445. The context seems to imply that some of the apostles made baskets. So in Piers Plowman, B. xv. 285, we read of St. Paul—
'Poule, after his prechyng · panyers he made.'
Yet in Acts xviii. 3 we only read that he wrought as a tent-maker. However, it was St. Paul who set the example of labouring with his hands; and, in imitation of him, we find an early example of basket-making by St. Arsenius, 'who, before he turned hermit, had been the tutor of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius,' and who is represented in a fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, by Pietro Laurati, as 'weaving baskets of palm-leaves'; whilst beside him another hermit is cutting wooden spoons, and another is fishing. See Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, 3rd ed. ii. 757.
Note that baskettes is trisyllabic, as in Palladius on Husbandry, bk. xii. l. 307.
448. The best description of the house-to-house system of begging, as adopted by the mendicant friars, is near the beginning of the
Sompnour's Tale, D. 1738. They went in pairs to the farm-houses, begging a bushel of wheat, or malt, or rye, or a piece of cheese or brawn, or bacon or beef, or even a piece of an old blanket. Nothing seems to have come amiss to them.
450. See Prologue, A. 255; and cf. the description of the poor widow at the beginning of the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4011.
The Pardoneres Tale.
For some account of the source of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 439. The account which I here quote as the 'Italian' text is that contained in Novella lxxxii of the Libro di Novelle.
Observe also the quotations from Pope Innocent given in vol. iii. pp. 444, 445. To which may be added, that Chaucer here frequently quotes from his Persones Tale, which must have been written previously. Compare ll. 475, 482, 504, 529, 558, 590, 631-650, with I. 591, 836, 819, 820, 822, 793, 587-593.