Ed de Moel

Child Ballads - Additions and Corrections

80. Old Robin of Portingale

P. 240, 513 a, III, 514. Mabillon cites Balderic's history of the first crusade, whose words are: "Multi etiam de gente plebeia crucem sibi divinitus innatam jactando ostentabant, quod et idem quædam ex mulierculis præsumpserunt; hoc enim falsum deprehensum est omnino. Multi vero ferrum callidum instar crucis sibi adhibuerunt, vel peste jactantiæ, vel bonæ suæ voluntatis ostentatione." Migne, Patrologiæ Curs. Compl., torn, clxvi, col. 1070.

A man who is looking forward to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land wishes to have the cross burned into his right shoulder, since then, though he should be stript of his clothes, the cross would remain: Miracula S. Thomæ, Auctore Benedicto, Robertson, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, II, 175. The branding of the cross in the flesh must have become common, since it was forbidden by the canon law. In some editions of the Sarum Missal, a warning is inserted in the Servitium Peregrinorum: "Combustio crucis in carne peregrinis euntibus Hierusalem prohibitum est in lege, secundum jura canonica, sub poena excommunicationis majoris." Sarum Missal, Burntisland, 1867, col. 856 *. (Cited by Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 167.)

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