The fox, standing on hind legs, wears a bishop's mitre. His left paw grasps his staff of office, the crozier, its headpiece shaped like a question mark in reverse. It looks like a ram's horn, so that the symbol of power also resembles a shepherd's crook, referencing the guardian aspect of a bishop's role. The right paw is raised. Is it in blessing or exhortation to the flock before him? His ‘congregation’ is a collection of birds – two chickens, a cockerel, three ducks, a swan and a heron. This scene, in the lower border of what is a manuscript possibly produced in France between 1300 and 1340, bears testimony to the longevity of the connection of the fox, in folklore and satire, specifically with anticlerical satire but always with cheating people. The manuscript scene alludes to the old European- wide tale of Reynard the Fox masquerading in ecclesiastical robes in order to mislead the foolish. To the right of the scene is a housewife in a blue dress, white apron and white headcloth. She is swatting at a fox with what looks like a distaff with wool on it. The fox is running away with a large bird, its head trapped between his jaws. Both the fox- bishop and the fox- thief pictures rest on a painted long vine- like tendril so that both scenes are linked as if the before/ after parts of the same story. The second scene seems to be the outcome of the first. It is therefore a sharp satirical comment on the rapacity and duplicity of the church, but works also as a scene from everyday rural life with a fox which has raided the hen coop. It carries with it resonances relating to the greediness and deceitfulness of man, the gullibility of the general populace and, more particularly, the oft- repeated connection of the church with avaricious predation. What the fox does to the fowls, appearing as guide, mentor and comforter, luring them into false security and then attacking them, is what many saw the church doing to its flock.