[1613] As for instance the various other books written or translated for the nuns of Syon (on which see Eckenstein, op. cit. pp. 394-5) and the mystical treatise “Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat,” which was written by Richard Rolle of Hampole for a nun of Yedingham. Rolle was kindly cherished by the nuns of Hampole, where he settled; they often sought his advice during his lifetime and after his death they tried to obtain his canonisation; an office for his festival was composed and a collection of his miracles made. (See Cambridge Hist. of Engl. Lit. II, pp. 45, 48.) For similar treatises of foreign origin, see the Opusculum of Hermann der Lahme (1013-54), Francesco da Barbarino’s Del Reggimento e Costumi di Donne (which contains a section dealing with nuns), (c. 1307-15), Francisco Ximenes’ Libre de les dones († 1409) and John Gerson’s († 1429) letter to his sister. See Hentsch, op. cit. pp. 39, 114, 151, 152.
[1614] Printed from the Thornton MS. in Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, ed. G. G. Perry (E.E.T.S. 1867, 1914), No. III, pp. 51-62. Compare Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843 (La Sainte Abbaye), some pictures from which are reproduced in this book.
[1615] Mechthild von Magdeburg, Offenbarungen, oder Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. Gall Morel (1869), pp. 249 ff.; see Eckenstein, op. cit. p. 339. The same idea is found in a little German Volkslied:
Wir wellen uns pawen ein heuselein
Und unser sel ain klosterlein,
Jesus Crist sol der maister sein,
Maria jungfraw die schaffnerein.
Götliche Forcht die pfortnerein,
Götliche Lieb die kelnerein,
Diemuetikait wont wol do pei
Weisheit besleust daz laid all ein.
—Uhland, Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder, II, pp. 864-5.
[1616] English text in Furnivall, Early English Poems (Berlin, 1862), printed in Trans. of Philological Soc. 1858, pt. II, pp. 156-61; and in Goldbeck and Mätzner, Altenglische Sprachproben (Berlin, 1867). pt. I, p. 147; W. Heuser, Die Kildare-Gedichte (Bonn, 1904), p. 145; and in a slightly modernised form in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poets, 1801, I, pp. 83 ff., who took it from Hickes’ Thesaurus, pt. I, p. 231. I have here used the modernised version for the sake of convenience. An attempt has been made to identify the religious houses mentioned in the poem with real monasteries in Kildare; the poem is certainly of Anglo-Irish origin and occurs in the famous “Kildare Manuscript” (MS. Harl. 913). See W. Heuser, op. cit. pp. 141-5. There is a French version in Barbazon et Méon, Fabliaux III, p. 175.
[1617] “It is not until French wit flashes across English seriousness that we travel to the Land of Cokaygne,” G. Hadow, Chaucer and His Times, p. 35. Stories of a food country are, however, common in medieval literature, being sometimes legends of a vanished golden age, as in the Irish “Vision of MacConglinne” (late twelfth century), and sometimes ideal pictures of a life of lazy luxury, as in the French and English Lands of Cokaygne and the German Schlaraffenland. On the whole subject, see Fr. Joh. Poeschel, Das Märchen von Schlaraffenland (Halle, 1878), and the introduction by W. Wollner to The Vision of MacConglinne, ed. Kuno Meyer (1892).
[1618] Polit. Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (Camden Soc. 1839), pp. 137-48.
[1619] The idea of the Ordre de Bel-Eyse is probably taken from the twelfth century Anglo-Latin poem by Nigel Wireker entitled Speculum Stultorum, which tells the story of the ass Burnellus, who goes out into the world to seek his fortune. At one point Burnellus decides to retire to a convent and passes the different orders under review, to see which will suit him. This gives the author an opportunity for some pointed satire, including a reference to nuns; “they never quarrel save for due cause, in due place, nor do they come to blows save for grave reasons”; their morals are very questionable, “Harum sunt quaedam steriles et quaedam parturientes, virgineoque tamen nomine cuncta tegunt. Quae pastoralis baculi dotatur honore, illa quidem melius fertiliusque parit. Vix etiam quaevis sterilis reperitur in illis, donec eis aetas talia posse negat.” Finally Burnellus decides to found a new order; from the Templars he will borrow their smoothly pacing horses, from the Cluniacs and the black Canons their custom of eating meat, from the order of Grandmont their gossip, from the Carthusians the habit of saying mass only once a month, from the Premonstratensians their warm and comfortable clothes, from the nuns their custom of going ungirdled; and in this order every brother shall have a female companion, as in the first order which was instituted in Paradise. Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright (Rolls Series, 1872), I, pp. 94-6.
[1620] With these two highly successful jeux d’esprit at the expense of monastic luxury may be compared a passage in the curious thirteenth century poem entitled “A Disputison bytwene a cristene mon and a Jew,” in which an incidental shaft is perhaps aimed at nunneries, which affected the habits of Cokaygne and Fair Ease. The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., pt. II, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S. 1901), No. XLVI, p. 490.