Eustache Deschamps, Chaucer's French contemporary and panegyrist, is a voluminous poet who, without much inspiration, gives many vivid pictures of contemporary life. This balade is all the more significant because Deschamps represents ordinary orthodox lay opinion, and his murmured complaint was repeated a generation later by the great Gerson. The edition quoted is that of the Société des Anciens Textes Français.

GRAVEN IMAGES
(Vol. viii, p. 201.) Balade.

That we should set up no graven images in the churches, save only the Crucifix and the Virgin, for fear of idolatry.

Take no gods of silver or gold, of stocks or stones or brass, which make men fall into idolatry; for it is man's handiwork wherein the heathen vainly believed, adoring false idols from whose mouths the devils gave them doubtful answers by parables; warned by their false beliefs, we will have no such images.

For the work is pleasing to the eye; their paintings (of which I complain), and the beauty of glittering gold, make many wavering folk believe that these are gods for certain; and fond thoughts are stirred by such images which stand around like dancers in the minsters (1), where we set up too many of them; which indeed is very ill done, for, to speak briefly, we will have no such images.

The Cross, the representation of Jesus Christ, with that of the Virgin alone, sufficeth fully in church for the sanest folk, without this leaven of wickedness, without believing in so many puppets and grinning figures and niches, wherewith we too often commit idolatry against God's commandments; we will have no such images.

L'ENVOY

Prince, let us believe in one God only, and we shall have Him perfectly in the fields, everywhere, for that is reason; not in false gods of iron or adamant, stones which have no understanding; we will have no such images.

(1) "Telz ymages qui font caroles
Es moustiers ou trop en mettons."
Carole was often used of any circlet, or series of objects arranged in a ring; also it was the ordinary word for a round dance, accompanied (as nearly all medieval dances were) with song. The Metrical Life of St Hugh of Lincoln applies the same simile to the slender marble shafts with which the plain stone core of each column is ringed; the thirteenth-century architect Villard de Honnecourt uses it of the colonnade round a semi-circular apse; see his Album, ed. Lassus, p. 121, and J. Quicherat, Mélanges d'Archéologie, vol.II, p. 272.

(Coulton I, p.188-189)