Perrow—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 707 
a piece in verse of the latter part of the fifteenth century. It 
introduces allegorical figures, Pittee and Amitie, as appraisers 
aud gives a list of personal property found in the house of the 
deceased lover. In the Testamentum Christi (early XIV Cen¬ 
tury), we have a parody of the Deed used seriously for a moral 
purpose. 5 Though it is a deed in form, any one of several facts 
might justify its being called a Testament, for it not only con¬ 
tains the autobiographical and moral elements, and deals with 
the same subject with which the Hew Testament deals, but it 
also contains a last will of Jesus. There were also numerous 
parodies of recipes and prescriptions. 1 2 Romances also were 
sometimes parodied when they became unreasonable or tire¬ 
some. 3 
In the midst of this passion for parody we are not sur¬ 
prised to find that the Will was eagerly seized upon both as a 
vehicle of serious literature, and for humorous or satirical pur¬ 
poses. The fact that it had a two-fold nature, being both a 
legal and an ecclesiastical institution, easily led to its becoming 
a favorite form. There was, as it were, an approach to it from 
two different sides. 
But it is most probable that the idea of the testament as a re¬ 
ligious document was uppermost in the minds of those who used 
it. It is quite certain that the Middle Ages misunderstood the 
word Testament as applied to the New Testament. They re¬ 
garded it as the Last Will and Testament of our Lord. The 
word ScaOrjKr) in classic Greek meant a disposition, an arrange¬ 
ment of any kind, and, more specifically, a last will. The word 
is often used in the translation of the Old Testament for the 
Hebrew word meaning covenant. 4 So we have the Old 
and Hew Testament or Covenants which God arranged with 
men. How the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the 
sixteenth verse of the ninth chapter plays on this word and 
1 See page 443. 
2 Wright and Halliwell, Reliquae Antiquae L. 1845, I, 250; D'Urfey’s 
Pills, II, 3; III, 149; VI, 111. 
s Cf. Chaucer’s Sir Topas. 
* J. H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, New 
York, 1886, s. v. 6iaBr/Krj\ see also the Century Dictionary , s. v. Tester 
ment. 
