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.Medieval saints legends pickup on this contrast between what is transitory and valueless markedby dung with what is permanent and valuable.In Ælfric s Life of SaintAgatha, for example, the harlot Aphrodisia tries in vain to persuadethe virtuous Agatha to sleep with Quintianus, the evil leader of Sicily.When Aphrodisia tells Quintianus of her failure, she explains: I offered[Agatha] gems, cloths of gold, and other favors, as well as a huge homeand servants, but she rejected all that as if it were the dung which liesunder foot. 11 In the Life of Saint Agnes, the relatives of Simpronius try tooffer her rich robes and more, but the blessed Agnes rejected all that,caring no more about those treasures than about the reek of dung. 12 Thesaint s rejection of riches by dismissing them as mere dung suggests boththat dung was to be despised and that there exists a correlation betweenriches and dung.Similarly in the Life of Saint Eugenia, who cross-dressesto fulfill her Christian faith, the daughter reveals her breasts to her fatherand with this action exposes her identity: For Christ s love, I left all ofyou, and scorned earthly desires as if they were dung. 13Filth of whatever sort is identified with what is worthless, without anyliteral or figurative merit.Drit (excrement or dirt) figuratively signifies 28 EXCREMENT IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGESsomething valueless, degrading, or sinful. Goostly almes is myche betereþan deling of þis worldly drit, as John Wyclif suggests, placing spiritualdeeds above the matter of this world.14 Thost, meaning dung or turd,can mean, as in the fifteenth-century play, The Castle of Perseverance, thatwhich is worthless: And euery man sette at a thost.Al oure fare is notworth a thost. 15 A negative view of the body and filth carries over meta-phorically in Sir John Clanvowe s late fourteenth-century The Two Ways,in which the riches of the world are likened to filth. And, therefore,for þe love of God sette we not oure hertes so muche vpon þe foule,stynkyng muk of þis false, faillyng world.And, þerfore, þat muk of þisworld þat is cleped richesse it shulde be cleped sorwe and no richesse. 16What the world treasures and admires is just dung or filth, that whichhas no true worth in terms of Christian history, and is a sign of foulnessand perfidity.Hellish StenchIn the neoplatonic tradition as developed by Plotinus, material is visible,physical, and imperfect.It is ontological refuse dirty, dark, andformless a kind of existential anarchy.The Absolute is the highest interms of hierarchy, followed by the intellect, soul, and finally matter,which is given the status of being only when touched by the soul.17 Therange of biblical semantics combined with the neoplatonic traditioncarries over into medieval valences.In medieval thought, hierarchicalspace perceived up as good (heaven) and down as bad (hell); hence, interms of bodily space, up was good (head) and down was bad (genitalia/defecation).18 Within this symbolic economy, excrement inevitablybecame linked to hell.19 The excremental stench of hell had its source in the bowels of Satan. 20 The symbolic valence of filth within Christianthought is present in material depictions of hell, one we can see tak-ing form in the Anglo-Saxon period.A let ter of Wynfrith (Boniface)to Eadburga, 716 717, tells about a monk who experienced a vision ofparadise and hell.And he said that when he had to return to his body, in all the vision, hehad seen no other creature he despised so very much as his own body, nornothing seemed so hateful nor so contemptible; and he never smelt a foulerstench as it then seemed to him that the body smelled, except for the devilsand the burning fire which he saw there.21The Old English poet Cynewulf refers to himself as being soiled by mydeeds and says the sinful are polluted with wickedness
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