HUNCHBACKED HERMIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES
His name was Theobald and his heart was true
Willing to serve the nobility and the clerics too
He was reserved, restrained, and unspeakably modest
Filled with good purpose so friendly and honest
He approached a chaplain needing an endeavor
He claimed he was witty, highly smart and clever
A propagator of fear was our demonstrative pastor
Chastising the congregation about their own disaster
Bellowing out and blustering the great self-flagellation
Exclusively you’ll be pardoned before the last elevation
Into a heavenly embrace after an overbearing self-affliction
Ensuring the golden gates with an abasement and dereliction
The preacher began to grow horns and offered poor Theobald
to assist the children to avoid limbo so they wouldn’t scald.
The hermit was ordered to tour the churches as a guide
Showing the innocent the frescos which had nothing to hide
Depicting human suffering in various gruesome scenes
Never showing our Prince of Stars helping to intervene
Skeletons like the living dead with a papal crown
Grinning over a confessional with a hideous eerie frown
Torture casually represented in an absolutely criminal style
Cluttering the walls as one ventured up the holy aisle
Theobald was irritated as the young eyes all sadly gazed
The damsels stared and whined hypnotized and amazed
Screaming out in terror for the angst was so extreme
The boys all growled like possessed by a bad dream
Needing an exorcist to expel the abominable beast
which the Roman hypocrites have offered for the feast.
Quartering the sinner and tarring him with feathers
Burning the wretched witch no matter what the weather
A mystic like Hildegard was saved by making music
Transfiguring her danger into a figure so very cherubic
Rendering the faithless into an outcast of a horrific kind
Making sure the peasant was uneducated and faithfully blind
The troubadour was plucking a simple secular melody
while Machaut wrote for Notre Dame and the sacristy.
Nonetheless all mankind was sent into the tenebrosity
Devoid of charity, compassion and our savior’s generousity
So after the second heartless and despicable journey’s care
our hermit was disoriented and filled with a horrendous despair.
He gently withdrew to his cave and meditatively did pray
His heart was in a shambles and his perspective in disarray
His honor for the sermonizer had dissipated and disappeared
The children were the epitome of hope he most endeared.
He traveled dismal and hunchbacked to return his master’s keys
For the mission was diabolical and its results were a disease
which infected the loving souls of all lionhearted men.
He turned his collar most disappointingly and said his last amen.