“In the light of what Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus wrote it is amusing to find that Thomas himself became the butt of a jest which embodied what they both loathed. Thomas was silently composing a hymn in his mind while eating a lamprey. He finished hymn and lamprey together. To give thanks to God for his hymn he muttered one of Christ’s seven last words on the Cross, Consummatum est! — ‘It is finished!’ Bystanders were shocked. They thought he was lightly referring to the lamprey he had just consumed.”