Redemptor

Ryght swet lady and sacred mayden mother of the savyour and redemptor Jesu Chryst what syne myght I have commysed towarde thy dere sonne Jesu Christ that .vii. dogges ben yssued out of my bodi wherbi I have lost the love of my husband the moste pleasaunt and the best that ever woman might have chosen.

Nor this deth is graunted / nat vnto euery man // Whiche coueyte for to dye: for Chriſt our ſauyour // Some wold fayne be martyrs / by ſwerde / but they ne can // That is a ſpecy all grace / of our dere redemptour // But this ſayd other deth / to vanquyſſhe all errour // To tame this frayle body / and luſt to mortyfy // To euery one wyllyng: is graunted cõmouly

And the redemptor ſ hall come to Sion,and vnto thẽ that turne frõ their vvickednes in Iacob.

Gif Christs pretious bluid hes bein fruictful for the instruction of your Christian forbearis in the veritie of trew religion, and brocht thame to the æternel felicitie of immortal gloire, be his trew seruice: consider, I beseik your Maiestie, for the loue ye aucht to the honor of your redempteur, and caire ye suld haue of your awin saluation, what ye can answere to your souerain and seuere Iudge, when he sal ask of yow in the day of discussion, why ye seruit him not in the vnitie of that faith, […]

“Six to one—the difference between a Roman and a Jew. And, having found it, now, O redemptor of the flesh of swine, let us on. The amount—and quickly. The consul may send for thee, and I will then be bereft.”

Its redeemability converts the redemptors into rent-chargers, and, according to an official report quoted in Mr. Dowell’s “History of Taxation in England,” ever since Pitt’s rearrangement the unredeemed amounts have been regarded as a fixed charge on properties, subject to which they have been bought and sold many times over.

The clown and the comedian—morphologically, if not historically, related as they are to the seasonal drama portraying the return of cosmos to chaos—are the quaint redemptors of the carnival who recapture that formless paradise of carefree naïveté prior to the often painful and alienating distinctions between man and animal, male and female, good and evil, sacred and profane.

During the middle of the century, the relatively uniform view of the poor as part of the natural order split into two conflicting positions: one comprising the earlier view of the poor as the redemptors of the rich, meekly accepting their lot in much the same way as the lepers who had no choice but to be stigmatized by their disease; and that of the poor as antisocial reprobates categorized as socially undesirable.