A question about Chaucer's Troilus.

[Ohad]

Hello.
I am trying to translate Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida from middle english, and there is one verse I could make sense of.
On book II, verse 54, line 372. It is written:

`What? Who wol deme, though he see a man
To temple go, that he the images eteth?
Thenk eek how wel and wysly that he can
Governe him-self, that he no-thing foryeteth,
That, wher he cometh, he prys and thank him geteth;
And eek ther-to, he shal come here so selde,
What fors were it though al the toun behelde?

The first two lines seem to translate to:

What? who will deem, when he sees a man going to the temple that he eats the images?

I don't understand what does it mean at all... can anyone help?
Thank
Ohad.

[PeterL]

So who would think that a man who went to a temple would eat the images? Only a complete fool would believe that.

[Ohad]

What I don't understand is - is there any habit of eating religious images? are they made of edible material? This seems like an awfully peculiar example, and I want to try and understand why is it posed.

[PeterL]

Eating religious images is absurd. That's what that stanza is about.

A better translation of

`What? Who wol deme, though he see a man
To temple go, that he the images eteth?
might be: What! Who the Hell would ever think that someone going to a temple was going there to eat the images?