Exemplum
Encyclopedia
An exemplum is a moral anecdote
, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.
sprang from the above, in classical, medieval and Renaissance literature, consisting of lives of famous figures, and using these (by emphasizing good or bad character traits) to make a moral point.
Collections of Exempla helped medieval
preachers to adorn their sermon
s, to emphasize moral conclusions or illustrate a point of doctrine. The subject matter could be taken from fable
s, folktales, legend
s or real history. Jacques de Vitry
's book of exempla, c. 1200, was one of the most famous collections. Geoffrey Chaucer
's The Miller's Prologue and Tale
became a vivid satire on these collections and the abuse they found wherever they were just brought into monotonous litanies
.
Examples include:
"The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a longer example of an exemplum.
A father tells the first story from The Scholar's Guide, and his son tells the second.
to Mecca
. Near their destination, their provisions are nearly depleted, and the two city dwellers attempt to cheat the country man by telling him that whoever of them dreams the most extraordinary dream shall get the last of their bread.
As the city dwellers sleep, the country man, alert to their intended deception, eats the half-baked bread before retiring.
The city dwellers relate their made-up dreams. One says he was taken to heaven
and led before God by angels. The other says that angels escorted him to hell
.
The country man says he dreamed the same things that his companions dreamed and, believing them to be forever lost, one to heaven and the other to hell, ate the bread.
The son tells his father the moral of the story: "As it says in the proverb
, ‘He who wanted all, lost all.’" He says that the two city dwellers got their just comeuppance. The story says that he wishes they’d been whipped, as the antagonist in another story he has heard, was beaten for his chicanery. His comment is a transition to the next tale, causing the father to ask his son to tell him this story. Thus, the roles of the father and his son are reversed, as the father, who was the storyteller, becomes the listener, and the son, who was his father's audience, becomes the narrator.
One day while he is away, his master gives the other apprentices bread and honey
, but does not save any for Nedui, telling them that Nedui "would not eat honey even if he were here." Upon learning that he has been left out, Nedui avenges himself upon his master by telling the eunuch
whom the king has set over the apprentices as their supervisor that the tailor is subject to seizures of madness, during which he becomes violent and dangerous. In fact, Nedui claims, he has killed those who have happened to be near him when he is in the grip of such a fit. To protect himself, Nedui says, he binds and beats the tailor when such a fit comes over him. He also tells the eunuch what to look for: "When you see him looking all around and feeling the floor with his hands and getting up from his seat and picking up the chair on which he is seated, then you will know that he is mad, and if you do not protect yourself and your servants, he will beat you on the head with a club
."
The next day, Nedui hides the tailor's shears, and, when the master, hunting for them, behaves as Nedui mentioned to the eunuch, the eunuch orders his servants to bind the tailor and beats him himself with a club. His servants also beat him until he is unconscious and "half dead."
When he regains consciousness, the tailor asks the eunuch what crime he has committed to have deserved such a beating, and the eunuch tells him what Nedui told him about the tailor's seizures. "Friend, when have you ever seen me crazy?" the master asks his apprentice, to which question he receives, from Nedui, the rejoinder: "When have you ever seen me refuse to eat honey?"
The father tells the son the moral
of the story: "The tailor deserved his punishment because if he had kept the precept of Moses, to love his brother as himself, this would not have happened to him."
By having the listener tell the narrator the moral of the story, the storyteller shows that the narrative has successfully served its purpose as an exemplum, as the listener, hearing the story, shows that he is able to ascertain the moral that the tale is intended to express.
by Lee Patterson.
To bolster his listener's belief that "most of" his tale is "the gospel
truth," the narrator names the names of the culprits and their victims (both themselves and others) and cites no less an authority than Pope Leo
as one who knows and wrote a version of the narrative and points out that the story is "known in the court at Rome" and has appeared widely in many chronicles, including those "beyond the sea." However, after the telling of the tale, the storyteller admits that some doubt its veracity.
The story starts by identifying several activities that are not allowed in church or in the churchyard
: "carols, wrestling
, or summer games." In addition, "interludes or singing, beating the tabor
[a small drum], or piping. . . . while the priest
is conducting mass
" are "forbidden" and sacrilegious, and "good priests" will not tolerate them.
It is also improper to dance in church, as the story that the narrator is about to tell demonstrates.
When "twelve fools" in Colbeck (or, as the editors’ note explains, "Kolbigk, in Saxony
, an area in eastern Germany, just north of the present-day Czech border) decided, one Christmas Eve
, to make "a carol
--madly, as a kind of challenge," and persisted in singing and dancing in the churchyard while the priest was trying to conduct Mass, despite his entreaties to them to stop, the priest calls upon God to curse
them.
The singers’ carol contains three lines, the last of which appears to become the basis of their curse, as they are unable to leave the churchyard or to quit singing or dancing for a year after God curses them for their sacrilegious behavior:
As a result of the curse, the dancers cannot stop singing and dancing; neither can they let go of one another's hands.
The priest, too late, sends his son, Ayone, to rescue his daughter, Ave, who is one of the "twelve fools" involved in the dancing. However, due to the curse, when Ayone takes his sister's arm to separate her from the other carolers, it detaches from her body. Miraculously, her wound does not bleed, nor does she die from it.
Ayone takes the arm to his father. The priest tries, three times unsuccessfully, to bury the limb, but the grave casts it back, so the priest displays it inside the church. Everyone, including the emperor
, comes to see the cursed dancers, who, despite no rest, food, drink, or sleep, dance non-stop, night and day, regardless of the temperature or the weather. Several times, the emperor orders a covering to be built to protect the dancers from storms, but it is reduced to rubble overnight each time it is built or rebuilt.
After the year has ended, the curse is lifted, and the dancers fall down upon the ground, as if dead. Three days later, they arise—except for Ave, who has died. Soon after, the priest also dies. The emperor installs the container in the church as a receptacle for the dead girl's arm, and it becomes a holy relic
commemorating the miracle
of the curse.
The other dancers cannot get together again, ever, and must skip, instead of walking, wherever they go. Living mementoes of God's curse against sacrilegious behavior, they bear permanent physical changes to their clothing and their bodies: "Their clothes didn’t rot nor their nails grow; their hair didn’t lengthen nor their complexion
change. Nor did they ever have relief. . . ."
Although some believe and others doubt the authenticity of the tale he's told, the narrator says he recounted the story so that his listeners, taking heed, may be "afraid to carol in a church or churchyard, especially against the priest's will," as "jangling is a form of sacrilege
."
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...
, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.
Exemplary literature
This genreGenre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
sprang from the above, in classical, medieval and Renaissance literature, consisting of lives of famous figures, and using these (by emphasizing good or bad character traits) to make a moral point.
Collections of Exempla helped medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
preachers to adorn their sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
s, to emphasize moral conclusions or illustrate a point of doctrine. The subject matter could be taken from fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s, folktales, legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
s or real history. Jacques de Vitry
Jacques de Vitry
Jacques de Vitry was a theologian chronicler and cardinal from 1229 – 40.He was born in central France and studied at the University of Paris, becoming a regular canon in 1210 at the church of Saint-Nicolas d'Oignies in the Diocese of Liège, a post he maintained until 1216...
's book of exempla, c. 1200, was one of the most famous collections. Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's The Miller's Prologue and Tale
The Miller's Prologue and Tale
"The Miller's Tale" is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , told by the drunken miller Robyn to "quite" "The Knight's Tale"....
became a vivid satire on these collections and the abuse they found wherever they were just brought into monotonous litanies
Litany
A litany, in Christian worship and some forms of Jewish worship, is a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions...
.
Examples include:
- SuetoniusSuetoniusGaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
's De vita Caesarum or Lives of the Twelve CaesarsLives of the Twelve CaesarsDe vita Caesarum commonly known as The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.The work, written in AD 121 during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was the most popular work of Suetonius,... - PlutarchPlutarchPlutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
's Parallel LivesParallel LivesPlutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century... - JeromeJeromeSaint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
's De viris illustribusDe Viris Illustribus (Jerome)De viris illustribus is a collection of short biographies of 135 authors, written in Latin, by the 4th century Latin Church Father Jerome. He completed this work at Bethlehem in 392-3 CE. The work consists of a prologue plus 135 chapters, each consisting of a brief biography. Jerome himself is... - PetrarchPetrarchFrancesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
's De viris illustribusDe Viris Illustribus (Petrarch)De viris illustribus is an unfinished collection of biographies, written in Latin, by the 14th century Italian author Francesco Petrarca. These biographies are a set of Lives similar in idea to Plutarch's Parallel Lives. The works were unfinished however he was famous enough for these and other... - Chaucer's The Monk's Prologue and TaleThe Monk's Prologue and TaleThe Monk's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.The Monk's tale to the other pilgrims is a collection of seventeen short stories, exempla, on the theme of tragedy...
, The Pardoner's Tale and The Legend of Good WomenThe Legend of Good WomenThe Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer.The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets... - Boccaccio's On Famous Women and On the Fates of Illustrious MenDe Casibus Virorum IllustriumDe Casibus Virorum Illustrium is a work of 56 biographies in Latin prose composed by the Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo in the form of moral stories of the falls of famous people, similar to his work of 106 biographies On Famous Women.-Overview:De Casibus is an encyclopedia of...
- Christine de PizanChristine de PizanChristine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...
's The Book of the City of LadiesThe Book of the City of Ladiesthumb|400px|right|Picture from The Book of the City of LadiesThe Book of the City of Ladies , or Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, is perhaps Christine de Pizan's most famous literary work, and it is her second work of lengthy prose. Pizan uses the vernacular French language to compose the book, but...
. - Don Juan Manuel's Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de PatronioLibro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de PatronioDon Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio , also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor or Libro de los ejemplos , is one of the earliest works of prose in...
. - Mirror for MagistratesMirror for MagistratesMirror for Magistrates is a collection of English poems from the Tudor period by various authors which retell the lives and the tragic ends of various historical figures.-Background:...
by various Tudor authors - Der Stricker's bispel
Three examples of exempla
The Norton Anthology of Western Literature includes three exempla (singular, exemplum), stories that illustrate a general principle or underscore a moral lesson: "The Two City Dwellers and the Country Man" and "The King's Tailor's Apprentice" (both from The Scholar's Guide) and "The Cursed Dancers of Colbeck.""The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a longer example of an exemplum.
A father tells the first story from The Scholar's Guide, and his son tells the second.
"The Two City Dwellers and the Country Man"
In "The Two City Dwellers and the Country Man," told by the father, the three traveling companions of the tale's title are on a pilgrimagePilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
to Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
. Near their destination, their provisions are nearly depleted, and the two city dwellers attempt to cheat the country man by telling him that whoever of them dreams the most extraordinary dream shall get the last of their bread.
As the city dwellers sleep, the country man, alert to their intended deception, eats the half-baked bread before retiring.
The city dwellers relate their made-up dreams. One says he was taken to heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
and led before God by angels. The other says that angels escorted him to hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
.
The country man says he dreamed the same things that his companions dreamed and, believing them to be forever lost, one to heaven and the other to hell, ate the bread.
The son tells his father the moral of the story: "As it says in the proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
, ‘He who wanted all, lost all.’" He says that the two city dwellers got their just comeuppance. The story says that he wishes they’d been whipped, as the antagonist in another story he has heard, was beaten for his chicanery. His comment is a transition to the next tale, causing the father to ask his son to tell him this story. Thus, the roles of the father and his son are reversed, as the father, who was the storyteller, becomes the listener, and the son, who was his father's audience, becomes the narrator.
"The King And His Wife"
The son's story recounts the story of a king's tailor's assistant, a youth by the name of Nedui.One day while he is away, his master gives the other apprentices bread and honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
, but does not save any for Nedui, telling them that Nedui "would not eat honey even if he were here." Upon learning that he has been left out, Nedui avenges himself upon his master by telling the eunuch
Eunuch
A eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
whom the king has set over the apprentices as their supervisor that the tailor is subject to seizures of madness, during which he becomes violent and dangerous. In fact, Nedui claims, he has killed those who have happened to be near him when he is in the grip of such a fit. To protect himself, Nedui says, he binds and beats the tailor when such a fit comes over him. He also tells the eunuch what to look for: "When you see him looking all around and feeling the floor with his hands and getting up from his seat and picking up the chair on which he is seated, then you will know that he is mad, and if you do not protect yourself and your servants, he will beat you on the head with a club
Club
A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth.- History...
."
The next day, Nedui hides the tailor's shears, and, when the master, hunting for them, behaves as Nedui mentioned to the eunuch, the eunuch orders his servants to bind the tailor and beats him himself with a club. His servants also beat him until he is unconscious and "half dead."
When he regains consciousness, the tailor asks the eunuch what crime he has committed to have deserved such a beating, and the eunuch tells him what Nedui told him about the tailor's seizures. "Friend, when have you ever seen me crazy?" the master asks his apprentice, to which question he receives, from Nedui, the rejoinder: "When have you ever seen me refuse to eat honey?"
The father tells the son the moral
Moral
A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...
of the story: "The tailor deserved his punishment because if he had kept the precept of Moses, to love his brother as himself, this would not have happened to him."
By having the listener tell the narrator the moral of the story, the storyteller shows that the narrative has successfully served its purpose as an exemplum, as the listener, hearing the story, shows that he is able to ascertain the moral that the tale is intended to express.
"The Cursed Dancers of Colbeck"
The third exemplum, "The Cursed Dancers of Colbeck," is a prose, rather than a poetic, narrative. Like a mini-sermon, it preaches against wrong conduct—in this case, sacrilegious behavior. This tale has an identifiable author, Robert Mannyng," who set down the story in the early fourteenth century. The Norton Anthologys version is translated from Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
by Lee Patterson.
To bolster his listener's belief that "most of" his tale is "the gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
truth," the narrator names the names of the culprits and their victims (both themselves and others) and cites no less an authority than Pope Leo
Pope Leo
Pope Leo was the name of thirteen Roman Catholic Popes:*Pope Leo I Leo the Great *Pope Leo II *Pope Leo III *Pope Leo IV *Pope Leo V *Pope Leo VI *Pope Leo VII *Pope Leo VIII...
as one who knows and wrote a version of the narrative and points out that the story is "known in the court at Rome" and has appeared widely in many chronicles, including those "beyond the sea." However, after the telling of the tale, the storyteller admits that some doubt its veracity.
The story starts by identifying several activities that are not allowed in church or in the churchyard
Churchyard
A churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language or Northern English language this can also be known as a kirkyard or kirkyaird....
: "carols, wrestling
Wrestling
Wrestling is a form of grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. A wrestling bout is a physical competition, between two competitors or sparring partners, who attempt to gain and maintain a superior position...
, or summer games." In addition, "interludes or singing, beating the tabor
Tabor (instrument)
Tabor, or tabret, refers to a portable snare drum played with one hand. The word "tabor" is simply an English variant of a Latin-derived word meaning "drum" - cf. tambour , tamburo...
[a small drum], or piping. . . . while the priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
is conducting mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
" are "forbidden" and sacrilegious, and "good priests" will not tolerate them.
It is also improper to dance in church, as the story that the narrator is about to tell demonstrates.
When "twelve fools" in Colbeck (or, as the editors’ note explains, "Kolbigk, in Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, an area in eastern Germany, just north of the present-day Czech border) decided, one Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...
, to make "a carol
Carol (music)
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character....
--madly, as a kind of challenge," and persisted in singing and dancing in the churchyard while the priest was trying to conduct Mass, despite his entreaties to them to stop, the priest calls upon God to curse
Curse
A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...
them.
The singers’ carol contains three lines, the last of which appears to become the basis of their curse, as they are unable to leave the churchyard or to quit singing or dancing for a year after God curses them for their sacrilegious behavior:
- By the leafy wood rode Bovoline,
- With him he led the fair Mersewine.
- Why are we waiting? Why don’t we go?
As a result of the curse, the dancers cannot stop singing and dancing; neither can they let go of one another's hands.
The priest, too late, sends his son, Ayone, to rescue his daughter, Ave, who is one of the "twelve fools" involved in the dancing. However, due to the curse, when Ayone takes his sister's arm to separate her from the other carolers, it detaches from her body. Miraculously, her wound does not bleed, nor does she die from it.
Ayone takes the arm to his father. The priest tries, three times unsuccessfully, to bury the limb, but the grave casts it back, so the priest displays it inside the church. Everyone, including the emperor
Emperor
An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...
, comes to see the cursed dancers, who, despite no rest, food, drink, or sleep, dance non-stop, night and day, regardless of the temperature or the weather. Several times, the emperor orders a covering to be built to protect the dancers from storms, but it is reduced to rubble overnight each time it is built or rebuilt.
After the year has ended, the curse is lifted, and the dancers fall down upon the ground, as if dead. Three days later, they arise—except for Ave, who has died. Soon after, the priest also dies. The emperor installs the container in the church as a receptacle for the dead girl's arm, and it becomes a holy relic
Relic
In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a venerated person, or else another type of ancient religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of veneration or as a tangible memorial...
commemorating the miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
of the curse.
The other dancers cannot get together again, ever, and must skip, instead of walking, wherever they go. Living mementoes of God's curse against sacrilegious behavior, they bear permanent physical changes to their clothing and their bodies: "Their clothes didn’t rot nor their nails grow; their hair didn’t lengthen nor their complexion
Complexion
Complexion refers to the natural color, texture, and appearance of the skin, especially that of the face.-History:The word "complexion" is derived from the Late Latin complexi, which initially referred in general terms to a combination of things, and later in physiological terms, to the balance of...
change. Nor did they ever have relief. . . ."
Although some believe and others doubt the authenticity of the tale he's told, the narrator says he recounted the story so that his listeners, taking heed, may be "afraid to carol in a church or churchyard, especially against the priest's will," as "jangling is a form of sacrilege
Sacrilege
Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things...
."