6 - Clerical dominion and authority in new anticlerical literature

Summary

And lewte [I0113] on me [for] I loured [on pe frere];

‘Wherfore lourestow?’ quod lewtee, and loked on me harde.

‘If I dorste’, quod I, camonges men pis metels auowe!’

‘3is, by Peter and by Poul!’ quod he and took hem bope to witnesse:

Non oderis fratres secrete in corde tuo set publice argue illos.

‘They wole aleggen also’, quod I, ‘and by pe gospel preuen:

Nolite iudicare quemquam’

‘And wherof seruep lawe’, quod lewtee, ‘if no lif vndertoke it

Falsnesse ne faiterie? for somwhat pe Apostle seide

Non oderis fratrem.

And in pe Sauter also seip dauid pe prophete

Existimasti inique quod ero tui similis &c.

It is licitum for lewed men to [legge] pe sope

If hem likep and lest; ech a lawe it grauntep,

Excepte persons and preestes and prelates of holy chirche.

It fallep no3t for pat folk no tales to telle

Thou3 pe tale [were] trewe, and it touche[d] synne.

Pyng pat al pe world woot, wherfore sholdestow spare

To reden it in Retorik to arate dedly synne? … ’

(B xi 84–102)

Clerical polemicists were often obliged to find authorities to defend their attacks on opponents. Lewte's biblical texts, and that imputed to the friars, had been pressed into this kind of service before. The secular cleric Richard FitzRalph took Joh. 7:24, ‘Nolite iudicare secundum faciem: sed iustum indicium indicate’, for the text of his proposicio Defensio Curatorum against the friars. He used the text as an authority for his claim that he did not mean to attack an order approved by holy church and the pope, only to show where correction was necessary.