Another anti-Catholic poem (see introduction to d2_MelA_042), amusing for the play it makes on the dual meaning of 'pontifex' as 'bridge-builder' and 'pontiff', which unfortunately cannot be duplicated in English. Two responses to this were published by John Dunbar in the first volume of his Epigrammata (1616; I.44-45, translated in the online edition of Dunbar by Jamie Reid-Baxter and Dana F. Sutton available at The Philological Museum), meaning it must have been written prior to this. Metre: elegiac couplets.
In pontifices (no later than 1616)
[p118]
In pontifices
Flumen apud Superos nullum est, quid pontibus ergo
est opus, aut ipso denique pontifice?
Ast apud infernos, ubi tot sunt flumina, sedes
illa habeat pontes, pontificesque suos.
[p118]
Against bridgemakers
There's no river in Heaven: so why is there a need for bridges or, finally, for that bridgemaker himself? Instead, among the flames, where there are so many rivers, a let that seat have its bridges, and its bridgemakers.
Notes:
Translation
a: There were five rivers in the underworld of Greek mythology: the Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, and Cocytus.
