Qui la loi Iesu-Crist tendront,' &c.
I. e. By Peter I wish you to understand the pope, and to include also the secular clerks, &c. John represents the friars (l. 7185).
7178. I. e. 'against those friars who maintain all (this book), and falsely teach the people; and John betokens those (the friars) who preach, to the effect that there is no law so suitable as that Eternal Gospel, sent by the Holy Ghost to convert such as have gone astray.' The notion is, that the teaching of John (the type of the law of love, as expounded by the friars) is to supersede the teaching of Peter (the type of the pope and other obsolete secular teachers). Such was the 'Eternal Gospel'; no wonder that the Pope condemned it as being too advanced.
7197-7204. Obscure; and not fully in the F. text.
7217. The mother of Faux-Semblaunt was Hypocrisy (l. 6779).
7227. 'But he who dreads my brethren more than Christ subjects himself to Christ's wrath.'
7243. patren, to repeat Pater-nosters; see Plowm. Crede, 6.
7256. Beggers is here used as a proper name, answering to F. Beguins. The Beguins, members of certain lay brotherhoods which arose in the Low Countries in the beginning of the thirteenth century, were also called Beguards or Begards, which in E. became Beggars. There can be now no doubt that the mod. E. beggar is the same word, and the verb to beg was merely evolved from it. See the articles on Beg, Beggar, Beghard, and Beguine in the New E. Dict. All these
names were derived from a certain Lambert Bègue. The Béguins were condemned at the council of Cologne in 1261, and at the general council of Vienne, in 1311. It seems probable that the term Beggars (Beguins) is here used derisively; the people really described seem to be the Franciscan friars, also called Gray friars; see l. 7258.
7259. fretted, ornamented, decked; from A. S. frætwian, to adorn; cf. l. 4705, and Leg. of Good Women, 1117; here ironical.