The Ass Carrying an Image
The Ass Carrying an Image is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 182 in the Perry Index. It is directed against human conceit but at one period was also used to illustrate the argument in Canon Law that the sacramental act is not diminished by the priest's unworthiness. A jackass in office The Greek fable tells of an ass that is carrying a religious image and takes the homage of the crowd as being paid to him personally. When pride makes it refuse to go further, the driver beats it and declares that the world has not yet become so backward that men bow down to asses. The Latin title of the fable, Asinus portans mysteria (or its Greek equivalent, ονος αγων μυστήρια), was used proverbially of such human conceit and was recorded as such in the Adagia of Erasmus. The fable was revived in Renaissance times by Andrea Alciato in his Emblemata under the heading Non tibi sed religioni (not for your sake but religion's), and is placed in the context of the Egyptian cult of Isis. No less than three English versions of Alciato's accompanying Latin poem were written in the next few decades. The most significant