676. quo foret ipse vigil, ‘where it ought to be watchful,’ a common use of the imperfect subjunctive in our author’s Latin: cp. ‘gestaret,’ 695, ‘lederet,’ 922, ‘medicaret,’ 1052.
815. What follows is spoken as in the person of the supreme pontiff: cp. Mirour, 18505-18792, where somewhat similar avowals are put into the mouth of a member of the Roman Court.
819 f. Cp. Conf. Amantis, Prol. 261,
‘The hevene is ferr, the world is nyh.’
835. Ovid, Fasti, v. 209.
955 f. I take this concluding couplet as a remark made by the author on the sentiments which he has just heard expressed by the representative of the Pope. It practically means that ‘Clemens’ is not a proper name for the Pope: it is in fact a ‘headless name’ and should rather be ‘Inclemens.’ Compare the address to Innocent III at the beginning of Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova:
‘Papa, stupor mundi, si dixero Papa nocenti,
Acephalum nomen tribuam tibi: si caput addam,
Hostis erit metri,’ &c.
957 ff. It seems best to take what follows as, in part at least, a dialogue between the author and the representative of the pope, who has just spoken. Soon however the speech passes again entirely to the author. The Biblical reference here is to Revelation, xxii. 8 f. The same use is made of it in the Mirour, 18736 ff.