[In the following excerpt, Mosher discusses the Gesta Romanorum in the context of preceding and succeeding collections of moralized stories.]

[The] collection of fables and tales by the English preacher and fable writer, Odo de Ceritona,¹compiled between 1219-21, is apparently the earliest in which fables are accompanied with moralizations. Although preachers used this collection as a source-book for illustrations, it was probably compiled to reform clerical abuses. Those “parabolae” which were intended for exempla, Odo inserted in his sermons but never collected.² The collected narratives, by virtue of their accompanying moralizations, acquired a greater independent value than they had hitherto possessed in the subordinate office of illustrations. The collection was composed largely of fables, but the idea of appending moralizations was soon applied to collections of tales other than fables and helped to produce such compilations as the Gesta Romanorum. These moralized tales and fables of Odo were eagerly utilized by preachers³ who in copying them into collections for their own use “sometimes lengthened, shortened, or otherwise changed them, sometimes added others, borrowed, in theme at least, from other authors or from their own imagination.”⁴ The large number of manuscripts containing such collections still extant in France, Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland,⁵ testify amply to the popularity of Odo's fables.⁶

The fables, however, though often mingled in the sermons as exempla,⁷ are of less importance for our study than the “parabolae,” or exempla, which appeared in his sermons, written previous to 1219.⁸ There are two collections of homilies: those for Sundays (Homiliae de Tempore), and those for Festivals (Homiliae de Sanctis). Of the former there are sixty-six; of the latter, twenty-six. The exempla in these sermons show growing familiarity with such writers as Seneca, Ovid, Vergil, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, and Boethius.⁹ Moreover, the type is employed on a scale far greater than in any of the English homily collections of the earlier period. Hervieux' edition of the “parabolae” used in the Sunday sermons only, contains one hundred and ninety-nine. …

We may now consider the formal, Latin example-books which were produced in England after the middle of the thirteenth century. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, example-books in England, as elsewhere, appear to be practically confined to Latin. France, Germany, and Italy were much more prolific than England in turning out exempla, although the clerics in the latter country were by no means idle. Manuscripts of monkish legends were produced copiously enough, but they were eclipsed by the more compendious and superior compilations of the Continent, such as the exempla from the sermons of Jacques de Vitry, the Alphabetum Narrationum, the Tractatus of Étienne de Bourbon, the Directorium Vitae Humanae of John of Capua, the Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais (?), and the Dialogus Miraculorum of Caesar of Heisterbach. Still, a few compilations were made on English ground, which have not fallen into oblivion; some of them are, indeed, among the most noted of their kind.

Until the close of the thirteenth century, apparently no famous collection was produced in England, but the time was preparing for a great work,—the Gesta Romanorum. We have, for example, a Liber Exemplorum ad usum Praedicantium,¹⁰ compiled between 1270-79 by a Franciscan, probably of Warwickshire.¹¹ This book is a preachers' manual in two parts; the first part relates tales “De Rebus Superioribus,” such as Christ, the Virgin, the angels, and St. James, arranged in order of importance; the second part narrates incidents “De Rebus Inferioribus,” arranged alphabetically. There are two hundred and thirteen titles, and the list of sources, compiled by Little, comprises forty-three authors. The Vitae Patrum, from which the writer takes thirty-six exempla, is most prominent; then come in order of importance, the Dialogues of Gregory, the Summa virtutum et vitiorum of Paraldus, and the Life of John of Alexandria; less frequently quoted sources are the Bible, the classic theologians, such as Augustine, Gregory, and Beda, saints' lives, Barlaam and Josaphat, and historical compends, such as those of Peter Comestor and Beda.

Of particular significance are references in the work to other collections, now missing¹² but, judging from the tales cited, of about the same kind as that under discussion. One of these called “Exempla Deodati” furnished the Liber Exemplorum three tales. The first of these entitled “Quaedam mulier coniugata” tells of a woman of evil character who was incited by the devil “in specie iuvenis” to corrupt holy persons; she was saved by her son's penitence.¹³ Another from this source narrates a conversation between a demon and “frater Iordan, magister ordinis predicatorum.”¹⁴ The third tells of a certain young man who, “amans illicite,” entered the chamber of his noble lady one night only to be greeted with the cry, “A A A! fuge, demon.” Frightened out of his wits, he fled with greater speed than dignity to a near-by hermitage where, after confession, he was relieved of the devil which had transformed him.¹⁵ Another missing collection cited by the author of the Liber Exemplorum is the “Exempla Communia” from which he takes three, possibly four, tales.¹⁶ These are of the same monkish character, dealing with churchmen, demons, and miraculous happenings. These lost collections indicate that example-books must have been far more numerous before time and the destructive zeal of the Reformation reduced the number of such “talis of rybawdy and vain lesyngis.”

The compiler of the Liber Exemplorum, however, like many other clerics, appears to have considered the tales highly meritorious. His exempla are directed “to the utility and edification of the people, announcing to them vices and virtues, punishment and glory.”¹⁷ He aims throughout to make the use of tales beneficial and wholesome. Now he directs a warning to preachers to avoid vile words;¹⁸ again, after certain particularly vicious tales, he cautions preachers to modify them in recital to the people, since they may suggest crimes hitherto unknown.¹⁹ Another caution, which was probably observed widely, relates to the exercise of discrimination in the use of tales dealing with sinning clerics.²⁰ These were to be employed when churchmen were addressed, but were not expeditious for general use.²¹ Not only did he aim to make the exemplum a wholesome and worthy part of sermons, but he also tried to make the tales of his collection stimulating by using specific names, either as actors or personal narrators, and specific places, particularly local ones.²² The Liber Exemplorum is an energetic little book which points to considerable activity in England in the field of illustrative tales.

Similar to the Liber Exemplorum are other example-books which were complied in England during the thirteenth century. Toward the end of the century appeared a large collection, alphabetically arranged under subject headings, and known as the Speculum Laicorum.²³ It has been attributed to John Hoveden, who died in 1275, but though it is undoubtedly the work of an Englishman, the evidence for Hoveden's authorship is very scanty.²⁴ The tales are arranged under ninety-one headings, beginning with “Abstinentia” and ending with “Usura”; they number five hundred and seventy-two. These include, besides the usual monkish legends, many delightful contemporary anecdotes²⁵ which help to account for the popularity of the work, indicated by the number of copies still preserved in the British Museum and the Bodleian.

In addition to such larger collections as those mentioned in the foregoing pages, and the Continental collections which were circulating among the clergy, smaller compilations abounded.²⁶ All these had been preparing the way for a work of exemplar literature in many respects unparalleled,—the Gesta Romanorum.²⁷ Concerning this book which is so well-known and has been the subject of so much scholarly investigation, little need be said here.²⁸ The few facts which concern us particularly may be briefly stated. The Gesta was, in its original form, a collection of Latin narratives drawn from oriental apologues, monkish legends, classical stories, tales of the chroniclers, popular traditions, and furnished with apposite moralizations after the manner of Odo de Ceritona's moralized fables and the Contes Moralizés of Nicole de Bozon. “Its object was undoubtedly,” says Herrtage, “to furnish a series of entertaining tales to the preachers of the day or to monastic societies, accompanied by such allegorical forms of exposition as to convey, according to the taste of the age, information of a theological character or moral tendency.”²⁹ The collection appeared at the end of the thirteenth or the opening of the fourteenth century.³⁰ Oesterley repudiates the ascriptions to the most favored claimant, Pierre Bercheur, and concludes that it is impossible to determine the compiler. Considering the absence of substantial evidence, it is no wonder for, as the learned editor asks, “Who during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, did not tell parables and tales in the style of the Gesta, who did not moralize, and what was not moralized?”³¹ The most significant fact in connection with the present discussion is that all indications point to England as the place of compilation.³² This circumstance undoubtedly gave a special prominence to exampla in England, but it must be realized that for the most part the Gesta is no more English than French, German, or Italian. It represents the universal clerical spirit of an age in which story-telling had a sort of practical value.

It would, of course, be an error to consider this great collection merely an example-book. The early date, the Latin language, and the general tone of the work indicate that it was designed primarily for clerics;³³ but it is more than a preachers' manual. Mingled with many fables and short, typical exempla,³⁴ are a greater number of elaborated and purely secular tales.³⁵ It may, therefore, with some propriety be looked upon as a transitional work between collections of exempla and compilations of tales which, though sometimes didactic in tone, were largely secular in content, were more pleasingly told for popular entertainment, and left the lesson to be drawn without the aid of an explanation. On the one side the Gesta points to the collections of Gregory, Nicole de Bozon, and Jacques de Vitry; on the other, to the stories of Boccaccio, Gower, and Chaucer.³⁶

After the appearance of the Gesta, there is a notable increase in the number of secular tales in exempla-books. Often the place of the more obvious moral of the monkish legend is supplied by the attachment of an ingenious moralization. The next important collections compiled in England illustrate this new departure. These were two books by an English Dominican, John Holkot, who was a professor of theology at Oxford at the time of his death in 1349.³⁷ One of these works, the Liber de Moralizationibus,³⁸ consists largely of classical stories from Ovid, Pliny, Valerius Maximus, and ancient history. Each story is provided with an elaborate moralization called an “expositio moralis,” or “tropologia.” The collection, although the manuscripts contain only from forty-seven to seventy-five tales,³⁹ had considerable popularity. It stands with the same writer's Liber Sapientiae as the most notable example-book compiled in England between the Gesta Romanorum and Bromyard's Summa Praedicantum.

Holkot's Liber Sapientiae⁴⁰ consists of nineteen chapters subdivided into two hundred and eleven “lectiones.” The “lectiones,” which run together in a very confusing manner, treat a great number of topics which occupied the attention of contemporary clerics, such as adultery, avarice, and other sins, the love of God, reward of virtue, punishment of evil, miracles, and scores of allied subjects.⁴¹ These discussions are guided by Biblical texts freely interspersed, and are illustrated by a heterogeneous mass of historical and classical learning, figures of speech, natural history passages, and exempla comprising fables, monkish legends, and secular tales.⁴² Despite an index, the material is not conveniently tabulated but it appears to have been very popular among the learned, for no less than eight editions were called for before 1500.⁴³

But Holkot's works, and even the Gesta, are surpassed as collections of exempla by the last great Latin example-book compiled in England, John Bromyard's Summa Praedicantium,⁴⁴ a gigantic work which rivals the most famous Continental collections. Like Holkot, Bromyard was a Dominican. He was educated at Oxford and became distinguished in jurisprudence there, as well as at Cambridge, where he lectured on theology; his work was, therefore, exceptionally influential. The great Summa contains more than a thousand exempla; as Goedke remarks, “Scarcely any other work is so rich in fables and tales.”⁴⁵

The book is divided into one hundred and eighty-nine chapters, treating as many topics arranged alphabetically, as, “gaudium,” “gloria,” “gratia,” “gratitudo,” “gula,” etc. Mingled with the discussion on these topics are the exempla, usually indicated by the word “exemplum” in the margin. As Crane puts it, they represent “the whole body of mediaeval and classical literature known to the learned. Scarcely any department of these two great divisions is unrepresented: fables, legends, mediaeval epics, Oriental apologues, anecdotes from Roman history, from Biblical history, popular jests, etc.”⁴⁶ It included most of the choice tales from all former collections of the kind.⁴⁷ With its completion at the opening of the fifteenth century,⁴⁸ the Latin example-book reached its highest development, not only for England but for the world.

To sum up,—England was largely indebted to Continental sources for the tales in her formal example-books, and in the number of famous collections was not so fruitful as Germany, France, and Italy, where churchmen were more numerous and tales had a greater circulation. But, aside from smaller compilations, her contribution was by no means insignificant, as is shown by the Liber Exemplorum, the Speculum Laicorum, the Gesta Romanorum, the Liber de Moralizationibus, the Liber Sapientiae, and the Summa Praedicantium.

Notes

1. Les Fabulistes Latins, IV, contains the fables and parables of Odo, and a thorough critical and biographical study of their author.

2. See Hervieux, Les Fabulistes, IV, 35.

3. That some of Odo's contemporaries were using exempla is evinced by sermon collections still preserved. Wright calls attention to some of them as follows. “In a manuscript [Arundel, 231] … in the British Museum some monastic compiler has arranged in one series the homilies of John of Abbeville, Odo of Kent, and Roger of Salisbury on the Sunday Gospels throughout the year … They all present one characteristic which is much less common in the writers of sermons at an early date, the frequent illustration of the subject by short stories or fables.” Biographia Britannica Literaria, I, 225. The Catalogue of the Western MSS. in Trinity College lists (I, 9-11) a thirteenth century MS. of fifty-nine “Sermones per anni circulum,” which formerly belonged to the Durham Cathedral. Mr. James, the compiler of the catalogue, notes that stories are used in many of these sermons.

4. Hervieux, op. cit., IV, 35.

5. Ibid., IV, 47-77.

6. Hervieux states that there are only three translations of Odo's fables: One Spanish (El libro de los gatos), and two French. One of the latter is anonymous; the other he believes to be the Contes Moralizés of Nicole de Bozon. Les Fabulistes, IV, 85.

7. Seventeen of the Aesopic collection appear in the homilies, besides nine others “au moins en germe.” Ibid., IV, 124-5.

8. Ibid., IV, 46.

9. Ibid., IV, 126.

10. Edited by A. C. Little for the Society of Franciscan Studies. The prologue is missing from the unique MS., B. IV. 19, Durham Cathedral, and the collection is preserved only to the letter M.

11. The editor, from references in the exempla, concludes that the writer was a student in Paris about 1264-5, and that he later held clerical office in England. Liber Exemplorum, introd., vi seq.

12. Little states that he was unable to find the Exempla Deodati. He did, however, find one other reference to the collection in Balliol Coll. MS. 228 where it is represented by one exemplum. The work is here attributed to “Frater de ordine minorum, Deodatus nomine, quondam minister Hybernie.” See Liber, 141-2, note.

13. Liber, 54.

14. Ibid., 91.

15. Liber, 121. The tale closes with a reference to its use in the sermons of one “frater de Wycumbe”; see also ibid., 88, for another reference to the use of exempla in contemporary sermons.

16. Ibid., 5, 61, 95, 125. Three of these cite the Exempla Communia.

17. Liber, introd., xiii.

18. Ibid., 98. “Caveat qui predicat ut verba curialia dicat, ut videlicet nominet lutum pro stercore, rem parvi valoris pro vili spermate.” See also ibid., 200.

19. Ibid., 56, 115-16, 120-21.

20. The monks did not seem to mind the disparaging tales about themselves, and they certainly took delight in those which dealt with the secular clergy.

21. Liber, 94-95. After narrating a tale of a wicked cleric who saw a vision of hell awaiting him, the author says, “nec expedit de religiosis talia populo pronunciare. … Si autem predicatur religiosis, tota narracia … utilis erit.” See also the tale preceding this. It is to be noted that although the writer is a Franciscan he does not attempt in the tales to extol his own order nor to cast reflections upon other orders. This is generally true with reference to the thousands of stories told and retold by men of the various monkish orders, Franciscans, Dominicans, Cistercians, Augustinians, and others. The religious dramatis personae good and bad in the narratives, are, as if by general understanding, of a universal class; the appellations, “a certain monk,” “a pious hermit,” “a wicked friar,” etc., are pretty consistently adhered to. In some cases, to be sure, specific names are mentioned, but they are commonly those of well-known men and are by no means restricted to any particular order. In the present collection, for instance, the Franciscan collector speaks highly of several Dominicans, such as “Richard Fishacre of good memory” (p. 19), “Robertus de Sudeseye, brother holy and noble” (p. 63); see also pp. 109, 123.

22. Among writers of exempla there appears to have been little hesitation about joining a nine hundred year old event with a ninety year old name.

23. The original MS., 11,284, Brit. Mus., is entitled “Fabularum anecdotorumque collectio ad usum praedicantium, in seriem alphabeticam digestam.” See Crane, J. de V., introd., lxxii. Excerpts from the Speculum are printed in Haupt and Hoffman's Altdeutsche Blätter, Leipzig, 1840, II, 74-82. These are reprinted by Wright in Latin Stories.

24. See J. A. Herbert, “The Authorship of the ‘Alphabetum Narrationum,’” in Library, January, 1905, p. 96.

25. See ibid., p. 96; also Crane, J. de V., introd., lxxii. Contemporary with the Speculum, there appeared on the Continent two collections. One of these, containing about two hundred tales, was called the Tractatus exemplorum de abundantia adaptorum ad omnem materiam in sermonibus, secundum ordinem alphabeti; the other was the famous Alphabetum Narrationum of which a fifteenth century English translation is preserved. The latter, An Alphabet of Tales, has been edited by Mrs. Mary M. Banks for the E. E. T. S.

26. See Crane, J. de V., introd., lxxii-lxxiii.

27. The following are the best editions: Sir Frederick Madden, Middle English text, for the Roxburghe Club, 1838; Herman Oesterley, Latin text, Berlin, 1872; S. J. H. Herrtage, Middle English text, for the E. E. T. S., No. 33; Rev. Chas. Swan, Modern English, New York, 1905.

28. From the time of Warton and Douce, the Gesta has been the subject of painstaking research. Since Oesterley's masterly work was published in 1872, nothing material has been added.

29. Gesta, ed. Herrtage, introd., viii. The popularity and influence of the work is suggested by the fact that no less than one hundred and sixty-six manuscripts have been found. Ibid., xxvii.

30. Gesta, ed. Oesterley, 257.

31. Ibid., 254-55.

32. Ibid., 262.

33. The tales are unclassified, but, as was noted in the introductory chapter, the combination of tabulation and moralization was not introduced, apparently, until Johannes Junior's Scala Celi, about 1350.

34. The following representative titles need no explanation: how a clerk was saved by confession and penance from a compact with the devil (Herrtage, p. 375); how a nail dropped into the balance of good-deeds when a good and a bad angel stood disputing over a departing soul (p. 379); how a man was delivered for his piety (p. 379); how certain tempting devils were vanquished (p. 380); how a bishop was damned for neglecting God's warning (p. 380); how a rich man was punished for robbing a poor widow (p. 386); old favorites, such as the man chased by a unicorn, the rustic who drank ditch-water, and the test for the true son, are not wanting.

35. Typical of this group are: the story of Lear and his three daughters, the three caskets, the pound of flesh, the tale of Constance, the race of Atalanta, Androclus and the lion, Vergil's speaking statue.

36. D'Ancona assumes the influence of monkish on secular collections, the beginning of which he puts at the opening of the fourteenth century. See Studi di Critica e storia letteraria, 252. Garnett says that Il Novellino was compiled about the middle of the thirteenth century “with a distinct moral purpose.” A History of Italian Literature, 85.

37. See Dictionary of National Biography.

38. The work is otherwise known as Liber de Moralitatibus, or simply Moralitates. It is printed with the Liber Sapientiae, Basel, 1586.

39. See Oesterley's Gesta, 246. Some of Holkot's tales are drawn from the Gesta.

40. It is sometimes called Opus super Sapientiam Solomonis.

41. The book may be compared in general method of composition to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, although the relative clearness of topical division in the latter is marked. A prefixed “tabula,” corresponding rudely to our index, furnishes an aid to those sufficiently initiated to use it.

42. As Crane has pointed out, the extraordinary number of citations from pagan authorities is noteworthy. J. de V., introd., xcix.

43. See Hain, Repertorium Bibliographicum.

44. First edition without place or date (probably Basel, 1485), 2 vols., folio (Union Theological Seminary). Other editions are: Nuremberg, 1485, 1518, 1578; Paris, 1518; Lyons, 1522; Venice, 1586; Antwerp, 1614 (Yale).

45. See Orient und Occident, I, 538.

46. See “Mediaeval Sermon-books and Stories,” in Proceedings of the Amer. Philosophical Society for 1883, XXI, 71.

47. The present treatment of the Summa is frankly disproportionate to the size of this enormous monument to the collector's industry. But the work may be said to differ from those already treated, in bulk rather than in kind.

48. Bromyard died in 1418. See D. N. B.; also Crane, “Mediaeval Sermon-books and Stories,” Amer. Phil. Soc., XXI, 70.