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.Myrrh, as we said earlier, acts so that dead flesh does not easily rot.Certainly the dead flesh rots rankly when the mortal body is enslaved tooverflowing lust; just as the prophet said of some: The cattle have rottedin their dung [Joel I:17].As the cattle rot in their dung, so fleshly menend their days in the stench of their lust.But if we spiritually offer myrrhto God, then our mortal body will be preserved through continence fromthe stenches of lust.23In the late twelfth-century Sawles Warde (The Custody of the Soul), Feardescribes Hell to Prudence: [A]nd dragons with tails, as dreadfulas devils, which swallow [souls] whole and vomit them out againbefore and behind ( ant it eilede draken, grisliche ase deoflen, þeforswolheð ham ihal ant speoweð ham eft ut biuoren ant bihinden ).24In other words, the demonish dragons both vomit and defecate souls.Sinful humans literally become excrement.In Ancrene Wisse (Guide forAnchoresses), Part 7, an elaborate allegory about what can ext inguishlove of Jesus suggests that Urine is the stench of sin ( Migge is stenchof sunne ).25 For the projected female audience, the sin alluded to issexual in nature.The Ancrene Wisse equates excrement with flattery.The fikeleres meoster is to hulie the gong-thurl.Thet he deth as ofte ashe with his fikelunge ant with his preisunge writh mon his sunne, thetstinketh na thing fulre.Ant he hit huleth ant lideth, swa thet he hit nawtstinketh.The bac-bitere unlideth hit ant openeth swa thet fulthe, thet hitstinketh wide.[The flatterer s work is to cover the [devil s] privy-hole;he does this as many times as he conceals with his flattering and praisingsomeone s sin, which stinks more foully than anything else.And he hidesand covers it over, so that it does not reek.The backbiter takes the lid offand uncovers the filth, so that it stinks far and wide.]26Dante likewise associates flattery with stench by immersing his flatterersinto filth.For example, in Canto 18, the Eighth Circle, called Malebolge,the Second Pouch has Flatterers immersed in excrement: This was theplace we reached; the ditch beneath/ held people plunged in excrementthat seemed/ as if it had been poured from human privies. (Inf.18.112114).27 Here flattery functions like excessive language; it is, therefore,appropriately punished with another surplus shit.28 In Canto 28 in the 30 EXCREMENT IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGESNinth Pouch, the sowers of scandal and schism, including Mohammedand Alì, his nephew and follower, are eternally disemboweled.No barrel, even though it s lost a hoopor end-piece, ever gapes as one whom Isaw ripped right from his chin to where we fart:his bowels hung between his legs, one sawhis vitals and the miserable sackthat makes of what we swallow excrement.(Inf.28.22 27)A fourteenth-century Italian manuscript of Dante s Commédia shows thismoment.Mohammed, read as a sower of discord, rips open his chest tohis entrails in perpetuity.Some matter, possibly excrement, is on theground.29 Since Mohammed was viewed as a schismatic, a hereticalChristian, excrement symbolizes the language of division.Excremental material filth, laden with symbolic value, was an innermoral marker and sign of spiritual corruption, not necessarily simplyan out ward physical sign.30 Moral impropriet y s link t o scat ologyfinds resonance in Acts: 1:18 19, when Judas s guilt is marked by therupture of his intestines.31 Sin and degrading behavior become literal-ized as excrement.In Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine by Guillaume deDeguileville, hell is equated with filth when the Pilgrim is shown apilgrim scrip on which was written how [Jesus Christ] descended intothe infernal mire to lift out all his friends and lead them to Paradise. 32 Mortal sin is equated with filth. 33 The wicked, those who refuseto undergo penance, became all black and dirty filthy, stinking andvile just as if they had come out of a charcoal-maker s black sac or afoul dung-heap or mud-hole. 34 In Seinte Margarete [Saint Margaret],after Margaret bursts out of the dragon, she has a conversation with ademon
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