[ This hitherto untranscribed text is by a hand unknown and no putative attribution to any earlier scriptor should be assayed. ]
Discovered inscribed in cursiva anglicana (Middle English
and Latin) by stylus on a wax tablet. Early 14th Century.
This tabletta (tabula or ceraculum), one of a number hinged together and
sealed in a carrying-pouch, is in the personal possession of
Catherine Eisner who has transcribed the orthographical variants,
with reference to The Middle English Dictionary and
to The Index to Middle English Verse; and within
the limitations of current scholarship Eisner
believes this text to be a faithful rendering.
In Truth May All Our
Prayers Exalt the Tongue
Loud to Condemn the
Wrongs by Falsehoods Shriven.
Praise Crown Restored
in Faith Raise Voice in Song
Not Death Besought but
Souls their Harvests Thriven.
 |
This verse, perhaps the final jottings on these wax tablets
to be deciphered (since the succeeding tabulae in the
series are seemingly irredeemably welded together),
is thought to celebrate the seizure of power by Edward III,
aged seventeen, in the coup d'état against Roger Mortimer,
the de facto Regent of England; so a ‘restoration’ of the
true king would have been strong in the mind of the writer,
possibly a mendicant preacher. This series of verses (1307
to 1330?), therefore, spans the reign of Edward II and the
early years of his heir, the boy King Edward III.
It’s clear the tablet-scriber was alert to the unfolding drama
within the unruly House of Plantagenet and aware, too, of the
monarchical intrigues of his turbulent times, so it’s
frustrating that his later shrewd observations are hidden
from us. The fact that the travelling-pouch of tablets lay
concealed in a secret cache for over six hundred years surely
evidences the caution the writer must have observed
in safeguarding his indiscreet clerical broadsides.
The figuration of the growth of the Soul as a spiritual
harvest to be reaped by Righteousness may be
found in 2 Corinthians 9:10.
|
For a transcription of the first of these medieval verses by an unknown hand, see
Verse 1 (possibly 1307) a devout prayer on the occasion of Edward II’s coronation:
The tabulae appear chronological in composition; see the following Verse 2 of 1312:
The Cambridgeshire Hoard
Provisional details of the 14th Century Cambridgeshire Hoard will be announced by Eisner following completion of the first phase of studies.
I realised only yesterday, following the uncovering of a childhood cache of my drawings, that I must have been – even in my early teens – fascinated by 14th Century clerical thought and practice. This pastiche of a medieval woodcut – a pilgrim – I printed at home when I was fourteen.
