The People’s Queen
Vanora Bennett
For my mother
Table of Contents
PART TWO Regnavi I used to reign
PART THREE Regnabo? Shall I reign again?
The picture on the left shows the capricious goddess Fortune, as she was often displayed in the rose window of medieval English churches, teasing her victims with the hope of lasting wealth and power.
The greedy, feverish people rising up Fortune’s ever-turning wheel, on the left, are gloating, regnabo, boastful Latin for ‘I shall reign’.
The person at the top, who has achieved every ambition, crows, regno, or ‘I reign’.
The terrified people on the right of the wheel, going down, are looking back at their moment of glory, wailing, regnavi, or ‘I used to reign’.
And the one falling off at the bottom whimpers, sum sine regno; ‘I am without a kingdom’ or ‘I have been left with nothing’.
The message understood by every congregation – that pride comes before a fall – took on new significance after the Black Death. This devastating outbreak of plague killed off one-third of the