but an old mumper made his vaunts of having got three testons, or five shillings.  Ah, but, cried his comrades, thou hast a leg of God; as if, continued Friar John, some divine virtue could lie hid in a stinking ulcerated rotten shank.  Pray, said Pantagruel, when you are for telling us some such nauseous tale, be so kind as not to forget to provide a basin, Friar John; I’ll assure you, I had much ado to forbear bringing up my breakfast.  Fie!  I wonder a man of your coat is not ashamed to use thus the sacred name of God in speaking of things so filthy and abominable! fie, I say.  If among your monking tribes such an abuse of words is allowed, I beseech you leave it there, and do not let it come out of the cloisters.  Physicians, said Epistemon, thus attribute a kind of divinity to some diseases.  Nero also extolled mushrooms, and, in a Greek proverb, termed them divine food, because with them he had poisoned Claudius his predecessor.  But methinks, gentlemen, this same picture is not over-like our late popes.  For I have seen them, not with their pallium, amice, or rochet on, but with helmets on their heads, more like the top of a Persian turban; and while the Christian commonwealth was in peace, they alone were most furiously and cruelly making war.  This must have been then, returned Homenas, against the rebellious, heretical Protestants; reprobates who are disobedient to the holiness of this good god on earth.  ’Tis not only lawful for him to do so, but it is enjoined him by the sacred decretals; and if any dare transgress one single iota against their commands, whether they be emperors, kings, dukes, princes, or commonwealths, he is immediately to pursue them with fire and sword, strip them of all their goods, take their kingdoms from them, proscribe them, anathematize them, and destroy not only their bodies, those of their children, relations, and others, but damn also their souls to the very bottom of the most hot and burning cauldron in hell.  Here, in the devil’s name, said Panurge, the people are no heretics; such as was our Raminagrobis, and as they are in Germany and England.  You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled, for aught I see.  Ay, marry are we, returned Homenas, and for that reason we shall all be saved.  Now let us go and bless ourselves with holy water, and then to dinner.

Chapter 4.LI.

Table-talk in praise of the decretals.

Now, topers, pray observe that while Homenas was saying his dry mass, three collectors, or licensed beggars of the church, each of them with a large basin, went round among the people, with a loud voice:  Pray remember the blessed men who have seen his face.  As we came out of the temple they brought their basins brimful of Papimany chink to Homenas, who told us that it was plentifully to feast with; and that, of this contribution and voluntary tax, one part should be laid out in good drinking, another in good eating, and the remainder in both, according to an admirable exposition hidden in a corner of their holy decretals; which was performed to a T, and that at a noted tavern not much unlike that of Will’s at Amiens.  Believe me, we tickled it off there with copious cramming and numerous swilling.