The English Moral Hays 327 
orders, is marshaled in the city of Esperance. With the leaders, 
Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, are Mary herself, who has come to 
guard her chevaliers ; Virginity, with a few followers; Chastity, with 
a numerous retinue; and the other moral virtues supported by all 
the chivalry of France. 
Then the battle begins.!. Quarrelsomeness laces on his armor, and 
with his standard-bearer, Frenzy, attacks Silence, but only to meet 
defeat. Anger is captured by Gentleness, while Frenzy succumbs 
to Patience. Hate and Discord fall before Peace and Concord, and 
Falsehood is put to flight by Truth. From both sides hordes of 
combatants mingle in the fray; for here the story is not confined, 
as in the Psychomachia, to the deeds of the few great leaders. 
But in the confusion of battle the conflict between Virginity and 
Chastity on one side, and Fornication and Adultery, aided by Venus 
and Cupid, on the other, draws more than passing notice. Of still 
greater interest is the struggle of Faith against Heresy, at which 
point the author reaches the heart of his theme. The pagan gods, 
of course, fight on the side of Heresy, and Antichrist himself rides 
madly to his aid. But he is overcome by Saint Michael, and his 
army is routed. The virtues return triumphant to their city, where 
Penitence and Confession heal their wounds, and all join in the 
great feast spread by Generosity and Courtesy. 
It would require an extensive monograph to follow the course of 
the Psychomachia through medieval literature. In the seventh 
century Aldhelm described the combat between virginity and the 
principal vices, whom he represents as military leaders.* Peter of 
Blois, in introducing Faith as man’s advocate against the accuser, 
Satan, borrowed his picture of the virtue directly from the words of 
Prudentius.£ Raoul de Houdan told how the pilgrim, as he journeys 
toward Paradise, is threatened by Temptation, and how he is saved 
from the attack of the vices only through the armed intervention 
of the virtues. As the theme was thus developed, it lost its 
distinctively ecclesiastical tone. The French poet, Rutebeuf, retold 
the conflict briefly, less from a churchman’s point of view than from 
the satirist’s, and without any apparent moral purpose ; ® and Lydgate 
introduced it in a tediously prolix narrative poem, where the pagan 

1 2098 ff. 2 2767 fi. 
3 De Laudibus Virginitatis, Patr. Lat., 89. 110-13; also De Octo Prin- 
cipalibus Vitiis, Tbid., 281, and Bonaventura, De Pugna Spiritualt, contra 
septem vitia capitalia, 6, 21—27, + See above 311. 
5 Songe de Paradis, 141—92, 541—98. 
8 La Batatle des Vices contre les Vertus, 20-36. 
