Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/65

53 by one of the Fathers in a hermitage; but as he grew to youth he was tickled with lust. The Father commanded him to go alone into the desert and pass forty days in fasting and prayer. When some twenty days had passed, there appeared a naked woman foul and stinking, who thrust herself upon him, and he, unable to endure her stench, began to repel her. At which she asked: "Why do you shudder at the sight of me for whom you burned? I am the image of lust, which appears sweet to men's hearts. If you had not obeyed the Father, you would have been overthrown by me as others have been." So he thanked God for snatching him from the spirit of fornication. Many other examples lead us to the path of life.

Honorius closes with the story of the "Three Fools," observed by a certain Father: the first an Ethiopian who was unable to move a faggot of wood, which he would continually unbind and make still heavier by adding further sticks; the second, a man pouring water into a vase which had no bottom; and, thirdly, the two men who came bearing before them crosswise a beam of wood; as they neared the city gate neither would let the other precede him even a little, and so both remained without. The Ethiopian who adds to his insupportable faggot is he who continually increases his weight of sin, adding new sins to old ones unrepented of; he who pours water into the vase with no bottom is he who by his uncleanness loses the merit of his good acts; and the two who bear the beam crosswise are those bound by the yoke of Pride.

Such are good examples of the queer stories to which preachers resorted. One notices that whatever be the source from which Honorius draws, his interest is always in the allegory found in the narratives. Another very apt example of his manner is his treatment of the story of the Good Samaritan, so often depicted on Gothic church windows. For us this parable carries an exhaustless wealth of direct application in human life; it was regarded very differently by Honorius and the glass painters, whose windows are a pictorial transcription of the first half of his sermon.