. Claudio Leonardi and Enrico Mensto, eds. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1988. 3-29.

Lyons, John D. Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Mosher, Joseph A. The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature of England. New York: Columbia University Press, 1911.

Scanlon, Larry. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Shaw, Judith. 'The Influence of Canonical and Episcopal Reform on Popular Books of Instruction.' The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Thomas J. Heffernan, ed. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1985. 44-60.

Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of Reformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Tubach, Frederic C. 'Exempla in the Decline.' Traditio. 18 (1962): 4017-17.

Vance, Eugene. Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages. Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. Vodola, Elisabeth. Excommunication in the Middle Ages. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

Welter, J. Th. L'Exemplum dans la Littrature Religieuse et Didactique du Moyen Age. Paris: Occitania, 1927.

Ziolokowski, Jan M. Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

NOTES

1. Jacques de Vitry qtd. in Le Goff (1988), 9.

2. See, for example, Le Goff (1988), 3-12; Tubach (1962), 412ff.; Scanlon (1994), 65.

3. For a full study, see Casagrande and Vecchio (1987). For other literature dealing with peccata linguae, see Blythe (1995), 119-42 and Craun (1997), 73-230.

4. The Vulgate offers a precedent for this binary conception of speech. Though a small member of' the body, the tongue is by its nature the most ambivalent. Through the tongue, man both praises God and curses men like Him. In James 3:10: 'ex ipso ore procedit benedicto et maledicto'.

5. See Wright (1842), 42.

6. Handlyng Synne 46, 48.

7. Boyle (1983), 31 and Shaw (1985), 45.

8. For detailed account, see Craun (1997), 13-24. Latin names for peccata linguae are taken from his list (15-16) drawn from Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, which includes the most detailed treatment of peccata linguae in an English manuscript.

9. Le Goff (1988), 10.

10. The validity of applying Augustine's ideas about language to pastoral literature is thoroughly justified in Craun (1997), 11ff. where he traces Augustinian theology in the major pastoral writers on peccata linguae Other scholars have also argued that Augustinian sign theory underpined medieval thinking on language; e.g., Colish (1968), 8ff. and Vance (1986), 34ff. It is a reasonable extension, I believe, to apply these ideas to exempla.

11. Doctrina I.x.

12. Magistro I.2.

13. Iohannis XIV.7

14. Doctrina II.viii-xii.

15. For a full account of the Fall in medieval thought, see Jager (1993).

16. Confessiones IV.xi.17.

17. Iohannis XXXVII.4.

18. Vance (1986), 39.

19. Doctrina II.iv.5.

20. For alternative discussions of Augustine's autobiographical relationship to language, see Colish (1968), 22-81 and Vance (1986), 13-28.

21. Confessiones II.i.1.

22. Ibid. III.i.1.

23. Ibid. V.x.18.

24. Ibid. IV.xv.24.

25. John 1:14.

26. Iohannis VI.10.

27. Colish (1968), 33.

28. The Northern Homily Cycle Vol. 3 66.

29. For an account of blasphemy in late Middle Ages, see Lawton (1993), 84-107.

30. Alphabet 82-4

31. Ibid. 83.

32. Blangez (1979), 159.

33. Handlyng 668.

34. Fasciculus 166.

35. Book of Vices and Virtues 67.

36. Some English versions are found in Fasciculus 166, Handlyng 689-760 and Festial 113-4.

37. Handlyng 702-5.

38. Doctrina I.xvi.15.

39. Ayenbite 148.

40. Ibid. 148.

41. Vodola (1986), 59.

42. Jacob 31-2.

43. Golden Legend 724-5.

44. Dives and Pauper 1.

45. Ibid. 3.

46. Myrour 213.

47. See Dives 132, Myrour 212, 214.

48. Fasciculus 160.

49. Some English versions are found Jacob 232, 95; Handlyng 56-7; Festial 96-7; Alphabet 304-5; Shrifte 57.

50. Dives 134.

51. Dives 134.

52. Festial 191-2.

53. Ibid. 192.

54. Ayenbite 249.

55. Fasciculus 48.

56. Book of Vices 284.

57. Ibid. 284.

58. Ibid. 284.

59. Jacob 31.

60. Ibid. 31.

61. BL MS. Addit. 9066 f.75v.

62. Iohannis XXXII.7.

63. Iohannis XXVII.6.

64. Tractates on Epistles III.4.

65. Some English versions are found BL MS. Addit. 22283 f.17v (Northern Homily Cycle); Fasciculus 162; Handlyng 3553-3628; BL MS. Harl. 2391 f.224r; Shrifte 70.

66. BL MS. Addit. 22283 f.17v.


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