The Ass Carrying an Image

[1] It is directed against human conceit but at one period was also used to illustrate the argument in Canon Law that the sacramental act is not diminished by the priest's unworthiness.

The Latin title of the fable, Asinus portans mysteria (or its Greek equivalent, ονος αγων μυστήρια), was used proverbially of such human conceit and was recorded as such in the Adagia of Erasmus.

[2] The fable was revived in Renaissance times by Andrea Alciato in his Emblemata under the heading Non tibi sed religioni (not for your sake but religion's), and is placed in the context of the Egyptian cult of Isis.

[6] A contemporary English reference in The Conversations at Little Gidding (about 1630) also mentions 'Aesops Asse interpreting the Prostrate Worship of the People that was offered to the Golden Image on his back as intended to his Beastliness'.

Roger L'Estrange had similarly taken the fable, at much the same time as La Fontaine, as 'a reproof to those men who take the honour and respect that is done to the character they sustain, to be paid to the person'.