on the appointed day they were being led to the fire, one of the attendants said to one of them, "Wretched one, you are condemned. Now do penance and confess your sins, lest after the burning of the body, which is only momentary, hell-fire burns your soul eternally." When the man replied, "I certainly think that I have been mistaken, but I fear repentance in so great straits is by no means acceptable to God." The former replied, "Only confess from your heart. God is merciful and will receive the penitent."

Wonderful fact! For as soon as the man confessed his perfidy, his hand was fully healed. While he delayed in confession, the judge summoned him to the punishment. His confessor replied to the judge, "It is not just that an innocent man should be condemned unjustly." Since no trace of a burn was found on his hand, he was dismissed.

The man had a wife living not far from the city entirely ignorant of these things which have been related. When he came to her rejoicing and said, "Blessed be God who has liberated me to-day from the destruction of body and soul!" and explained to her the cause; she replied, "What have you done, most wretched man, what have you done? Why have you withdrawn from your holy and sacred faith from fear of momentary pain? You ought rather, if it were possible, to expose your body a hundred times to the flames than once to withdraw from a faith so well proven."

Whom does not the voice of the serpent seduce? That man, unmindful of the favor divinely conferred upon him, unmindful of the so manifest miracle, followed his wife's advice and returned to his former error. God, not unmindful truly of the crime, in return for so great ingratitude, tortured the hand of each one. The burn was renewed in the hand of the heretic and, because his wife was the cause of his returning to his error, she was made his companion in the renewed pain. So vehement was the burn that it penetrated to the bones. And since they did not dare in the village to utter the cries which the violence of the pain extorted, they fled into the nearest woods, howling there like wolves. Why protract my words? They were betrayed, led back to the city, and together cast into the fire, which was not yet fully extinguished, and were burnt to ashes.

NOVICE: "They were justly punished." *

*Cf. Cæsar of Heisterbach, III, 16.

V. TALES OF THE HOST.

1. CHRIST SEEN IN THE HANDS OF A PRIEST.

Cæsar of Heisterbach, Dist. IX, Cap. XXVIII. (Vol. II, p. 186.) In Himmerode an aged priest, Henry by name, died a few years ago. He was a holy and just man, and had been for very many years sacristan in that monastery. When he was reading the mass one day at the altar of St. John the Baptist, in the choir of the lay-brethren, a certain one of the lay-brethren standing near, saw, in the hands of the priest, the Saviour in the form of a man. Nevertheless the priest himself did not see it. This was told to me by one of the elders in that convent.

2. WOMAN punished FOR SCATTering theE HOST UPON HER VEGETABLES.

Cæsar of Heisterbach, Dist. IX, Cap. IX. (Vol. II, pp. 173-74.)

On the same island a maiden, not a nun, whom I saw there, was possessed. When the devil was asked by a priest why he had so long and so cruelly tortured Hartdyfa de Cogheme, he replied through the mouth of the girl. "Why? She has most certainly deserved it. scattered the Most High upon her vegetables."

Since he did not at all understand the saying and the devil was unwilling to explain, the priest went to the woman and told her what the devil had said about her, advising her not to deny if she understood. She immediately confessed her guilt, saying, "I understand the saying well, although I have never told any inan of it. When I was a young girl and had a garden to cultivate, I received a wandering woman as a guest one night. When I told her of the losses in my garden, saying that all the vegetables were being devoured by caterpillars, she replied, 'I will tell you a good remedy. Receive the body of the Lord, break it in pieces, scatter it over your vegetables, and the plague will cease at once.' I, wretched one! who cared more for my garden than for the sacrament, when I had received the body of our Lord at Easter, took it out of my mouth and did with it as I had been taught. What I had intended as a remedy for my vegetables, became a source of torment to me, as the devil is my witness."

NOVICE: This woman was more cruel than the attendants of Pilate, who spared Jesus after His death and did not break His bones.

MONK: Therefore, up to the present day she atones for that heinous sin and suffers unheard-of tortures. Let those who employ the divine sacrament for temporal gain, or what is more execrable, for evil-doing, give heed to this punishment, even if they do not consider the sinfulness. Also if vermin neglect the reverence due to this sacrament, they sometimes suffer punishment.*

3. A CHURCH BUILT FOR THE HOST BY BEES.
Étienne de Bourbon, No. 317. (pp. 266-67.)

For I have heard that a certain rustic, wishing to become wealthy and having many hives of bees, asked certain evil men how he could get rich and increase the number of his bees. He was told by some one that if he should retain the sacred communion on Easter and place it in one of his hives, he would entice away all of his neighbor's bees, which leaving their own hives, would come to the place where the body of our Lord was and there would make honey. He did this.

Then all the bees came to the hive where the body of Christ was, and just as if they had felt compassion for the irreverence done to it, by their labor they began to construct a little church and to erect foundations and bases and columns and an altar with like labor, and with the greatest reverence they placed the body of our Lord upon the altar. And within that little bee-hive they formed that little church with wonderful and the most beautiful workmanship. The bees of the vicinity leaving their hives came together at that one; and over that structure they sang in their own manner certain wonderful melodies like hymns.

The rustic hearing this, wondered. But waiting until the fitting time for collecting the swarm of bees and the honey-comb, he found nothing in his hives in which the bees had been accustomed to make honey; finding himself impoverished through the means by which he had believed that he would be enriched, he went to that one where he had placed the host, where he saw the bees had come together. But when he approached, just as if they had wanted to vindicate the insult to our Saviour, the bees rushed upon the rustic and stung him so severely that he escaped with difficulty, and suffering greatly. Going to the priest he related all that he had done and what the bees had done. The

*Cf. Jacques de Vitry, No. 270.

priest, by the advice of his bishop, collected his parishioners and went in procession to the place. Then the bees, leaving the hive, rose in the air, making sweet melody. Raising the hive they found within the noble structure of that little church and the body of our Lord placed upon the altar. Then returning thanks they bore to their own church that little church of the bees constructed with such skill and elegance and with praises placed it on the altar.

By this deed those who do not reverence but offer insult instead to the sacred body of Christ or the sacred place where it is, ought to be put to great confusion.*

* Cf. Cæsar of Heisterbach, IX, 8; and see Crane: Exempla, p. lxxxviii.

II.

III.

IV.

1. Thomas Walsingham's Account,
2. Robert of Avesbury's Account,

3. The King's Ordinance Concerning Laborers,

STATUTES OF PROVISORS AND PRAEMUNIRE.

1. Statute of Provisors of 1352, 25 Ed. III, Stat. 5,

c. 22,

2. Statute of Præmunire of 1393, 16 Rich. II, c. 5,

WYCLIFFE AND THE LOLLARDS.

I. Heretical and Erroneous Conclusions,

2. Bull of Gregory XI to the University of Oxford,
3. Reply of Wycliffe to his Summons by the Pope to
come to Rome,

4. Statute of 1401 against the Lollards,

THE PEASANT REBELLION.

PAGE

I

2

2

3

5

6

9

9

9

II

19

19

20

3. The King's Grant of Manumission,

4. Withdrawal of Manumissions,

5. The King's Pardon for Violence of Lords,

I. THE BLACK DEATH.

Contemporary accounts of the great pestilence of 1348-9 are surprisingly few. Several of the chronicles close shortly before that date, and others seem to have been suspended during the period of confusion attendant upon it. Its extent and effects are, however, discoverable from a large mass of ecclesiastical and manorial records and from the appearance on the Statute-book of the Statutes of Laborers. The document (3) printed below is not properly a law, but a royal ordinance, issued apparently in the summer of 1349, while the plague was still raging. It was transformed into a law, with closer definition of the rate of wages, at the first subsequent meeting of Parliament, in 1351; (25 Ed. iii. Stat. 2.) This law was frequently reenacted in various forms until it came to be embraced in the great Statute of Apprentices;