"Shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se
Where is the nest of freres in this place!"
And er that half a furlong wey of space,
Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve,
Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve
Twenty thousand freres on a route.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Summoner’s Prologue. In hell the angel asks Satan to lift up his tail and show the friar where the nest of friars is, the Summoner says. Suddenly twenty thousand friars swarm out of Satan’s backside like bees out of a hive, he adds, using a vivid simile. Far from the image of holiness and devotion to God usually associated with friars, here they are savagely satirized and portrayed as mortal sinners destined for hell.