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KEY Commentary Side Textual Bibliographic Scriptural
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and christ is gods. If my faith be stedfast in the promises
that I haue in Christes bloud / I nede but to praye mi
father in Christes name and he shall send me a legion of
angels to helpe me: so that my faith is lorde ouer the angels
and ouer all creatures to turne them vn to my
soules health and my fathers honoure / and maye be subiecte
vn to no creature / but vn to gods worde in oure sauioure
Christe only. I may haue no trust therfore in the saintes.
If ye saye / ye put no trust in them / but only put them in
remembraunce of their dutie / as a man desyreth his neyboure to praye for him / remembring him of his dutie /and as when we desyre our brethern to helpe vs at oure nede. That is
false / for ye put trust in all youre ceremonies and all
youre holy dedes and in
whosoeuer disgyseth him selfe and altereth his
cote from the comune facion / ye and euen in the cotes of
them that be not yet saintes / aftir youre doctrine.
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165/17–18
law . . .
whore. Cf. Exod. 20.14, Deut. 5.18, Heb. 13.4.
165/25–26
And to . . . for
displeasure. Cf. CWM 6/1.311/32–34.
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Yf a prest said masse in his gowne / wold ye not
rise agenst him and slee him / and that for the false faith
that ye haue in the other
garmentes. For what honoure can those other
garmentes doo to god moare then his gowne or profit vn to
youre soules / seinge ye vnderstonde nought ther by? And
therto in the collectes of saintes ye saye / saue me God
and geue me euerlastinge life for the merites of
this or that saint / euery man aftir his
phantasie chosynge him some one sainte singularly to be
saued by. With which collectes I praye you shew me how
stondeth the deeth of Christe? Paul wold saye that Christ
died in vayne if that doctrine were true.
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165/30
gelded men.
Although found in 1531 and 1573, Walter omits 165/S3: "Whether it were
best that prestes were gelded."
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And therto in as moch as ye saye / the saintes
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166/5
haue layd virgens in
their beddes. Leaders in the early church denounced the custom
of "syneisakitism" or the cohabitation of a celibate man and
woman. Some indeed slept together, ideally only in the literal sense. If
they would not separate, Cyprian ordered them excommunicated.
Cf. To Pomponius, Bishop of Dionysiana [sic]
(AD C249) (Ep. 62 in PL 4.364–72; Ep. 4 in CSEL 3B.17–26; Ep. 61 in ANF
5.356–58). In Canon 3, Nicea I in 325 prohibited clerics from living
with women who were not close female relatives, but its decree was not
everywhere obeyed. Cf. Gratian, Decretum, Part 1, Dist. 32, Ch. 16 (CIC 1.121;
2NPNF 14.11). Jerome deplores the practice in his famous letter
describing corrupt Roman society, To Eustochium, Ep. 22 (AD 384), Par.
14: "One house holds them and one chamber. They often occupy the same
bed, and yet they call us suspicious if we fancy anything amiss." (PL
22.403; CSEL 54.162; 2NPNF 6.27). Also in the late 4c, John Chrysostom
wrote two treatises against mulieres subintroductae
: Against Those Men Cohabiting with Virgins and
On the Necessity of Guarding
Virginity (PG 47.495–532), in
Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations,
tr. Elizabeth A. Clark, Studies in Women and
Religion 1 (New York: Mellen, 1979) 164–246.
Robert of Arbrissel (c1055–1117), a wandering
preacher, slept among his female followers, for which he was rebuked by
Marbod, Bishop of Rennes, Ep. 6 (PL 171.1481) and Geoffrey, Abbot at Vendome , Bk. 4,
Ep. 47 (PL 157.182). Cf. Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage : Sexual Abstinence in
Medieval Wedlock (Princeton UP, 1993) 111n68. In 1100 Robert
founded the abbey of Fontevrault on the Loire, where Eleanor of
Aquitaine was later confined after she supported the revolt of her sons
against Henry II. Separate houses for men and for women on the same land
were jointly ruled by
an abbess, as were Bridgittine monasteries
such as Syon. Robert was beatified but never
canonized. Cf. NCE 12.528–29; Jacqueline Smith, "Robert of
Arbrissel: Procurator Mulierum," in Medieval Women, ed. Derek
Baker (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical Historical
Society, 1978) 175–84; D.D.R. Owen, Eleanor of
Aquitaine: Queen and Legend (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 9.
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