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-----Původní zpráva----- Od: wolery <[log in to unmask]> Komu: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Datum: 19. února 1999 10:06 Předmět: Re: Hospital Dedications [<Holy Innocents] Among a group of Middle English prose tracts on spiritual guidance that I am working on at present, about fifty raise the issue of tribulations. By far the most common tribulations are physical illness and sufferings related to prayer. Some present sickness as a temptation by the devil. For example, a short tract in Harley 4843 includes pain in mortal illness as one of the five temptations with which the devil afflicts a dying man, tempting him to anger and impatience expressed in railing against God (ff.260v-261r). Others see it as the work of God, either punishing sin or, more frequent and more important, cleansing and purging the sufferer. Two examples of the latter, both in late manuscripts, are short writings concerned almost entirely with the importance and value of sickness. One, in Gonville and Caius College Cambridge 160 teaches that anyone who is dear to God must be tested and purged by sickness. All that he can suffer on earth is less than the least pain of hell, and so to be allowed suffering here is a token of truest love. As Christ and His virtue dwells in us, so we must suffer. If we turn against it, our bitterness of heart destroys any reward (p.413). The other, a translation of a Latin note which occurs in other manuscripts with a vernacular treatise, is even less compromising. It begins with the statement, "If a man knewe how profetable sekenes were to hym, he wold desyre neuere to lyve withoute sekenes; for the sekenes of the body ys the helthe of ţe soule" and concludes with a long condemnation of those who do not accept illness patiently when it comes to bring health to their souls, but rather busy themselves to seek recovery with the aid of a physician (Laud misc.517, ff.182r-184r). This approach is particularly common in tracts apparently written specifically for religious. Peter Jolliffe I think it is a commonplace of late medieval spiritual literature, it is in no way specific for these tracts. The "tentationes diabolicae" are certainly connected with the "consolationes angelicae", about that writes e.g. Jean Gerson in his "Opus tripartitum". Zdenek Uhlir Department of Manuscripts National Library of the Czech Republic %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%