Quant les voit à soi démentans';
i.e. 'Marriage is an evil bond—so may St. Julian aid me, who harbours wandering pilgrims; and St. Leonard, who frees from their fetters (lit. un-irons) such prisoners as are very repentant, when he sees them giving themselves the lie (or recalling their word).' The 'prisoners' are married people, who have repented, and would recall their plighted vow.
St. Leonard was the patron-saint of captives, and it was charitably hoped that he would extend his protection to the wretched people who had unadvisedly entered into wedlock, and soon prayed to get out of it again. They would thus exchange the hard bond for the soft condition of freedom. 'St. Julian is the patron of pilgrims; St. Leonard and St. Barbara protect captives'; Brand, Pop. Antiquities, i. 359. And, at p. 363 of the same, Brand quotes from Barnabee Googe:—
'But Leonerd of the prisoners doth the bandes asunder pull,
And breaks the prison-doores and chaines, wherewith his church is full.'
St. Leonard's day is Nov. 6.
[119]. The MSS. have slept-e, which is dissyllabic. Read sleep, as in C. T. Prol. 397.
[120]. Hence the title of one of Lydgate's poems, The Temple of Glass, which is an imitation of the present poem.
[130]. Cf. the description of Venus' temple (Cant. Tales, A 1918), which is imitated from that in Boccaccio's Teseide.
[133]. Cf. 'naked fleting in the large see.... And on hir heed, ful semely for to see, A rose garland, fresh and wel smellinge'; Cant. Tales, A 1956.