ad hec captor: "Nescis quid, perfide, dicas. Clunibus impendet Scotia tota meis." (The prisoner said this to his captor: "You don't know what you're saying, deceiver. I have all of Scotland hanging from my buttocks.") Interpretation Ysengrimus is usually held to be an allegory for the corrupt monks of the Roman Catholic Church. His greed is what typically causes him to be led astray. He is given to say that he will absolve the sins of the other characters. He comes to a grisly end in the ending of the poem: stripped of his skin and thrown to the swine. Reinardus, by contrast, represents the poor and the lowly; he triumphs over Ysengrimus by his wits. Nivardus deals with a subject that got extensive treatment in European popular culture during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The characters Ysengrimus and Reinardus were clearly well developed by the time he wrote his epic; later treatments, however, usually featured Reynardus and relegated Ysengrimus the wolf to the menagerie of stock characters that served as Reynardus's supporting cast. They went on to appear in most Western European vernaculars, including French, Dutch, and English. A version of the Reynard stories was one of the first English printed books, made by William Caxton. References Further reading Harrington, K.P., and Pucci, Joseph. Medieval Latin (2d. edition, Univ. Chicago, 1997) Mann, Jill, "Beast epic and fable"; in Medieval Latin, an Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, Frank A. C. Mantello and Arthur G. Rigg, editors. (Catholic University of America, 1996) Voigt, Ernst, Ysengrimus (Halle, 1884) J. M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry 750-1150, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. External links Ernst Voigt's 1884 German translation of Ysengrimus Jill Mann's 1987 translation of Ysengrimus (preview only) A Wolf at School by Ayers Bagley The History of Reynard the Fox by Henry Morley, 1889. Comprehensive bibliography on Arlima (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge) 12th-century Latin books Fables Reynard cycle Mock-heroic poems Fabliaux Fictional wolves