11. The Pilgrim

This ancient poem, a manuscript on vellum, illustrated with drawings, but very much damaged, is in the Cottonian Collection in the British Museum, probably translated in the fifteenth century from the first of the Three Pilgrimages, a French manuscript. It is in the form of a dream, and it concludes by fixing the pilgrim as a monk in a Cretaceous monastery. Soon after setting out, he is tempted by a golden image, but is driven from it by the appearance of a dead corpse. He then encounters an armed man, who endeavours to entice him to turn aside to see his mistress, and uses a magic virtue and incantations. They hold a long conversation, in which is narrated the case of a Duke Frysc, who had consented to be baptized; he is represented with a girdle about his middle, otherwise naked, except his crown, but when he had got into the baptistery, he becomes alarmed by a voice which informs him that it is an unlucky city. 'For I am thought he hends a cry

That alarmed certifying

For synne and for Inyquyte

How no folk schulde dampued be

At the day of Jugemente

Gon to helle there to be brent,

Ye mo as in comparison

Thanne folk for ther savacyon

Scholde that day reveyued be

To dwelle in heune that fayre cyte.'

The duke, although a bishop has got him by one hand, with one of his legs in the baptistery, gets his liberty, and runs away. Had sprinkling been the practice in those days, the bishop might readily have managed the ceremony with a handful of water. The pilgrim then has a very long adventure with Hervey, who strives earnestly to draw him aside. She is engaged with a pair of scissors, cutting strips from Pelacqua, Ariana, and other 'Seetys founde false and vitrewe.' These she puts together, to form a new system of divinity. He becomes sadly puzzled; she had laid her nets so artfully, 'In loud, on water, and in the bayr.' He sees many attempt to pass, but all are entangled; at length by fasting and by great penance, he slips through the nets. He is then assaulted by Satan, who tells him that he has devoured thousands of Christ's flock, and has so many arts that he cannot escape him. The devil, to terrify the pilgrim, narrates a recent adventure by which he had succeeded in destroying a holy hermit. He had transformed himself into an angel of light, and went to the hermit, warning him that Satan would soon overcome him if he was not courageous to resist; that he would appear to him in the shape of his father, and if he parleyed with the fiend, he must be lost; and ex-hered him to smite the fiend at once with sword or knife. Soon after this, his father really came to visit him, when the deluded hermit plunged a dagger to his heart, and thus fell into the jaws of the fiend. The pilgrim, much terrified, kept crossing himself, at which Satan drew back; and by continuing to make the sign of the cross, he makes his escape. He is then stopped by Fortune and her Wheel, and by Idolatry, but evades them. A fortune-teller wishes him to have his activity cast, but as he knows that many men are born at the same moment, some to fortune and many to misery, he knows that there can be no virtue in such consultations of the stars. He is then profited by images in churches, to remind us of the holy lives of saints. 'And ve to folkes many on [a one]

Fid greet proffyte also they don.'

Sorcery endeavours to catch him with her crooked book; and he is assailed by Worldly-gladness, but escapes. At length Grace Dieu visits him in a stately ship, having a palace and castle on deck. He embarks, and is shown a large baptistery, filled with tears from an eye in a rock. This bath is replenished with tears of repentance, by works of supererogation. Its virtues are thus described:

'For it re-curth every wounds

Call this Baptym the secunde

That dothe away aile gruance

With which water Danie peuance

Makyth a lye! I the esure

To wasche away al ordure,

In whiche bath in certayne

The body womman Mawdry e

Iwasben was tak bred her to

The Apostle Peter eke also

And many too than I may to-e

Were Iwasben in this wice

'A lye,' water impregnated with alkaline salt.

And so schalt thou by reed of me

Yeue thou lyste to purged be.'

Grace Dieu fills up the bath, and the pilgrim, naked, enters the baptistery to his middle, and is bathed and washed. She then tells him he may make his choice of monastic orders—Cisterces, Clunys, Charterlions, or Preachers Minours: he chooses to enter the Cistercian order. The porter, 'Drede of God,' at first refuses him; but Charity receives and shows him over the establishment: he is shown many books. The librarian says:— 'And my name seue thou lyste be

Is called Agyographe,

Which is to seyne I the ensure

Of holy wrytyngs the Scripture,

And at feyres and at feetis

I reste in skynues off dede bestis.'

She expresses a clear notion of the Old Testament as enlightened by the New—

'I mene as thys in sentement,

That the oulie tratament

Were derke and cloudy off his syght

Zeue that it ne took his lyght

Claryfyd by cuteudemet

Off the newe tratament,

Whos schynyngs in conelusyoun

Is cause off our Salvacyoun.'

He is shown a mirror, which exhibits the sins of the person who looks in it; he is also shown one of Flattery's mirrors, which exhibits the most defiled, as angels of purity. He is at length introduced to the chief prior, Obedience, and sits down to dinner:—

'And also as I dyde obserue,

Noon other folke at mete serue

But folkes deede euer more

Where off I was abaschyd sore.'

Abstinence is the freytourer and butler; the servants were the skeletons of those who had founded and endowed the abbey. Willid Poverty, in a state of nudity, slogs a song, ending with—

'I slepe in Joye and sekerness

For theses may not robbe me.'

Unwilling Poverty sits grumbling and murmuring. Dame Chastity at last introduces the pilgrim to Prayer, who makes him welcome in these lines:—

'Wherefore callyd I am Prayere

Whiche that am the messagere

That flee to heume with whynges lyght,

For abone the sterres bryght

To fore the lord to present

Prayer made in good entente.'

He then speaks to the pilgrim about the servants, who were the spectres of the wonders:—

'And rehe wyght for his good dede

Is worthi to resseyne his mede

Lyke his meryte off equyte

These deede folk which thou dost se.'

Grace Dieu, Obedience, Latrya, and Prayer, then give him instructions for his future conduct in the monastery, where he remains until death strikes him, and he awakes from his sleep.

There is an ancient pilgrimage noticed in Skelton's Rycht Delectable Treatise upon a Goodly

Garlande or Chapel of Laurell. The author recounts his literary labours; inter alia —

'Of my ladys grace at the contempleyoun

Owt of frenzhe in to englysshe prose

Of mances lyfe the peregrynacioun

He did translate, enterprete and disclose.'

No copy of this pilgrimage has been discovered and identified as his; and very high authority connects the second line with the 'peregrynatioun.' If so, it is in prose; but if the first two lines refer to the Contemplation on the Virgin Mary's Grace, a prose work, and Skelton being a poet, it would lead us to infer that the pilgrimage was in verse. The poem last described may prove to be the translation referred to by Skelton. Be that as it may, Bunyan never gained a hint from John Skelton, the satirist. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost.

This curious allegory was written by John Alcocke, the founder of Jesus College, Cambridge, a learned and abstenious English bishop, in the reign of Henry VII.

The author represents the full and recovery of mankind under the simile of an Abbey, the inmates of which are perfect in holiness and happiness. The abbess is Charity; the prioress, Wisdom; the sub-prioress, Meknes; and the nuns, Poverty, Cleanness, Temperance, Soberness, Penance, Butomness, Confession, Righteousness, Predication, Strength, Pacience, Simplicity, Mercy, Largeness, Reason, Pity, Meditation, Orison, Devotions, Contemplation, Chastity, Jubilation, Honesty, Curtesy, Fear, and Jealousy. This abbey was conveyed by the Almighty to Adam, Eve, and their beirs for ever, upon condition that he withstood the temptation of the fiend and that of his wife. The deed is witnessed by angels and man, heaven and earth, sun and moon, stars, and all creatures. Given at Paradise, the first day that man was made; in the year of the reigning of Almighty God, king of kings, whose kingdom never began nor never shall have end. No persons were to be admitted until Conscience had cleansed the soul with grace of the Holy Ghost. Two maidens, called Love and Righteousness, shall cast away from Conscience all manner of filth; Meekness and Poverty shall keep them poor in spirit. The abbey was situated upon the waters of repentance. Joy and Mercy built the walls and strengthened them with alms. Patience and Strength are the pillars and buttresses. The nuns have each her place. Contemplation is the doctor; Devotion the butler [the bishop remarks, 'Aim! if I durst say, full many be in religion (nuns), but few be religious']; Oryson shall be chanter. St. Bernard saith, When we pray in good life, our good Angel dauseth and maketh thereof a present to the Father of heaven. The abbey being so well furnished, a tyrant came, and in an evil hour, while the portress was absent, he put in his four daughters, who were all of shrewd manners; the fiend father of them all. Their names were Pride, Ravy, False Judgment, and Lust; and these destroyed the abbey, and dispersed the inmates. The punishment of man was the loss of Paradise, to spend his days in sorrow, to eat grass that groweth on the earth, and never to come to bliss until the abbey was restored. When Adam and Eve died, their souls went to hell; and not only they, but all those that of them came for four thousand six hundred years; to hell they went, every one. Then some of the anus prayed the Holy Ghost for assistance. David, Isaiah, and others, endeavoured to re-edify the abbey; but in vain. At length Christ came, and sought out the abbess and her company for thirty-three years, and at last brought them together by hanging on the cross; after which he led them with him into hell, and took out Adam and Eve his wife, and all his friends and replaced them in the Abbey of the Holy Ghost in Parson. From this curious and very rare little volume, Bunyan could not have gained any idea; but in it are some translations of passages of Scripture made fifty years before any version of the Bible was published in English, which prove the great liberties the church took with the Scriptures; and the extent to which they misled the people, while the Holy Greeks were locked up in a foreign language. Matt. iii. 2: 'Shrive ye and do ye perance, and be ye of good belief, the kingdom of heaven migdeth fast.' John viii. 6: 'He stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger all their sins, so that each of them might so how unfail other was.' Matt. xxvi. 38: 'I have, he said, full much dread against that I shall die. Sit ye down, he said, and wake ye, and bid your beads till I come again to you.'² The Pilgrimage of the Seele. Printed by William Caxton. 1483. Small Folio.³

Dr. Dibdin having, in his account of this very rare volume, stated that 'this extraordinary production, which, perhaps, rather than Bernard's Isle of Man, laid the foundation of John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," I shall make no apology to the reader for the following specimens of its poetry and prose. Not daring to trust to the doctor's specimens, which occupy eight folio pages, my analysis is drawn from a careful perusal of the original edition by Caxton, compared with the manuscript written in 1413; the result is, to establish honest John's originality, and to excite great surprise that the learned doctor could have published so unfounded an insinuation. As I lay in a seget laurence nyght, slepyng in my bedde, me befeile a full merneylous dreme.

Having finished my pilgrimage and laid aside my fleshly carrion, it appeared foathsome and dance Misericord buried it. The fowle horrible Satan cruelly menaced me and told me I was his prisoner—a youngling of full huge beauty appeared, and defends the soul of the pilgrim, who is taken to judgement. He is brought before Michael, while his good angel pleads for him Satan cries loudly against him. The devils complain that as soon as a pilgrim is bore and washed in the salt lye (christened) Grace Dien assigns them a guardian angel—we are ill used, let us cry a row so loud that in spite of them they shall bear our complaint. Peter the porter of heaven is called to testify whether the pilgrims have done penance—Call St. George for the Gentiles, for clerks St. Nicholas, for hermits St. Anthony, St. Benet for monks, for wedded folk St. Paul—not that he was ever married, but he taught the duties of marriage—for widows St. Anne, for maids St. Katherine. The Pilgrim is placed before the tribunal, and his guardian angel pleads that he had kept his belief, never lost his scrap, nor his burden, and having persevered to the end, he ought to be safe. The cursed Satan acknowledged that the Pilgrim passed the water and was therein washed and fully cleansed of all rather fyllite, but as soon as he knew good and evil he set little by that washing, but cast himself like a swine in ordure and fyllite. He was washed at a tender age unwillingly, and although by this laver the foul spot of sin original was utterly avoided, yet he has not kept the vow, and is more spotted with deadly sin than he was before he was washed; and as all heathen men that have never received this laver belong to our Company because they have it not, much more those that have received these gifts of Grace de Dieu and despised them must be ours. The soul pleads in verse, he appeals to Jesus. Some of the lines are striking: 'For though there ran a river from thy side,

That all the world doth fully overflow,

Thy grace is whole, as every man may know.'

He then appeals to Mary—

'Now be my help a blissful heaven's Queen

Let somewhat of the grace on me be seen

I am be-known that I have done amiss

Eternal death deserved with my deed

But gracious Lady Queen of Heaven's bliss

Thou be my help and comfort in this aede

I am that same that highly have mis-wrought

Against thy child Jesus and eke thee

Yet know I well that Lion is he not

Nor thou nor might no Lioness be

In thou there is no malice nor cruelty

Though that I have thy son and the aggrieved

By thee is all my trust to be relieved.'⁴

He calls upon Michael—John Baptist, apostles and martyrs, and all saints.

Justice pleads against him, and will allow none to speak on his behalf. He then answers for himself, and accuses Satan of being a liar; but the fiend calls the worm of conscience to bear witness against him, and he relates all his wickedness that was not purged with penance, and as he spoke, Satan wrote it all down in a great paper. The soul defends himself by having at all times borne his burden and scrip, by his natural frailty and the temptations of Satan and allurements of the world. Mercy pleads for him that he had been contrite, and made amends for sin, and had confessed, but when his good and bad deeds were weighed, the evil was heaviest. Then Mercy flew to heaven and brought back a pardon from Jesus, which is given in verse; inter alia:— 'At instance of mine own mother sweet

To whom I may no manner of thug deny

And mercy also may I not forget

Unto their good myself I will apply

This grace I grant them of my royalty

That I shall them receive unto my peace

Of hell pain I grant them full release.'

¹ Hence 'the descent into hell' in a Popish creed, falsely called 'the Apostles' Creed.'

² From a copy in the Editor's library, printed by Wynkin de Worde.

³ British Museum, 21, d.

⁴ The pilgrim's staff.

⁵ 'Rather fyllite,' early pollution, original or.

⁶ Reader, this is undisguised Popery, published to the world before the Reformation, by the Church of Rome. Judge for yourself. Do Papists pray to the Virgin? Is she their intercessor and saviour?

⁷ Syndicisms.

⁸ His staff or vows.

⁹ 'Bone' in the poem. The French word not translated.

Christ balances the wicked works of this sinner with—

'Of the treasure of my bitter passion

And of the merit of my mother dear

To wham none other hath comparison

With merit of my saints all in fear

That to my bidding full obedient were

Of plenty and of superabundance

A forset¹ full which putteth in balance.'

The balance is in favour of the soul, and his sentence is to bear all his sins as a burden into purgatory, and abide in the fire until all are burned and 'thou, clean purged of all thy foul sins, shall then be pardoned.' At this sentence Satan is sore annoyed, and has great anguish.

He meets a number of pilgrims from purgatory, who sing to the Trinity and to Mary a song of praise for their deliverance. The angels join in a song without comparison more lusty than he had heard before. Then came one pilgrim, conducted by a huge number of angels, each having in his hand some lusty instrument, as harp, errans, &c., some of which he could not scribe. It was a soul who, by extraordinary penance, had suffered his purgatory on earth. He then sees a number of pilgrims condemned to 'brynne withynne the lyre of helle, neuer to be released.' An ugly company of devils seized them, saying, 'Goo we fast in to helle; there shall we fynde a warm dwellynge place.' Our poor pilgrim is taken to purgatory, where, in three days, he imagines that he has suffered a thousand years' indescribable tortures. His guardian angel is with him in the fire, but being a pure spirit, suffereth not. In his turmeant, he is told that naught can help him but masses and the good 'dedos of hooly chirebe.' He asks, What is the use of the pardons and indulgences granted by the church? His angel tells him that they abridge the time of punishment and pain; that for every deadly sin he must suffer seven years' purgation, and the thousand years that he had suffered was but as a moment, for his fardel of sins seemed to be as huge as ever, although the fire was so fierce, that if the great sea fell therein, it would be dried in a moment. At length, Grace Dieu sends from the church a quantity of prayers, masses, and good works, to comfort the pilgrims in purgatory—a packet to each prisoner, with the names of those who had purchased the masses for their relief. Every soul answered the summons, and greedily took the relief, all swimming in hot fire: it was ointment that relieved their horrid pains, and decreased their burden of sins. He then discovers the place in which Adam and the Fathers, to John the Baptist, were confined, till Christ descended into hell and released them. The prison also in which the souls of infants who had died without being christened—a dark and doleful place, where they will be shut up for ever. He inquires how it is possible for the God of love thus to condemn the innocent? His angel refers him to the words of Christ to Nicodemus: 'As seget John recordeth, he seeth, that an innocent depon without baptism is damped with oile' and they lay in endless darkness, and never know joy: and this pain shall be extended to all the most innocent souls not baptized. All those places of punishment are within enclosed all round by the earth. He is then led by his angel to the surface of the earth, the fire still burning within him, to every place in which he had committed sin, the punishment was according to the nature of his crime—sometimes shut up in thick ice, the pain being more intolerable than fire. This was for having used baths and stones² for easement of his body. One soul who had been purged, could not escape, because his executors had neglected to pay his debts. He finds that one day's penance upon earth cleanseth from sins more than years of purgatory. In the journey he finds his bones, and has a long conversation with them, in which they mutually criminate each other.

His guardian angel then takes him into the very depth of the earth, to hell, the stink of which nearly caused his soul to burst. The unhappited innocents he saw in a place: 'Hit was wonder meruelyous blacke and derke ynowe,' ever flying about seeking, but never finding, a hole to escape. He then came to a darker place of 'fire horrible and wonder hilroos.' There saw be the cursed fiends; some blew the fire; some, with iron forks, righted the brands; some, with sharp hooks, dressed the wretched souls into divers pains. Lucifer sat in a red-hot iron chair, chained with red-hot chains. The devils torment each other. The punishment of Pride is that a devil sits upon her head, and befouls her as much as he can. Hypocrites are trodden perpetually under foot by devils, inguiled in fire and stink. The envious and backbiters were hung by red-hot iron hooks through their tongues over eternal flames. Judas thus hung, but as his mouth had kissed the lung, his lips shined like gold; and his tongue was drawn out through his neck, and he hung in hottest flames. Traitors were broken upon wheels, fired by hooks turning swiftly round; the same punishment was inflicted upon lawyers, proctors, and counsel, who, to fill their purses, had pleaded for the guilty against the innocent. Upon seeing a number of souls being devoured by wolves, but never eaten; others having molten brass poured down their throats, he swooned, but is revived by his angel. These were the punishments of extortioners. Angry people were tied up in bundles, and pitched into fiery furnaces; drunkards were laid upon burning coals, with sulphur, their throats slit, and tongues drawn through the slit; the lechours were laid upon beds of burning thorns, full of venomous and huge toads and worms, for ever biting and gnawing them. The boiling caldron and pit of hell was boiling full of heretics; and when our Lord shall renew the world, all their burning and stinking and horrible pains shall be renewed, and all the filth that may be found in every other place, shall be cast thereto. He then ascends to the earth, and sees the tree from which Eve plucked the apple, and which, after process of time, formed the cross on which the Saviour suffered. Then follows a number of dialogues between the Trinity, regarding the scheme of mercy. His peroration being finished, and sins consumed, his angel took him by the hand, and began to mount towards heaven. The angel shows him many mnemonies; tells him how saints' days are to be kept. In the feast of the Purification, the cherubims sing this song:— 'Herryed' be thou blyfull honen quene

And worshiped mote³ thou be in enery place

That moder art and very mayden clene

Of god our lord thou geten hast that grace

Thou cause of soyes arte, and of solace

By merryte of thy great humylyte

And by the floure of thy vrygynyte

Honoured be thou, blessed lady bryght

By thy person embelysahed is nature

Of heuen blyse augmented is the lyight

By presence of so fayre a creature

Thy worthymosse passeth al mesure

For vnto thyn estate Imperyall

No presyange is that may be peregal.'⁴

¹ 'A forset,' a homdie.

² Strance: perversion of the words, 'Ye must be born again!'

³ Beechm.

⁴ 'Herryed,' praised—from which is derived hurrad.

⁵ 'Mote,' must.

⁶ 'Peregal,' equal.

In the feast of Ascension the father honoured the sons; and at the feast of Assumption, the Son honoured and worshipped his mother.

Song of angels on Easter day, to the Saviour, is—

'When thou were dead, to hell thou descended

And fetched them out that lay there in pain.'

The angel illustrates to him the doctrine of the Trinity, by the world being round, without beginning or end; having breadth, length, and depth, which three, by unity in measure, comprises one world. So in a body is matter, form, and substance; if one of these be missing, it is imperfect. So the matter is likened to the Father, the form to the Son, and the substance to the Holy Ghost. So to every perfect work, there must be might, cunning, and will. He then asks, that as these three are one, how came it that one was separated and became incarnate alone? This is accounted for, as a sunbeam does not leave the sun, but enliveneth the earth; so the Son illuminated the world, being clothed with man's flesh in the blessed maiden, and yet departed he not from his Father's presence. When properly prepared, the angel went to clear his way to heaven, and as he looked after him, a 'wonder huge light' descended from the Light heaven, smiting on his eye, and awoke him from his sleep, whereof he was full sorry, after having seemed to live so many thousand years; the clock struck twelve, and the bell tolled midnight, and he remembered that he had not slept three hours while all these adventures had passed. Now Jesus give us grace to come to this bliss. Translated in 1413, and printed by W. Caston, June 6, 1453. There is, in the British Museum,¹ a very fine and curious MS. copy of this very singular work, illustrated with rude illuminated drawings. It finishes with, 'Here eudith the dream of the pilgrimage of the soule, translated owt of the Frensch in to Englysche. The yere of our Lord MCCC XIII.' The translator craves indulgence, if 'in som places ther it be ouer fantastyk nought grounded nor foundable in Holy Scripture, ne in docteors wordes, for I myght not go fro myn auctor.' The original work was written in verse by Guillaume de Guillonville, prior of Chaalis, about 1330.

The Books of the Pylgrimage of Man. 4 to, 26 leaves. Woodcut of Pilgrim, with staff and cockle-shell, and clasped book in his left hand.²

Here begyneth a boke, in French called, le pelerynage de L'homme (in latyn, peregrinato humani generis), and in oure Maternal tunge, the pylgrimage of mankynd, of late drawen and in compendione prose copodied by the reuerent father in god dane william³ hundred Pricoure of the honourable place and

¹ Addit. MSS., Bibl. Eg. 615. It was bought of Mr. Rodd, 1886, but appears to want the first leaf of the text.

² This rare book is in the library of Queen's College, Oxford. I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Underhill, for the above analysis.

³ Guillaume de Guillerville, moine de chalis. It was printed in Paris by Allerrard, not dated, but about the year 1300. Mr. Greswell, in his notice of this book, says, 'Not only in early ages, but in later also, mankind have been found less willing to be instructed by abstract reasoning, than by fables or similitudes. Hence the popularity of these old religious sections. The "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" of our day confessedly excels all others of its kind. And though some have unconpriors of Leuromere and now rarely, at the special commandement of the same Father reuerent, I have complied the tenure of the same in Metre consprehended in xxvi. chaptours as ensayage appereth.