The Lure of Women, Hunting, Chess, and Tennis: A Vision

Abstract

Trinity College Dublin manuscript 281 was written by several scribes in mid-fifteenth-century England,' apparently at the Charterhouse of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen, county Surrey.2 The codex contains numerous theological works such as Pseudo-Augustine's Speculum peccatoris, Adam de Dryburg's Sermon for St. John, Guigo II's Scala Paradisi, Richard Rolle's De emendatione vitae, Adam of Eynsham's Magna vita Sancti Hugonis Lincolniensis. On folio 22v stands a short piece that notices the books that are necessary for a priest: Necessaria sacerdoti. Libri officii ut leccionarius, antiphonarius, baptisterium, gradale, missale, liber compoti ut cognoscat festa mobilia et immobilia, liber sacramentorum ut sciat saltem in sacramentis ministrare, liber canonum penitencialium ut sciat discernere inter peccata et iniungere penitentias, liber omeliarurm Gregorii et Bede ut sciat exponere euuangelium populo. Contrasting with the Latin everywhere else in the codex is a Middle English vision on folio 161r. The vision, recorded in anglicana script, is preceded by an extract from Augustine's De civitate Dei (fols. 159r-160v) and is followed by a continuation of the extract (161v) and then by an exemplum (162r-v). The exemplum tells about the conversion of a Jew to Christianity when a communion host helped to banish an illusion of Christian saints in Hell. This exemplum is the linked with the vision, called reuelacio, in the fifteenth-century table of contents of the codex on folio 5r: Quedam reuelacio et quedam narracio de sacramento eukariste. The vision, perhaps in the form of a letter but possibly incomplete, exhorts a monk to remain in his order and expresses regret that the monk was intending to forsake life as a religious. The writer says that he fasted on