Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 587-588:

The man who lowered his breeches and broke wind in the direction of a saint's shrine as it was carried in procession was expressing a view, even if not arguing a position.²

² William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum 5.275, p. 656.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for the passage from William of Malmesbury, translated by M. Winterbottom, along with the Latin:

1. Mingling with the throng of pious people who came to the festival can be found a fair number of rascals, who pick up an easy living by making their audience guffaw with jokes prepared in advance. When I was a boy, one of this type had arrived; his wit was sharper than that of others, and he was also good at making obscene gestures if words did not do the trick. 2. When the shrine of the saint was carried out of doors—it is improper even to tell the story—this man brazenly confronted it. He first polluted the air by baring his private parts, then went on to foul it by farting. This made fools laugh; but the monks were aggrieved that a scoundrel's babble should go unpunished. But the confessor's ear was at hand to hear their calls for vengeance. The man had scarcely lowered his breeches when, for all to see, he was forcibly seized by an evil spirit and began to pay the penalty for his shamelessness. 3. He spun in a circle, foaming at the mouth like a boar kept whirling around by a pack of baying hounds, and grinding his teeth; in fact it was quite clear that he had been taken over by the same Devil who had set him on this evil course. His friends, forceful only to be kind, grabbed him and haled him off home whether he liked it or not. 4. He was tied to a post there, and they imagined he was engaged in quiet reflection when he suddenly burst out of his bonds, overturned the table on the lunch party, punched some and brained others, and, armed with the tableware, made them all take to their heels. His companions, thinking he should not be left to his own devices, formed a phalanx and seized the madman for a second time, tied him up more tightly, and hauled him to the tomb. 5. There, after three nights' vigil and three days' fast, he was cured of his evil spirit but (more important) of his wantonness. For the monks prayed for him, purchasing the health of another at the cost of their own groans. After that he was always restrained and gentle, though his bloodshot eyes were baleful and threatening, and rolled in a way that always scared us boys. We remembered how, before he got better, he would sit at the tomb, glaring at us and sallying out to attack us, with foul expectoration if he had no other recourse.

1. Inter religiosorum multitudinem ad festum uenientium nebulonum quoque se immergit copia, qui facili compendio uictum mercantur, dum excogitatis salibus audientium cachinnos eitiunt. Quorum unus, me puero, illuc uenerat, preter ceteros ludo mordente facetus, obscenos quoque gestus imitari peritus, si quando uerbis minus agentibus destitueretur. 2. Hic beati scrinio foras portato impudens, quod importunum etiam relatu est, contra stetit, primoque nudato inguine incestauit aera, tum deinde crepitu uentris emisso turbauit auras. Id, quamquam fatuis risum imperasset, monachis tamen in immanem dolorem uenit, qui dolerent impune nebulonem garrire. Enimuero illis uindictam imprecantibus uicina non defuit auris confessoris. Vix enim uestes demiserat, et ecce coram populo, uiolento compressus demone, penas impudentiae pendebat. 3. Ita rotabatur in girum, ita spumabat in modum suis quem latratus canum circumagit, ita crepitantibus frendebat molaribus, ut palam fieret quod in illius ditionem transisset cuius instinctu tantum scelus inceptasset. Quare, a sotiis pie uiolentis correptus, ad manus uellet nollet domum tractus est. 4. Ibi ad postem ligatus, dum aliquid quietius meditari putaretur, ex inprouiso erupit. Super conuivas prandentes mensam depulit, aliquos pugnis contudit, aliquos telis excerebrauit, omnes effugauit, uasis, quae apposita erant, pro armis usus. At uero sotii, qui miserum non relinquendum putarent, in cuneum conglobati, dementem iterum corripiunt, artioribusque loris constrictum ad sepulchrum pertrahunt. 5. Ibi, tribus uigilatis noctibus totidemque ieiunatis diebus, monachis suplicantibus et gemitibus suis alienam salutem mercantibus, sanatus est non solum demone, sed, quod prestantius dicas, lecacitate, perpetuo post haec modestus et lenis, ueruntamen oculis fellitis et minacibus, quorumque sanguinea intortione nos pueros semper territaret, recordantes quod ante sanitatem sedens ad sepulchrum uultu intenti in nos fatiebat impetum, si aliud nequiret immundum eiectans sputum.

Labels: noctes scatologicae