Dives and Pauper Volume II

Dives and Pauper, vol. II, contains the Introduction, Explanatory Notes and Glossary to complete the Society’s edition of this expansive commentary on the Ten Commandments. The text, written ca. 1405-1410, is cast as a dialogue between a ‘rich man’ [a well-informed layman] and a ‘poor man’ [figured as a mendicant friar] over how, in the reign of King Henry IV, one might best conform one’s life to the Decalogue. It was widely read in its own time. Dives and Pauper’s discussion ranges widely and freely over many aspects of theology, including many topics that were contentious in the author’s day, and it is copiously illustrated from the realities of everyday life and politicsin the early fifteenth century.

Dr Priscilla Heath Barnum has previously edited the text of Dives and Pauper for the Early English Text Society, published in two parts [O.S. 275 [1976] and 280 [1980]].