The multi-genre structure of J. Metham's poem “Amoryus and Cleopes” (1449) and bestiary motifs in the “encyclopedic” episode of its plot

Semenov Vadim Borisovich PhD in Philology associate professor of the Department of Literature Theory at Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, str. Leninskie Gory, GSP-1, bld. 51, room No. 933 vadsemionov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The poem "Amorius and Cleopes", written in the middle of the XV century, is unusual in several respects. Firstly, it, like some others, has come down to us in a single manuscript, but that manuscript is not kept in the homeland of the author of the poem, but in the collections of the American University; it is known as Princeton University Library, MS Garrett 141. Released from Princeton in 1897, ex-student Robert Garrett collected a collection of rare manuscripts for several decades, buying them from private individuals in England, and 45 years later presented it to his alma mater. And as part of the donated collection was the specified manuscript, consisting entirely of the works of a writer whose name was not known even to a narrow circle of medievalists dealing with the problems of the history of local literature until the beginning of the 20th century. It was only in 1916 that Hardin Craig carried out the first edition of his works, then historians of English literature became acquainted with the name of John Metham, which, however, did not prompt them to subsequently mention this author among the writers of his time. In addition to the works of those who can be attributed to the first row of writers in the XV century, the rest of the works have come down to us as anonymous. It is all the more interesting that the manuscript has been preserved, entirely devoted to the works of the author who emerged from obscurity – and this is secondly.

In Garrett's manuscript, the poem is preceded by Metham's prose treatise on palmistry, in which he referred to himself as a "simple scholar-philosopher" who lived "twenty-five winters" (a copy of this treatise is also kept in the manuscript Oxford, All Souls College Library, MS 81), and after the poem is presented another prose, and it is the treatise "Physiognomy" (it is completed by the signature "Jon Metham, scolere off Cambryg" – 'John Metham, a scientist from Cambridge') and several small works. Also at the end of the poem itself (the last verses were erased, but individual words and lines were distinguishable under ultraviolet irradiation of the text), the author's patrons are mentioned – Sir Miles Stapleton (Sheriff of Norfolk, and during the creation of the poem a member of the Royal Parliament) and his wife, Lady Catherine (daughter of the Earl of Suffolk). It was Stapleton, whose ancestors, like those of Metham, presumably came from Yorkshire and were distantly related to the writer's ancestors, who turned out to be the first owner of the manuscript. Immediately, in verses 2215-2219, the poet recalls that he was born in Cambridge, although his father is a northerner, born into the family of the knight Alexander Metham. A little earlier (v. 2144-2145), he mentions himself as the author of the extant works "Alexander Macedo" ("Alexander the Great") and "Josue", or "Josefus" ("Joseph").

Finally, thirdly, it should not be forgotten that the poem in question was created in that century, which in 1913 received a very unflattering assessment in William Henry Hudson's "Essay on the History of English Literature". He began the chapter "From Chaucer to the Tottel Collection (1400-1557)" as follows: "With Chaucer, English literature made a brilliant beginning, but it was only the beginning, and after his death we enter a long barren period in its history" ^{[1, n/p]}. The expression a long barren period has been etched into the memory of local literary historians and has set a stereotypical attitude of critics from the XX century to the English literature of the XV century (in our internetized XXI century, English-speaking philologists use the hashtags #aBarrenAge and #aDullCentury to describe it – ‘barren epoch’ and ‘empty century’). Back in 1987, David Lawton lamented when talking about contemporary researchers: "For the most part, they tend to agree with the literary critics of their predecessors, who viewed the English poets of the fifteenth century as alchemists inside out, turning Chaucer's gold into Lydgate's lead" ^{[2, p.761]}.

Obviously, this explains the inattention with which English literary criticism treats Metham and his poem. In the light of the idea of the "infertility" of the era, "Amorius and Cleopas" looks like a secondary work, which can be described, looking from the content side, only as the first example of the adaptation of Ovid's plot about Pyramus and Thisbe to English literary soil (an explanation will follow below why such a point of view turns out to be unjustified), and from the form side – as the dull and slavish following of another "Chaucerian" after Chaucer. But this poem is more than a projection of Chaucer's literary techniques and Chaucer's love of subjects from Ovid.

Let's start with the form. Coincidentally or not, the poem is distinguished by numerical symbolism, because the number of verses that make up its prologue and four parts (in Garrett's manuscript, the first and second parts are not separated) is 2222. On the one hand, even the first publisher of her text claimed that it consists of 319 seven-lines with regular rhyme rhyme royal, i.e. ababbcc ^{[3, pp. VII, XIII]}, so familiar from the famous works of Chaucer, but, on the other hand, then the total number of verses would have reached 2233 And this is not the case. And first of all, because "Amorius and Cleopas" consists not only of solid stanzas like Chaucerian stanza. There are seven verses that vary the rhyme mentioned, and even though the correct Chaucer stanzas in the poem are undoubtedly the majority, but, more importantly, there are a sufficient number of stanzas that deviate from the classical standard of that time, which was Chaucer's seven lines. The total number of deviations of each type is shown below:

As you can see, the deviations amounted to about a quarter of all the lines of the poem's text. Firstly, it can be noted that Metem, although he uses the rhyme of Chaucer's seven verses in most stanzas, does not strictly observe it, and therefore stanzas with close to canonical rhymes abaabcc and ababacc are not uncommon. Secondly, some of the digressions, especially those varying Chaucer's stanza of the octave, mark individual parts of the text containing references to well-known genres, plots or authors. Thirdly, an amazing fact turned out to be the use of a specific form of the English sonnet more than a hundred years before it was invented by the "Petrarchian" Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, for his collection "Songs and Sonnets", which became known as the "Tottel's Miscellany". It is hardly possible to consider such a typical sequence of stanzas for an Italian sonnet as two quatrains and a six-line as an accident. The fact is that here fourteen lines completely embody the song of a young knight who approached Amorius, who sang about the hardships of love, i.e. there is also a thematic connection with the sonnet. And it is not the sonnet form itself that surprises (many Europeans were already ill with Petrarkism in the XV century), but the rhyme, according to which the "Shakespearean" sonnet will be recognized in the future.

By the way, in the plot of this unexpected sonnet (a lonely young knight in a May line bitterly mourns his lost lover, meanwhile praising her virtues), and in the figure of the singer, mourning the separation from the "bright lady" who shone at the imperial court, one can see not necessarily a template set of techniques and themes of song love lyrics in general and, as it seems to us, a specific projection of the plot of Chaucer's poem "The Book of the Duchess" and the corresponding figure of the Black Knight. Motifs from Chaucer, primarily from Troilus and Cressida, do indeed periodically arise in different parts of Metham's work, but, as a rule, this is not an involuntary borrowing, but a conscious creative reworking undertaken by the new author.

So, it would be possible to define Metham's appeal to the material from Ovid as following Chaucer in this, because he, in particular, described in detail the story of Keik and Alcyone from the same "Metamorphoses" in the aforementioned "Book of the Duchess". But if Chaucer created a story, perhaps more tragic, in parallel with Ovid's plot, then Metam with a happy ending, following the broadcast scene of the suicide of two lovers from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, destroys the tragedy of the latter. The appeal to Ovid's plot is parodic to the point of detail, for example: if Pyramus and Thisbe "ashes in one urn rested," then Amorius and Cleopas, who lived happily, are buried in the same grave by their numerous descendants, who grew up and gained nobility and fame.

So it is impossible to look at Metam's appeal to the story from the Fourth Book of Metamorphoses as a fabulous "porridge from an axe", the preparation of which may seem to manifest itself in the fact that the English writer took the general plot framework from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and retold the climactic scene in detail, placing it, of course, in that place where the climax of his own plot was supposed to be. No, Metam changed not only the ending, but also a lot to make the story of Amorius and Cleopas come out different. Pyramus and Thisbe are residents of the city of the legendary Semiramis, Babylonians, the events with Amorius and Cleopas unfold, although also in the East, but in the age of Nero, while in the fictional city of Albinest, named the capital of Persia. The names of the characters themselves are different, but here, obviously, it is a consequence of the fact that Metam created a picture of an abstract exotic East, therefore the name of Cleopas is a reference to the wise Cleopatra. It is also fantastic that the fathers of the heroes, the "Roman lords" (Palamedon is the father of Amorius, Dido is Cleopas), Nero appointed co–rulers over Persia. The equal rights of these rulers are emphasized by the fact that they even live next to each other, their possessions are separated by an old wall (thus, the Ovidian scene of lovers talking through the wall gets a motivation that was not in the original source).

But Metam went even further. Everything that he added to the material from "Metamorphoses" that was minimal in relation to his whole plot (let me remind you that the presentation of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe takes only 112 hexametric lines – and this is against 2,222 verses about a pair of lovers from Albinest), he attributed not at all to Ovid. In the text, Metham persistently mentions a certain predecessor writer named Fyrage (v. 45, etc.), the author of the book with the strange name "Grwe" (v. 59, etc.). Meanwhile, he should have understood how popular Ovid is in Western Europe, which means that he should also realize that Ovid's material will certainly be recognized by experienced readers. Therefore, it can be assumed that the redirection of the plot from Ovid to a certain mythical author-intermediary could be aimed at alienating someone else's material, distancing himself from it, and generally pointing out the independent nature of his work.

If the ancient reader empathized with the tragically deceased lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, then it is already important for English readers in the Late Middle Ages to know about the heroes of modern literature, who they are and what they are in order to decide whether they deserve empathy. Therefore, the logical focus of the plot was shifted from the scene of the double suicide to other scenes, more precisely, many neo–Ovid scenes were equalized with two Ovid scenes - the scene of lovers communicating through the wall and the scene mentioned above. Now it is important to show that the hero deserves the reader's affection as a real knight, in confirmation of which scenes of battle and victory of the hero at a jousting tournament appear in the new plot, as well as the theme of the battle with a monstrous serpent from the dragon family. And the heroine should evoke empathy with her intellectual exemplary character and her patronage over the hero, which is completely unthinkable for Antiquity: it is she who provides the hero with the "methodology" of defeating dragons and directs his preparation for battle, as we will see later.

As a result of such a processing of ancient material, the parts of the composition "Amorius and Cleopas" have features of one genre or another: one fragment may look like a courtly love novel and side by side with another, fabulously legendary, the third looks like a "historical" retrospection, while the fourth borrows from the writings of the hagiographic genre the motif of miracles performed by the saint a hermit. And, perhaps, not the least role is assigned to those episodes in which the writer, the "Cambridge scientist", gets the opportunity to embody in the plot a variety of "encyclopedic" information belonging to different sciences, for example, astrology or medicine. With the switching of genre scenes, speech registers and discourses change in parallel. And the mentioned switch is already noticeable in the synopsis.

The prologue indicates that the Roman Emperor Nero won important victories in Asia, conquering Media and Persia. He ruled Persia over two Roman lords, Palamedon and Dida, from whom their wives, descended from the famous family of Darius, gave birth to two beautiful children– Amorius and Cleopas. It turned out that the children, although their parents' Persian estates were adjacent, never saw each other.

The main part of the poem begins with the fact that Palamedon and his son are at the court of the emperor, whom Palamedon helped in another battle, and by order of the temporarily sole Did in the Persian capital Albinesta, the temple of Venus, previously destroyed by lightning, was rebuilt. Did invited the co-ruler to come to the feast of the consecration of the temple. The emperor released Palamedon, and he and his son set off, but first [the "scientific" register is briefly turned on here to report "astronomical" information] thoroughly examined the celestial constellations and prayed to the ancient gods. On the way [here the Chaucer register turns on with discernible notes of irony], a young sad knight joined the travelers, who sang a sonnet about the vicissitudes of love to Amorius.

Did meets Palamedon in Albinesta and asks him to visit the new temple of Venus. The next day, he examines the temple, admires it and wants to contribute to the exaltation of the old gods. To do this, he invited a court nigromancer [the fairy register is included], who is strong in such magic arts as invocations, spells and magic, and instructed him to create a beautiful golden sphere in the temple that would move and show the "signs of the gods" (obviously constellations). The nigromancer, named "Venus secretary" ("secretary of Venus") and her "prest" ("priest"), conjures during the day: summoning spirits, burns cedar branches, coals and incense in a spell circle, then creates a pit right under the circle, into which he throws gold, silver, precious stones, and then a lot of human bones. 700,000 cursed spirits were summoned to the pit, who helped the nigromancer create a two-layered sphere that hovered over the pit and moved: the first layer of liquid gold represented the living world, and the second transparent layer above it showed moving stars and magic signs, this layer was called the College of the Gods. [In this regard, the "astronomical" register is returned in articles 535-625.] Then the magician goes home to Palamedon to inform about the readiness of the sphere, but also that the impending fall of Venus has been revealed to him…

[Next is the genre register of the courtly romance novel.] In a few days, the temple of Venus is consecrated. At a solemn ceremony inside it, Amorius meets Cleopas for the first time – and they fall in love. At parting, the heroine shows the hero an illustration in her prayer book: a deer holds a heart, a knight kneels before him, who also holds a heart in one of his hands and a ring in the other. [The gestures register is turned on.] In honor of the consecration of the temple, an eight-day tournament is organized, and Amorius, wrapping a handkerchief with a pattern exactly copying the allegorical image from Cleopas's prayer book, defeats everyone, knocking many out of their saddles with powerful spear blows. At the end of the tournament, an unknown knight errant appears, decorated with the colors of flags and coats of arms of different lands of the East (Egypt, Arabia, India, etc.), who wants to take away the glory from Amorius. They begin a battle, and Amorius immediately kills him, hitting him with a spear exactly in the brain, after which he greets his lady as the winner of the tournament.

[Next is the first "Ovidian" scene, and therefore a return to the register of a love affair.] The characters are sad about each other. Cleopas goes to the garden and finds herself at the wall separating her father's domain from Palamedon's. There is a gap in the wall covered with ivy, and the heroine, having heard Amory's love lamentations on the other side of the wall, sees him through the gap. They confess their love and exchange gold rings through the gap, then, unable to kiss each other, kiss the wall and finally agree to meet at the same place next night…

In the afternoon, messengers from the city of Dorester arrived to Palamedon with a complaint, near which a monstrous dragon is rampaging, which has already eaten a hundred inhabitants. Amorius volunteers to fight him, which he tells Cleopas about at night. She teaches the hero how to prepare for a fight with a dragon and protect himself [here another "scientific" register is included, but of an "encyclopedic" type, as will be discussed below]. The hero undertakes to be guided by her instructions. [Return to the gestures register. The hero went to the dragon's lair and woke up the monster, then wounded it in the mouth with a spear, knocked out an eye with a sword, put a ring with a magic carbuncle presented by Cleopas into the other eye, threw a harmful potion created on her advice into the open mouth and, finally, when the dragon tried to fly away, plunged his sword into its heart to the hilt. The hero returns victoriously to Albinest and, having met with his beloved, arranges a date with him in the nearest forest near the spring the next night before dawn…

[The second "Ovidian" scene is the climax, so the tragic register is included. Cleopas arrives before Amorius at the appointed place. A huge lion appears, hunting, with blood on its muzzle. Cleopas gets scared and runs away, dropping her handkerchief, and then hides in a lion's den. The lion, who came to drink from the stream, rubs his bloody mouth on a handkerchief and soon leaves. Amorius appears, who sees the bloody handkerchief and decides that Cleopas was eaten by a predatory beast. He places the sword hilt on the ground and rushes at him. Cleopas hears the groans of the dying man, gets out of the den and manages to catch the last exclamations and the death of her lover. She rips the sword out of his body and kills herself in the same way…

[The tragedy is crossed out by the "hagiographic" register. The holy hermit, who lived nearby and was praying fervently at that time, heard the cry of Cleopas, who mortally wounded herself. After finishing the prayer, he went to the side from where the scream came, and found the bodies of the lovers. By making repeated appeals to the Mother of God, he was able to bring them back to life. They were surprised by the miracle of resurrection and asked for conversion. After baptizing them, the hermit went with them to Albinest, where he destroyed the statue of Venus and expelled the cursed spirits from the sphere, which made it disappear. After that, all the inhabitants of the city were baptized, and the hermit crowned the heroes according to the Christian rite.

[The register of a fabulous happy ending. Amorius and Cleopas lived happily ever after and died on the same day. And their numerous offspring buried the couple in the same grave under a rich marble tombstone.

Ovid has a clearly dotted story about the love of Pyramus and Thisbe, only the suicide scene is described in relatively detail. Metham's same scene took 166 verses (1605-1771). For comparison, the preparation for the fight with the dragon, starting with the arrival of Amorius at a night meeting with Cleopas and her "encyclopedic" lecture, and the battle itself are described in 326 verses (1226-1552), and this indicates a lower proportion of the scene from Ovid for the plot of the Metam than could be expected. The Cambridge scribe's poem is a layered pie of adventure, love and scholarship.

The heroine's scholarship plays a special role: it is designed to justify the need for Cleopas for Amorius. The corresponding episode here is called "encyclopedic" for a reason, because Cleopas consistently deploys a demonstration of knowledge from several scientific fields. In medieval literature, these areas were represented by special genres: bestiary, lapidary and herbarium. Thus, an indication of these genres can be seen in the full title of the "Book of Secrets" by the most prominent German encyclopedist of the Middle Ages Albert the Great: "Liber secretorum de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum et animalium quorundam" ('Book of secrets about the properties of herbs, stones and some animals'). In 1491, an anonymous treatise "Ortus Sanitatis" ("Garden of Health") was published in Mainz, Germany, which consisted of sections "De Herbis" ("On herbs"), "De Animalibus" ("On animals"), "De Avibus" ("On birds"), "De Piscibus" ("About fishes") and "De Lapidibus" ("About stones"). These are not exceptional examples, medieval encyclopedic works suggested contamination of these genres.

The "encyclopedic" episode is a lecture by the heroine and the inserted remarks of the hero reacting to her. The lecture of Cleopas, who heard the news that Amorius is to fight the dragon, begins with the fact that the author demonstrates to us such a "learned" trait of the girl as the desire for typologization (hereinafter the original text is quoted from the publication: Page, S.F. (ed.) Amoryus and Cleopes. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999; in the original stanzas the italics and the accompanying poetic translation are mine – V.S.).

«But qwat serpent ys yt? qwat do thei yt calle?

For sum more esy be than sum as in fyght,

And lesse hurtyth the venym of one in specyal

Than of anodyr; and wysdam wul that ye schuld be dyght

In sure harnes theraftyr; for clerkys wryte, of gret and smal,

Her namys and naturys, and qwerein thei noy be kend natural,

And eke remedyis ayens ther dedly noyauns,

If the case dyd yt reqwire to make wyse purveyauns».

(Articles 1241-1248: "But what kind of snakes are there? And what are their names? // Among their breed there are those with whom it is easier to fight, // Who burn less than others with their poison; // Think carefully about what you will take with you into battle. // Scientists know the names of all reptiles, // What is the nature of the reptile and how harmful it is, // What drugs to detract from the harm, / / And how ready to be to resist it.")

The reference to the works of scientists (they were designated by the word ‘clerkys’, usually used in relation to churchmen) is a direct indication of the well-read character, who is familiar not only with the register of species of snakes, but also with those principles of medicine that are associated with the treatment of poisons and the prevention of poisoning. Thus, Cleopas is shown not only to know the theory, but to understand what its practical application may be.

«For of summe of thise serpentys, the eyn so venymmus be

That wyth her loke thei slee yche erthly creature,

As thise cokatrycys; and yit remedyi ys ther, perd?.

For wyth a wesyl men yt destroye be kendly nature

And the serpent clepyd draconia - that more ys in qwantyt?

Than ony best on erthe, thow he be noght venymmus -

The myght of hys tayl the grete elevaunt sleth most mervulus,»

(Articles 1249-1255: "But there are those among the snakes who are too venomous // And with a glance he will kill any creature, // Yes, even a Cockatrice; but, fortunately, the Weasel Beast will win / /, killing him with its smell. // And the Dragon snake, which is famous // Not by venom: his tail is given // The ability to destroy a huge elephant!")

«Ayens hos powere, men for an efectual remedy

A panterys skyn bere; and yf thei therwyth schuld fyght

Wyth the venym of a tode or of arany,

They sone yt slee; and the serpent namyd jaculus - in hys flyght

Qwat that he uppon fallyth so venymusly, he doth yt smyght

That forthwyth yt deyth; and yit a ston ys ther

That the serpent may noght hym noght dere».

(Articles 1256-1262: "But to protect yourself for sure, // You put on a panther skin when going to battle, // Poison will help toads, as well as a spider – / / They will defeat him. There is another snake, // A Winged Yakul, he rushes headlong at the victim from a height with a poisoned arrow / / And immobilizes her, interrupting her life.")

The name and peculiarity of each dragon and snake, as well as the ways to deal with it, are not invented by Metem, which is evidenced by many historical sources: firstly, illuminated bestiaries, secondly, the works of recognized naturalists. Cockatrice, or Basilisk, in the form of a half-snake, half-fly, which is attacked by a Weasel, is depicted in the following famous manuscripts: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1511; Aberdeen, University Library, MS 24 ("twin" of the previous one); London, British Library, Royal MS 12 C XIX. The ancients believed that she was the only beast capable of withstanding a Basilisk [4, p. 160], probably because she ate rue before and after the battle ^{[5, p. 130]}, so that rue in the following "encyclopedic" stanzas of the poem will arise as an antidote herb quite naturally. In the first two of these manuscripts, a Weasel bites a Basilisk in the neck, although there was a belief dating back to Pliny the Elder that a Weasel thrown into a hole to a monster kills it with its smell. In total, seven manuscripts with a dramatic scene of a Weasel fighting with a Basilisk have been preserved ^{[6, p. 33]}. Albert the Great in the opus "De Animalibus" pointed out that this monster destroys all living things not only with its fiery breath, but also with its hissing, and that it – here Albert referred to Pliny – kills a person with a glance, but only on condition that he first looked at a person, and not a person at him ^{[7, p. 1720]}.

A dragon named Draconia is depicted wrapping around an elephant and biting it in the back in the same Ashmole manuscript 1511, where it is also named Draco Major. He is also represented in the aforementioned "Garden of Health", where he is described as "per omnes serpentes maximus" 'the largest of snakes' ^{[8, n/p]}. Two centuries earlier, Albert the Great also described Draco as the largest of the snake breed and mentioned that even an elephant could suffer from him ^{[7, pp. 1725-1726]}. The love of medieval thinking for the antithetical perception of the world, including the animal, led to the fact that animals turned out to be paired on the basis of opposition on some basis, often unexpected, for example, a dragon and an elephant were opposed by body temperature ^{[9, p. 8]}. The mention of the need to take a panther skin into battle with a dragon is also based on tradition. The opinion spread from the Greek "Physiologist" that the panther is an allegory of Christ, and the dragon is the devil, therefore it was believed that the dragon is the only enemy of the panther, who is afraid of it. When the panther growled, all the animals were enchanted by her voice and went to the sweet smell that spread far around the neighborhood from her mouth, only the dragon, trembling with fear, immediately rushed to its hiding place ^{[10, pp. 148-149] [11, pp. 14-15]}. This scene is depicted in the manuscript London, British Library, MS Sloane 3544 ^{[12, pp. 97-98, plate 3]}.

Finally, Yakul was seen by medieval scribes as a small but dangerous winged serpent. Albert the Great elevated his name to Latin iaculando (‘throwing action’) and reported that this snake lives in trees, where it poisons fruits and from where it rushes at its victims, so that you can die from a snake bite or from a eaten fruit; he attributed to Yakulu the property of killing quickly, but with a painless bite, and his to the skin – to cause painful death when touching it ^{[7, p. 1728]}. In the "Garden of Health" Yakul is depicted leading a hunt from a tree to a man, in the manuscript Paris, Biblioth?que N ationale de France, MS Latin 1173, known as the "Book of Hours of Charles of Angouleme", he is shown as a two-legged winged snake jumping on a woman and biting her in the stomach, and in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 764 he jumps from an ambush in a tree onto the back of some livestock (possibly sheep) and bites it.

Next, the poem includes the theme of the necessary "r emedyis of erbys and stonys" ('medicines from herbs and stones'), which justifies the connection of objects described in herbariums and lapidaries with creatures from bestiaries, and Cleopas promises to tell about medicines in detail soon:

«The name of home serpentyne ys; and eke odyr sundry

Of odyr serpentys so contraryus be to owre nature,

That aftyr summys bytyng or styngyn, men sodenly

Falle starke dede; but thei that fere thise chauncys to endure,

That in desertys must walke, thei purvey wysely

Remedyis of erbys and stonys, as I schal telle yow in hy».

(Articles 1263-1268: "An ordinary snake or not, it is born to be nasty // To nature by its human nature, // Everyone bitten is poisoned with poison, he // will fall dead in a moment. But to the wanderers of the steppes // The Antidote is familiar, whose composition // Is made of stone dust and the collection of rare herbs.")

After that, she returns to the typology, in which dragons/snakes are graded according to their danger to humans, and stops at the favorite image of European bestiaries – the Asp:

«And besyde thise, ther ys a dragon huge and cumbrus,

Namyd aspys, most to be feryd for hys sotelt?;

For enchauntement ner sleyght most ingenyus

Can noght bryng hym fro hys den for no necessyt?;

For wele he knoweth hys blode ys medycynabyl,

He lyith in hys den a-daylyght ever onmevabyl».

(Articles 1269-1274: "And besides those named, there is a huge dragon, // Whose name is Asp, he is insidious like no one else; // There is no spell to lime him, // And there is no trick to lure him, but // If he has thrown the darkness of caves and is caught, his blood / / Prepare priceless herbs and medicines.")

«But at evyn, yf he hap to mete wyth ony creature,

The venym owte of hys tayle into hys mowth

He drawyth anone, be kendly nature,

Thow yt gretly be mervulus and oncowth.

He, or a man beware, throwyth yt fourty fote,

Ayens the qwyche plate of stele may noght bote».

(Articles 1275-1280: "But if in the evening someone is caught himself – trouble, // Poison from the end of the tail will enter the snake's mouth, // And he will accurately spit far from his mouth / / And from forty paces into the poor guy. // And the victim will crouch, from the destruction of the wall, // From which the iron armor did not save.")

«For as wax ayens the fyre meltyth, on the same wysen

Steele and yryn be dyssolvyd at the touchyng of that corrupcion.

Qwerfore, men this profytabyl gyse

Use: a drynk of jacynctys and orygaun

The qwyche thei drynk for ther salvacion

And anoynte ther skyn, to the qwyche this venym hurtyth no more

Than dothe leuke watyr or the fome of a bore».

(Articles 1281-1287: "As the presence of fire melts wax, // So poison holes cast steel like a battering ram. // That's why they drink Crushed hyacinth and wild marjoram into a balm // And, in order to prevent damage to future wounds, // Rub that balm into the skin – and then the venom of snakes burns no more than warm water.")

In the poem, the Asp is called a huge dragon and is represented as elusive, which is also not an invention of Metham, but a translation of the "scientific" facts known to him. So, the same Albert characterizes the Asp in sufficient detail. He ascribes the name of the snake to the Greek aspisis (‘poison’) and draws it long, with fangs protruding from its mouth, similar to boars. The color of the snake skin is dark gray, sometimes with a blue tint. The asp strikes a person with a slow-acting poison, and he falls into a deep sleep, and his body turns cold and changes color. Albert concludes the description of the snake by pointing out that he wears an enchanted stone on his head, which allows him to resist the spells of the wizard. But if the stone does not help, then the big-eared Asp presses one ear to the ground, and sticks the tip of its tail tightly into the other so as not to hear the spells of the opponent calling it from the hole ^{[7, pp. 1716-1717]}. Obviously, this property was especially impressed by the portholes of the bestiaries, because it is this scene that we find in the Bodley 764 manuscript (here the serpent is gray), and in the Ashmole 1511 and Aberdeen manuscripts, University Library, MS 24 (in both the serpent is blue and winged). A.E. Makhov noted that for the authors of medieval bestiaries The property of the beast was more significant than the beast itself ^{[13, p. 89]}.

Cleopas also mentions sea dragons, which, it seems, do not need to be remembered, since Amoria is waiting for a fight with another, earthly one. However, on the one hand, this "digression from the topic" contributes to her assertion of the status of an omniscient person, and on the other hand, it is connected with a circumstance not disclosed in this text, but known to the author: the image of the most terrible snake, with which the hero will fight, is a contamination of images of two different types of dragons – terrestrial and marine (let's talk about this below).

«And besyde thise rehersyd, ther be in the see

Mervulus dragonnys and monstrys also;

As thise chyldrynys, ydrys, and ypotamys ther be,

Hos bytyngs be curyd wyth the egestyon of bolys; and odyr mo

Dragunnys on erth ther be, but one in specyal most foo

To alle lyvyng thing - but to man most in specyal -

The qwyche an hundred fote ys longe, tayle and alle».

(Articles 1288-1294: "And besides these earthly ones, they are dangerous to us // Sea monsters far from the shores, // Like the Hydra, for example, Hildrin il Mortgagam, // Against the bites of which bull manure is good. // There are many evil dragons, but only one is such // That brings special evil to all living things: // A hundred feet long, with a tail and the rest ...")

«And serra cornuta yt ys namyd be clerkys."

"O!" quod Amoryus, "lady, that same dragun yt ys

That I schuld fyght wyth, orybyl and furyus in werkys."

"In gode feyth," quod Cleopes, "and so hye Jovys me wyss,

I schal noght gab at alle, but telle yow the trwthys:

Strenght of man alone may noght prevayl wythowte charmys

Ayen this serpent; qwerfore, but ye be reulyd be me,

Thow ye were as myghty as Sampson, ded ye schuld be».

(Articles 1295-1302: "Horned Grey – that's what he's called in the books." // Amorius gasped: "Lady, but this is the one / / With whom I fight, the most terrible dragon!" // Recla Cleopas: "Let Jupiter send me // All the strength of mind, so that I can tell the truth in my turn // I told you: whoever goes into battle only with strength, / / Without malicious charms, yes, if he were like Samson, / / A mighty warrior, he will die like him.")

Hildrin is the misheard name of that sea serpent, which was called Chelydros (Chelydros, Celidros, or Chersydros, Cersidros). Thomas of Cantimpratensis (Thomas Cantimpratensis, or Thomas Brabantinus), a disciple of Albert the Great, in the treatise "Liber de natura rerum" ("The Book on the Nature of Things") echoes the "Etymologiae" of Isidore of Seville (Book XII, sect. IV "De Serpentibus"), who ascribed the name of this beast to the Greek words ('earth') and ('water'), and describes the snake as inhabiting both land and water: when Chelidros is on land, it smokes, when he is in water, it boils. The snake walks strictly in a straight line, because if it bends, it will crackle ^{[14, p. 281]}. In manuscript V alenciennes, Biblioth?que municipale, M S 320 (the book of Thomas is here in illuminated form) Helidros is represented by a two-legged, tailed, eared and wingless creature. Albert the Great describes Hydra as the most beautiful of snakes and points out that cow dung helps well from its bites (Metam extended this to all aquatic monsters). He localizes its habitat in the Egyptian Nile and describes the insidious tactics of this snake: The Hydra searches for a crocodile with an open mouth that has fallen asleep near the riverbank, smears itself with slippery mud and penetrates into the mouth; the crocodile wakes up and slams its mouth; and the Hydra, being inside, bites the crocodile and bites through its skin to get out ^{[7, p. 1728]}. This moment struck the imagination of the illuminators of the Ashmole 1511 and Aberdeen manuscripts, University Library, MS 24, and they depicted this dramatic scene (the Hydra is depicted winged). Finally, Ipotamus (Ipotamus, Ypotamus, Ipothamus, Ypothamus) was called an ordinary hippopotamus, but it was represented, justifying the name of the "river horse", in the form of a half-snake-half-horse with far-protruding boar tusks (such a creature is depicted in the manuscript Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.4.25).

The last in the line of dragons, Cleopas calls the most dangerous snake, whose name is Serra Cornuta, i.e. Serra Horned. There is no creature with this name in any known bestiary, so we can assume that this is an invention by the authorship of Metam. However, parts of the compound name are present in bestiaries and encyclopedias. So, in Albert the Great we find the Serra sea serpent, even of two types: Serra is a huge beast with wide fins and large fin wings, when she sees a ship, she rises from the water, spreading her "wings", and screams heart–rendingly, and then plunges into the abyss where she stayed; Serra Minor is a beast with with its head, the crest of which resembles a saw, it swims up to the ships from below, saws them, and when the ship sinks, it feeds on the corpses of the crew ^{[7, pp. 1700-1701]}. But Albert also mentions a small terrestrial snake, Cornutus Asp, on whose head there are two protrusions resembling horns. A snake bites a person, and he dies from a slow-acting poison ^{[7, p. 1722]}. Next to it is a description of the Cerastes snake (Cerastes, Cerastes, Carastes, Cerastis), or rather a small snake, the color of dust and with eight horns twisted like a ram. A snake ambushes in the dust, sparrows perch on its horns as on branches, and it kills them with a bite. It is dangerous for all creatures ^{[7, pp. 1722-1723]}. Thomas adds about Cornuta (Cornuta, Cornuto, Cornutis) that it has a very strong poison, the effects of which can be neutralized with teriac (recall that this is the most complex, "ideal" medicinal composition of venomous snake meat, opiates and other components, up to seventy in total) ^{[14, p. 279]}. Both two–horned and two-legged snakes are depicted in the manuscript V alenciennes, Biblioth?que municipale, M S 320, and the eight-horned Cerast is also depicted in the Garden of Health. The authors of bestiaries often pointed out that Cornuta and Cerastes may be the same species. Indeed, the Egyptian Horned Viper (cerastes cornutus) got into medieval bestiaries in this way, forked.

And John Metham, apparently, combined horned snakes with a Serra (which supposedly hides an ordinary whale) to get an unprecedented type of horned dragon a hundred feet long. In this way, as a scientist, he demonstrated his extensive knowledge of zoological "scientific" sources, and as a poet, his creative freedom from established typologies of monsters. In addition, the creation of such a dragon gave special significance to the feat of his hero Amorius and special value to the knowledge of Cleopas, who helps her lover. As a result, it could be noted that Metham, as he used the Ovidian plot, deeply processed the source material, shifting the emphasis from the legendary tragic to the fabulously heroic, just as he did using Chaucer's verse forms and techniques, not copying them mechanically, but freely varying them.