SOURCE: Kahrl, Stanley J. “The Medieval Origins of the Sixteenth-Century Jest-Books.” Studies in the Renaissance, 13 (1966): 166-83.

[In the following essay, Kahrl links sixteenth-century jest-books to the Gesta Romanorum, comparing the tales and exempla appearing in those books with tales in the Gesta Romanorum and similar collections.]

Saynt Bede tellis in ‘Gestis Anglorum’ how, when Englond was oute of þe belefe, þe pope sente in-to it to preche a bisshop þat was a passyng sutell clerk, and a well-letterd; and he vsid so mekull soteltie and strange saying in his sermons, þat his prechyng owder litle profettid or noght. And þan þer was sent a noder þat was les of connyng of literatur þan he was, and he vsid talis and gude exsample in his sermon; and he within a while conuertyd nere-hand all Englond.¹

While exempla may not, in reality, have converted ‘nere-hand all Englond’, there can be no question of the general effectiveness of illustrative tales as an aid in elucidating points of doctrine throughout the middle ages. With increasing frequency, particularly following the appearance of the preaching orders of friars, great collections of exempla were brought together to aid both parsons and pardoners in preparing effective sermons. Illustrative tales were not solely of value to medieval preachers, however. In Sir Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort, Anthony, More's spokesman, admits regretfully that ‘he yt cannot long endure to hold vp his head and heare talking of heuen except he be nowe and than betwene … refreshed with a meri folish tale, ther is none another remedi but you must let him haue it’.² It is not surprising that one of the leading English humanists advocated the continued use of exempla for moral instruction, considering their past effectiveness. What is of greater interest is the discovery that in preparing the sixteenth-century jest-books lesser English humanists were using the exempla for entirely new purposes. As one reads through the jest-books one is continually struck by the similarities in both style and content between the jests and their forbears the exempla, similarities which have thus far been noted only in passing.

Collections of comic stories now known as ‘jest-books’³ first appeared in England in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, at a time when such great collections of exempla as the Gesta Romanorum⁴ or Johannes Bromyard's Summa praedicantium⁵ were still popular. Of the early jest-books, the most important for a study of origins are A Hundred Mery Tales,⁶ first published in 1526, and the expanded version of Tales and Quicke Answeres (1532-1533) printed by H. Wykes in 1567 as Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres.⁷ Between them, these two collections contain every type of jest that appeared in later jest-books, and therefore provide excellent opportunities for tracing the origins of the jests.⁸

Although medieval collections of sermon exempla have been recognized as one of the sources for the sixteenth-century jest-books,⁹ as a result of the researches of A. L. Stiefel¹⁰ and H. de Vocht¹¹ continental ‘humanist’ literature of the early Renaissance is now regarded as the primary source from which the jest writers derived both the style and matter for their collections. After a perfunctory nod at Volksliteratur, Ernst Schulz presents what is now apparently the generally received opinion:

Obwohl die Schwankbücher im wesentlichen der Volksliteratur angehören, sind dennoch gerade gelehrte Kreise für die internationale Verbreitung der Schwänke tätig gewesen; im frühen Mittelalter waren es die Mönche, im 16. Jahrhundert die Kreise der Humanisten. Die Einwirkung von Land zu Land war um so nachdrücklicher, als sie sich der Weltsprache, des Lateinischen, bedienten. Die Facetiensammlungen der Humanisten haben einen ungeheuren Einfluss ausgeübt; sie haben für die meisten vulgärsprachlichen Schwankliteraturen vorbildlich, auf alle befruchtend gewirkt.¹²

Now the subject matter of a good number of the jests does correspond to the ‘cynicism and irreverence’ supposedly characteristic of the ‘modern spirit of the Florentine facetiae’.¹³ Cynicism and irreverence are not prerogatives of the Italian Renaissance, however. As G. R. Owst points out, ‘When we turn the pages of Poggio and his fellows, what do we find? Precisely the same types of humour as those displayed by the pulpit two centuries earlier, the same favourite objects of ridicule and witty repartee.’¹⁴ Furthermore, where the style in which the jests are narrated corresponds to the narrative styles of the facetiae, the correspondences are just as likely to derive from the narrative methods of the medieval preachers as from the techniques of the Renaissance humorists.¹⁵ For example, when a jest in the Quicke Answeres occurs in both the Fabulae of the German humanist Sebastian Brant and the Facetiae of Poggio, Stiefel generally prefers Brant's Fabulae as the source because both Brant and the compiler of the Quicke Answeres end their tales with moral tags. With such a practice we are closer to the style of Nicole Bozon's exempla than the facetiae of Poggio. It therefore seems appropriate to compare both the style and content of the jests to the style and content of the medieval exempla, concentrating first on characteristics of style, in order to determine the extent to which the compilers of jest-books were indebted to the practices of medieval preachers in their choice and narration of comic tales.

The style of narration consistently employed by the collectors of exampla and the sermon writers was dictated more by practical considerations than by any elaborate set of rules, such as those derived for the proper division of the so-called ‘modern’ sermons of the later middle ages. The exemplum was strictly teleological. Arnold of Liège, in his prologue to the Alphabetum narrationum, states this function most succinctly: ‘Narraciones siquidem et exempla facilius in intellectu capiuntur et memorie firmius imprimuntur et a multis libencius audiuntur.’¹⁶ Those theoreticians of sermon construction cited by Welter¹⁷ all stress the point that illustrative anecdotes serve to recapture wandering thought and to drive home points of doctrine. This is particularly true if the audience ‘sunt in sciencia debiles et in fide rudes’, as the compiler of the Speculum laicorum remarks.¹⁸ The most extensive set of rules given for the general employment of exempla is that of Humbert de Romans, a Dominican of the late thirteenth century, in his adaptation of Étienne de Bourbon's De dono timoris.¹⁹ All derive from two considerations—to gain attention and reinforce doctrine—and are important enough to summarize here. Assuming the narrator is capable of using exempla, he should first select those which are appropriate for his audience. Moderation in the number employed is recommended (Gregory often used only one or two in a single sermon). Authorities are to be adduced for confirmation of the exemplum, which must be obviously brief, to the point, and true. Any part of the story which does not pass the test of utility is to be excised; in the rare event that a fable or some other nonhistorical anecdote appears to be particularly appropriate, the congregation must be informed that the story is included for its signification, despite its untruth. Finally, and above all, the speaker should use competent authorities. In addition to the church fathers and the Bible, natural philosophers and scientists are permissible. But as to an approved technique to be used in the actual presentation of the particular narrative, nothing is stated.²⁰

Yet, if we keep in mind the functions such narratives were meant to perform, certain characteristics of narrative style can be isolated. The opening words attempt to establish the all-important veracity of the material to be recounted, either generally (‘legimus’, ‘audivi’, ‘we rede how on a tyme’) or specifically (‘Saynt Gregur tells’, ‘Caesarius tellis’, ‘we rede in “Libro de dono timoris”’, ‘in les gestez Charles est trovie escrit’, ‘verum ibidem Ambrosius narrat’). Those familiar with Lollius will appreciate the effect intended. Credence can be gained in other ways as well. In the ‘fabula ad idem’ to tale number 144 of Nicole Bozon's Contes moralizés,²¹ proper names are used to great effect, where the ‘deus mauveis garceoñs’ named Sterlyn and Galopyn play a foul trick on a magician by surreptitiously filling his bag of tricks with their ordure.²² The magician himself is particularized by locality rather than name (‘un tregettour y aveit en la counté de Leycestre’),²³ a device equally effective in gaining credence for a tale.

Once past such opening remarks, the tale moves swiftly. The widespread tale of the man and his son taking an ass to market, which occurs in the Alphabet of Tales²⁴ and Nicole's Contes,²⁵ begins abruptly in Nicole's version with the picture of the man riding his horse to market followed by his boy. The dramatic situation is always sketched in as quickly and economically as possible. No time is spent delineating the character of a protagonist other than to indicate profession or means of livelihood, such as a usurer. The action moves swiftly, carried forward as much as possible by snatches of direct discourse. In Bozon's version of the story, the man's brusque commands to his son are related: in the Alphabet it is the objections of passers-by. Because of its impact, dialogue appears constantly in the exempla as a means of advancing the narrative. Very little space is needed to tell the story, seldom more than a quarto page, for too long a narration vitiates the effect of the application. Ars gratia morum. The action generally moves to a recognizable climax, which, depending on the skill of the preacher, would apply more or less pertinently to the point being made. In the case of this tale the busy-bodies met on the road are not actually using the ‘verbis adulatoriis vel detractoriis’ which the congregation is being warned to avoid by Nicole. Finally, especially in such collections as the Gesta Romanorum or the Liber de moralizationibus of Robert Holkot, a generalized moral often follows the climax, drawn from some source of suitable prestige. Above all, one is struck by a sense of economy. These tales, and their descendants the jests, represent the antithesis to Pettie's Euphuism or Painter's stylistic elaborations. ‘Rien alors n'est laissé au hasard, épithètes accolées aux substantifs, images, figures de rhétorique sont là pour produire l'effet voulu sur l'auditeur ou le lecteur en harmonie avec le sujet traité.’²⁶

Many of these characteristics can be seen in the following tale, number 120 in the Alphabet of Tales, another version of which appears as number 31 in Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres:

Jacobus de Vetriaco tellis how þat þer was a preste þat trowid he was a passand gude synger, not-with-stondyng he was not so. So on a day þer was a gentyl-womman þat satt behynd hym and hard hym syng, and sho began to wepe; and he, trowyng þat sho wepid for swettnes of his voyse, began to syng lowder þan he did tofor; and ay þe hyer sho hard hym syng, þe faster wepud sho. Than þis preste askid hur whi sho wepud so as she did, and sho ansswerd hym agayn and sayd; ‘Sur, I am a pure gentillwomman, and þe laste day I had no calfe bod one; and þe wulfe come and had it away fro me; and evur when þat I here you syng, onone I remembre me how þat my calfe and ye cried like.’ And when þe preste hard þis, onone he thoght shame, and remembred hym þat þat þing [þ]at he thoght was grete lovyng vnto God, was vnto Hym grete shame and velany; and fro thens furth he sang nevur so lowde. et c^e.²⁷

The climax of the story, and the point at which a secular raconteur would stop, is the woman's answer. That which follows the ‘punch line’, however, provides the moralization for the alphabetical rubric—‘Cantus proprius multos decipit qui credunt bene cantare et pessime ac vilissime cantant.’ Likewise the version in the Quicke Answeres cannot let well enough alone. In this case it is a ‘frier that brayde in his sermon’. When asked why she wept, the woman replied

Forsoth, mayster (sayde she), I am a poure wydowe: and whan myne husbande dyed, he lefte me but one asse, whiche gotte parte of my lyuynge, the whiche asse the woules haue slayne: and nowe, whan I hard your hyghe voyce, I remembred my selye asse: for so he was wonte to braye bothe nyghte and daye. And this, good mayster, caused me to wepe. Thus the lawde brayer, rather than preacher, confuted with his folysshenes, wente his way; which, thinkynge for his brayenge lyke an asse to be reputed for the beste preacher, deserued well to here hym selfe to be compared to an asse.

For truely one to suppose hym selfe wyse
Is vnto folysshenes the very fyrste gryce.(28)

Whether or not the immediate source for the Quicke Answeres version is Brant's Fabulae,²⁹ the style is unquestionably derived from the earlier exemplum.

With time, of course, the retention of a moralized ending would seem less necessary to the ‘author’ of a jest-book, particularly if, as was the case, the later jest writers were borrowing from each other rather than from other collections.³⁰ Thus, under Liberalitas in the Alphabet, occurs the following tale:

Lantigonus, þat was kyng of Macydony, on a tyme when a pure man askid hym a peny, he ansswerd agayn and said þat it was mare þan a pure man sulde aske. And þan he askid hym a halpeny, and he ansswerd agayn and said; ‘It is les þan it semys a kyng for to giff.’ And Senec stude by and saw, and he said þis was a fowle cauillacion, when he mot nowder se þe kyng giff þe pure man a peny, nor þe pure man resayfe a halpeny of þe kyng; ffor þer is no þing so mekull made of as is þat þyng þat a man giffis with his gude wyll. et c^e.³¹

In Jack of Dover's Quest of Enquirie (1604), a version appears as ‘The Foole of Lester’.

A certaine knight there was (quoth another of the jury), that on a time, as he rode through Lester, had an occasion to alight and make water, and walking afterward a foote through the streetes, there came unto him a poor begger-man and asked of his worship one penny for God's sake. One penny, quoth the knight, that is no gyft for a man of worship to give. Why then, quoth the begger, give me an angell. Nay, that (sayd the knight) is no almes for a begger to take. Thus both wayes did he shake him off, as one worthy of no reward for his presumption.³²

Still the same joke, improved not solely through the excision of Seneca's remarks. Yet the form of the tale itself has varied little over the intervening centuries. English rather than classical details are called on to lend the necessary air of veracity. Indeed, the initial additions all are intended to create as vivid a dramatic setting as possible. More of the story is carried on as direct rather than indirect discourse, and the knight's retorts are more perfectly balanced, but we really learn little more from ‘The Foole of Lester’ than we knew after reading The Alphabet of Tales.

The characteristics of style already isolated can be profitably compared to the narrative methods of Erasmus, the humanist both Stiefel and de Vocht felt had exerted the greatest influence over the compiler of the Quicke Answeres. In describing the sources for tale number 63 of the Quicke Answeres, ‘The wyse answere of Hanibal to kynge Antiochus, concerninge his ryche armye’,³³ a commendably classical anecdote, Stiefel notes the original source in Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae V, 5, as well as the later appearances in Macrobius' Satyricon II.2.1 ff. and John of Salisbury's Policraticus. All of these works were known to medieval preachers. Erasmus' version in the Apophthegmata³⁴ struck Stiefel as closer to the version which appears in the Quicke Answeres than that of another humanist, Barlandus. ‘Bromyard, der die geschichte A XXIV, 2 bringt, steht dem engl. schwankdichter ferne.’³⁵ But does it? If we concentrate upon characteristics of form rather than verbal parallels (none of which are particularly close in this case), Erasmus' version, and, indeed, the whole Apophthegmata, will be seen to accord with the narrative techniques of the exempla. Erasmus' marginal titles set beside different individual tales within the collection provide a most revealing clue. ‘Pecuniae contemptus’, ‘lenitas’, ‘Ambitio insatiabilis’, ‘Mora noxia’ run these titles, reminding us of nothing more than the headings for separate tales in the Alphabet of Tales or the rubrics in Bromyard's Summa praedicantium. However, a comparison of the three versions will allow the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Bromyard presents his narrative, which he entitles an exemplum, in the course of a discussion of the proper use of arms. Arms are intended to support the laws, and are meant for use, not display. Tournaments, for example, should be prohibited, insofar as those participating

… student ornamentis, et diuitijs armorum in auro, et argento, et superbiæ vestimentorum, quam exercitijs, et industrijs, bellorum. … Potius propter illa occiduntur, quàm ab illis defendantur. Et secundum hoc optimè respondit ille expertus miles Anibal, qui Romanam militiam multo tempore sibi humiliauit, sicut patet per Augu. de ciuita Dei. De illo enim legitur, quòd cum apud regem Antiochum moraretur causa profugij, et rex obstentaret exercitum insignibus aureis, et argenteis florentem, et gloriabundus ab Anibale, quæreret, putas ne hæc omnia satis esse Romanis? Respondit Anibal satis esse credo, et si Romani auarissimi sint. Rex enim quæsiuit de numero, et potentia exercitius, ipse uerò de præda respondit annorum, pro qua habenda, Romani contra eos fortius pugnarent.³⁶

Erasmus' version runs as follows:

Idem [Annibal] profugiens apud Antiochum Regem agebat. Is ostendit illi suum exercitum Barbarico apparatu magnifice instructum, sed ad prædam magis quam ad bellum. Hæc omnia quum diligenter esset contemplatus Annibal, rogavit Antiochus, num hæc omnia satis essent futura Romanis. Tum Annibal; Plane satis arbitror, etiamsi avarissmi sint Romani. Lusit Poenus ab inexpectato: Rex de prælio sciscitabatur, iste respondit de præda. Quid enim aliud est miles imbellis, auro, argento, cæterisque rebus ad prædam invitantibus instructus?³⁷

Finally, in Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, this version appears:

Whan kynge Antiochus had prepared to make warre to the Romayns, he caused his armye to mustre before Anniball. So they shewed and mustred, both horse men and fote men; of whose ryche and sumptuous armour and apparaile al the felde glistred and shone. How saye you, quod the kynge to Hanibal, is nat this armye sufficient ynough for the Romayns? Yes, quod Haniball, and though they were the moste couetous of all the worlde. The kynge mente one thing, and he answerd an other.³⁸

As might be expected, the point of the tale, delivered in direct discourse, appears almost verbatim in the three versions. To change that would be to spoil the story. As any raconteur knows from experience, if you can remember the particular repartee which concludes the joke, the rest comes easily. The mark of a great raconteur lies in his handling of the preparatory material, where personal invention is most free. Thus the joke itself can be boiled down to a concentrate which includes only an identification of the characters involved, together with the point of the story, and it will still be recognizable.³⁹ For this reason, the type of comparison undertaken in some studies of folklore, where epitomes are used almost entirely, is apt to exclude some of the more important secondary characteristics, particularly the form in which the narrative appears.⁴⁰

The three versions cited possess those similarities in form which would appear where all three raconteurs were thoroughly familiar with a traditional method of presentation. For Bromyard, the discussion of useless extravagance in armor recalls naturally Hannibal's quip. After identifying Hannibal as a man qualified to pass on military efficiency by citing a patristic authority, he relates the exemplum, which he follows directly with the explicit moralization. For Erasmus, Hannibal's competence can be taken for granted. A value judgment (‘Barbarico apparatu magnifice’) replaces straight description (‘insignibus aureis, et argenteis florentem, et gloriabundus’), but the detail is the same. Bromyard's introductory remarks on the proper use of arms are briefly sketched in by Erasmus' balanced statement ‘ad prædam magis, quam ad bellum’; his moralization reappears as well (‘Lusit … præda’), also stylistically improved. Erasmus' final question is no more than a rephrasing of Bromyard's general remarks on extravagant armor. Erasmus' version is, in fact, closer to Bromyard than to the Quicke Answeres. What distinguishes the jest version is a lack of moral application. No remark on the futility of richly adorned armor remains. The excisions are so complete that the tale has become almost enigmatic, for without the heavy emphasis on the useless quality of heavily decorated armor, the word ‘covtous’ loses some of its force. Yet I believe this is by way of being a shorthand version of the traditional story, which relies for its total effect on the traditional associations which had always accompanied the story in its usual form. When the narrator states ‘the kynge mente one thing, and he answerd an other’, the reader is expected to know, probably by heart, such moralizations as that of Erasmus, stressing the præda—potentia exercitus dichotomy.

Perhaps by stressing the moralization I have conveyed the idea that the presence or absence thereof marks the jest as derivative from an exemplum. Such an impression would be erroneous. Because the exempla were intended as illustrations of a larger discussion, individual stories did tend to become associated with the issues for which they were most appropriate. Moralized endings offer the most convenient means of demonstrating the traditional qualities of the jests. However, economy of narration is just as surely a characteristic of the tradition as the presence of a moralization. Thus, William Painter's later elaborate version of Hannibal's quip⁴¹ can no longer be regarded as within the tradition I have been describing, not because it lacks the generalized application, but because Painter's narrative style is not concise. Elaborate stylistic longueurs have replaced the earlier economy of presentation, for in Painter's narrative the sole interest lies in the sound and pattern of words appearing in sequence. The more familiar the ‘story’ the better, for then it could be virtually ignored. The ‘horsemen and fote men’ of the Quicke Answeres version, themselves an added detail, become ‘plentie of wagons, chariots and Elephantes with towers, his bande of horsemen glittered gloriouslie, with golden bridles, trappers, barbes, and such like’.⁴² In the Quicke Answeres, the detail serves to vivify the picture of the army; in Painter's story, the addition becomes a distraction.

Not all of the tales of Erasmus appear in medieval costume, however. The graceful dialogue form of the Colloquia is a narrative device which came into its own with the humanists. As a technique for presenting philosophical or narrative material, the dialogue is as old as Socrates; it had been popular in ‘body and soul’ debates or the translations of Boethius' De consolatione in the middle ages. Yet the possibilities for creating an air of authenticity through the use of fictional characters engaging in genial conversation were not fully realized until the appearance of such works as The Courtier or More's Utopia.

One modification in narrative technique achieved through the colloquium occurs in the matter of narrative credibility. Where the medieval preacher adduced outside authority to prove the truth of his tales, Erasmus' characters create this effect from within themselves. Polymythus, who begins the storytelling in ‘The Fabulous Feast’, asks, ‘I suppose some of you have heard of the Name of Maccus?’ to which Gelasimus answers, ‘Yes, he has not been dead long.’⁴³ If one has accepted the reality of Erasmus' characters, and he takes great care to ensure such an acceptance, then the step to an acceptance of the reality of Maccus is short indeed. The superiority of this narrative method of establishing the credibility of a story becomes quite apparent when comparing the openings of the succeeding tale from ‘The Fabulous Feast’ and the version appearing as number 19 in the Quicke Answeres. Polymythus relates the sequel to his story of Maccus, after which he relates

Just such another Thing happen'd at Daventer, when I was a Boy. It was at a Time when 'tis the Fishmonger's Fair, and the Butchers Time to be starv'd. A certain Man stood at a Fruiterer's Stall, or Oporopolist's, if you'd have it in Greek. The Woman was a very fat Woman, and he star'd very hard upon the Ware she had to sell.⁴⁴

Yet the superiority of this opening was not apparent to the compiler of the Quicke Answeres. What a loss in ‘As a greate fatte woman sate and solde frute in a Lente, there came a yonge man bye, and behelde her frute ernestly’!⁴⁵ Gone is the character of a witty classicist, playing with the Greek expression and the idea of Lent. Gone is the immediacy of Polymythus' personal memory. By dramatizing the old expression ‘Saint Gregur tellis’, Erasmus has injected new life into the old form. Yet the author of the Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres failed to perceive the advantages of Erasmus' improvements. Where Erasmus was medieval, he was followed; where classical, he was not.

Within the body of the tale, those jests in the Quicke Answeres taken from Erasmus' Colloquium fabulosum follow their original closely and are, as a result, among the most lively in the whole collection, particularly the tale of Conon and Louis XI. However, the tale ‘Of an other picke-thanke, and the same kinge’ (number 24 in the Quicke Answeres), while in itself a faithful translation of Astaeus' response to the tale of Conon, provides an example of how strong was the pull toward the older technique when it came to a generalized moral ending. As usual in the colloquium, the proper reaction to Astaeus' tale is provided casually, yet adequately, by another member of the party in the introduction to his own tale.

Philythlus. I hear it's no good jesting with Kings; for as Lions will sometimes stand still to be stroaked, are Lions again when they please, and kill their Play-Fellow; just so Princes play with Men. But I'll tell you a Story not much unlike yours: not to go off from Lewis, who us'd to take a Pleasure in tricking Tricksters.⁴⁶

Even this moralization, drawn from bestiary lore, is traditional. Yet delivered as a response to the tale by a ‘character’ in the work of art, the moralization becomes acceptable. Compare this with the ending to the version in the Quicke Answeres:

Wherby ye maye note, that there is great difference betwene one that doth a thynge of good will and maynde, and hym that doth a thynge by crafte and dissymulation; whiche thinge this noble and moste prudent prince well vnderstode. And one ought to be well ware howe he hath to do with highe princes and their busynes. And if Ecclesiast forbid, that one shall mynde none yll to a kynge, howe shulde any dare speake yll?⁴⁷

The temptation to preach apparently could not be resisted.

The medieval origin of the jests is just as surely evident in their content as in their style. Nowhere can this be seen as clearly as in Theobaldus Anguilbertus' transitional work entitled the Mensa philosophica.⁴⁸ Here are two separate groups of tales, one moral, and one selected purely for entertainment. As the work was popular,⁴⁹ and drawn on by a number of the collectors of jests,⁵⁰ the principles of selection Anguilbert used to separate the moral tales of his second book from the comic tales of the fourth can be assumed to be similar to the principles used in preparing subsequent jest-books. Yet on a cursory inspection, there do not appear to be any discernible differences. For example, if one were to open the Mensa at random in the middle of either book, it would be difficult to ascertain one's location in the work as a whole without reference to the pagination or the running title. Both books contain a collection of short narratives ostensibly drawn from such familiar authorities as Valerius Maximus, Macrobius, or Jerome. In each case the method of organization is the same, as the author has grouped the narratives according to the social status of a central character within the narrative, ‘beginning with the most worthy Personagies’.⁵¹ Each book contains a chapter ‘De imperatoribus’, ‘De Medicis’, etc.⁵² Even the individual narratives present a similar appearance.

Thus among the ‘moral tales’ in book two, chapter two (‘De regibus’) appears a story attributed to Helinandus relating that when Piso praised Romulus' abstemiousness at a banquet, remarking that ‘if every man woulde do as thou doost, wine would be better cheape,’⁵³ Romulus replied, ‘Nay … it would bee dearer if everye man might drinke what hee would.’⁵⁴ This story provides a good early illustration of the ‘quick answer’ which later dominates the collections of John Taylor the Water Poet. So does the tale attributed by Anguilbert to Seneca's De ira in book four, chapter five, also ‘De regibus’, where ‘Antiochus’, having overheard from behind a curtain some subjects abusing him, appeared and said, ‘depart from hence least the king heare you’.⁵⁵ Not all of the stories in the two books present such close similarities, of course, but these illustrations are not untypical. Nevertheless Anguilbert unhesitatingly describes the stories in book two as ‘relata … exempla virtutum … ut qui aliter agebant auditis talibus ad emendat[i]onem veniant’,⁵⁶ while the fourth book is ‘de honestis ludis [et] iocundis solaciis verborum quibus in mensa recreamur’.⁵⁷ And the distinction is just, for while the second book includes a great many moral or philosophical sententiae often purportedly drawn from classical sources, similar material in the fourth book is notable by its absence.

Anguilbert's exclusion of specific moral commentary, coupled with a professed desire to include only humorous anecdotes in the fourth book, provides the sole basis for distinction between the two books. With one exception, both sections of the Mensa utilize the same sources.⁵⁸ Given these similarities, therefore, it is somewhat surprising to find Welter describing the jests in book four as marking ‘la transition entre l'esprit religieux et moral du passé et l'esprit sceptique et amoral du présent’, since this remark is certainly inapplicable to book two. One would not expect the simple lack of moralized comment to effect so dramatic a change, particularly as moralizations were not necessarily an inseparable adjunct to the exempla. A closer look at a few of Anguilbert's joci should settle the question.

In reading through these jests, one is immediately struck by the frequent occurrence of exempla already encountered in the pages of such earlier writers as Jacques de Vitry. As Dunn's notes indicate, such chapters as those ‘De usurariis’ or the two ‘De advocatiis’ were taken almost without exception from the exempla collections of Étienne de Bourbon or Humbert de Romans.⁵⁹ I doubt that such tales would strike any one as particularly sceptical.⁶⁰ On the other hand, for several chapters Dunn records no sources or analogues to speak of. Here ‘l'experience personnelle du compilateur’ referred to by Welter must have been drawn on, although we cannot ignore the possibilities of oral sermons, the ‘unbemerkte Predigtmärlein’. Here, if anywhere, should reign the new scepticism. What in fact do we find? In the chapter ‘De militibus’ occur several possibly original stories. The first turns on the popular superstition that it was bad luck to meet a priest on the way to war or a tournament. A knight does so, and returns with a broken leg. When the priest avoids him for fear of a beating, the knight replies, ‘Nay … it was good lucke for me, for yf I had not met with you, perhaps I had broken my necke.’⁶¹ The second relates how, when, at a tournament, no spectator took pity on the vanquished knight, his conqueror did so. This cannot be what Welter had in mind either.

The third story in this chapter for which no source is known does seem to offer an example of the new scepticism:

There was a knight which mette with the Prior of his Parishe, cumming home very drunke from the Chapter which was held in the Abbey whereof he was, of whom he asked what newes. The drunken Prior answeread, a vengeance on this Abbey, for they were woont to have twelve dishes of meate at a dinner, and this day they had but eleven. Then answeread the knight, If I had but two disshes of meate in my house, they would suffise me, and thou wretch as thou art, canst not be contented with eleven. surely I wyll geve thee the twelfth, and therewithall he threwe him downe in the durt.⁶²

Perhaps such hearty anticlericalism seems odd after the tale of the wounded knight. It should not seem so, for the most superficial acquaintance with the earlier alliterative satires, particularly the portraits of the four orders in Pierce the Ploughman's Creed, would serve to indicate that indignation at clerical abuses is not incompatible with piety.⁶³ Not only the alliterative satires, but as Owst constantly reiterates in his first chapter on ‘The Preaching on Satire and Complaint’,⁶⁴ the political songs edited by Wright, and indeed, such fifteenth-century writers as Lydgate, Hoccleve, and Henryson all exhibit exactly this tendency. And in this regard they were all schooled by the clergy, for

it was the Catholic clergy of every species in the Church who for centuries had been accustomed, from their own pulpits, to scold their fellow-clergy—and indeed the hierarchy as a whole—in terms no less flagrant and sometimes no less indecent than the most scurrilous Reformer.⁶⁵

However, we need not go so far afield for corroboration. A satire on an archbishop similar to Chaucer's monk opens the chapter on archbishops. After the prelate has preached ‘upon Palme Sundaye … of Christes humility, and of the shee Asse whereupon hee rode’, an old woman grabs the bridle of ‘his lofty palfry’ and asks ‘I pray you my Lord, is this the shee asse wherupon Christ roade?’⁶⁶ The same story occurs in Étienne de Bourbon⁶⁷ as well as the Liber exemplorum secundum ordinem alphabeti.⁶⁸ Anguilbert's version is somewhat shorter than that of Étienne; the latter includes a fuller description of the well-fed palfrey ‘preciosis vestibus ornatus’⁶⁹ (including bells?), and a more rhetorical question from the ‘vetula’.⁷⁰ Otherwise there is no difference. Both in form and matter these tales (and there are many more like them in the Mensa philosophica) stem directly from the traditional medieval exempla.

One further aspect of the Mensa indicates the extent to which this chrysalis is still contained by its cocoon. In an ostensible collection of joci et ludi, several stories are not particularly funny. This situation cannot be explained by an alteration in taste: the stories I am referring to never were intended to be funny. The first anecdote concerning popes, ‘Legitur in cronicis’, simply states that tow is burned at the consecration ceremony and the words ‘sic transit gloria mundi. Cogita te cinerem et mortalem’⁷¹ are pronounced. An equally moral tale, which Twyne's English translation omits,⁷² relates how the Virgin restored his hand to a pope who had cut it off after feeling temptation when a woman kissed it. The same story, a widespread miracle of the Virgin,⁷³ is related of Pope Leo in the Alphabet of Tales, and certainly arose to illustrate a Biblical hyperbole (‘If thine eye offend thee’, etc.). If there is any humor in the tale of the knight and the prior, it is extremely bitter, and the other tales already cited from that chapter are even less humorous. In the chapter on merchants, one merchant who sends his wife to church for them both dreams that at Heaven's gates she enters, but he is refused because ‘shee shall go in for you both’.⁷⁴ Twyne calls the story ‘a Proper jest’. However, the point of the story lies not in the porter's ‘quicke answer’ but rather in the final sentence. ‘Thus hee tareing without, awaked with sorow and griefe and aterward leade a godlier life.’⁷⁵ There are other examples of this tendency, which certainly derives from the moral applications for which the stories originally were intended.

I should not wish to leave the impression that Anguilbert's jests are all devoid of humor. A forerunner of David Harum sells another merchant a horse which ‘eats too much and will not climb trees’. The new owner discovers that the horse bites every one and balks at bridges.⁷⁶ Or there is the story of how a priest tricked a thief into revealing himself by ordering the congregation to sit down, and then saying ‘nay … hee is not yet set that stole the pooreman's goose’.⁷⁷ The thief promptly denies this statement. These, rather than the merchant's dream, provide us with ‘proper jests’. Yet, lest we forget whence they came, we should note that Anguilbert adds to the end of the tale of the priest's trick a comment that the thief was excommunicated.

From the vantage point of the Mensa philosophica we can perhaps surmise how the jest-books evolved. Wit has always marked a man of the world. Both Erasmus' Apophthegmata and Anguilbert's courtesy book would have served to stock many an aspiring young courtier with an evening's worth of wit; it would only remain to provide the flourishes. What more suitable repository could the purveyors of Renaissance humor to England's new men have drawn on than the great collections of exempla, each one of which had already been cast into the best mold possible for oral delivery? The short, pithy exempla, relying heavily on fast-paced dialogue, building as economically as possible to a recognizable climax, undoubtedly would have graced a table as effectively as they had enlivened a sermon. The compiler of A Hundred Mery Tales had but to cull the collections of the past to prepare his text for the printer. Thereafter these collections never lacked readers, ‘for a merye tale wyth a frende, refresheth a manne muche, and without any harme lyghteth his mynd, and amendeth his courage and hys stomake, so that it semeth but well done to take suche recreacion.’⁷⁸

Notes

1. An Alphabet of Tales. An English 15th century translation of the Alphabetum narrationum, ed. Mary M. Banks (London, 1904-1905, E.E.T.S. 126-127), narratio CCCXV, p. 217, hereafter cited as Alphabet, ed. Banks.

2. More's Utopia and a Dialogue of Comfort (Everyman: London, 1910), p. 186.

3. The term ‘jest-book’ makes its initial appearance in the eighteenth century, in Walpole's letters (1750). The earliest collections were entitled ‘merry tales’, apparently as a translation of Poggio's term facetiae meaning ‘wit, witticisms, humour’, where ‘merry’ equals ‘amusing, diverting, funny’. More uses this term in his Dialogue of Comfort (see above). Palsgrave applied ‘merry’ to the word ‘jeste’ as early as 1530, but defined the latter word as meaning ‘a ryddle, sornette’. The word ‘jest’ meaning ‘a saying intended to excite laughter: a witticism, a joke’ did not appear until 1551 in Robinson's translation of the Utopia. During the later middle ages, the most common word meaning ‘a merry or idle tale, a jest, joke, gibe’ was the fourteenth-century noun ‘jape’. However, the O.E.D. notes that ‘jape’ was not used by ‘Spenser, Shaks., or their contemporaries’; we may therefore assume that ‘jest’ had taken its place. The earliest use of the term ‘jest’ to describe what we now call jests occurs in the fourth book of The Schoolemaster (1576), where ‘mery honest Iestes’ translates the expression ‘honestis ludis’ of the original Mensa philosophica (1480?). As it appears in the title ‘The merry jests and witty shifts of Scoggin’, the word appears to have the meaning ‘a prank, frolic, practical joke’, a meaning we continue to find throughout the Renaissance period applied to certain types of collections. It is worth noting that the epithet ‘merry’ appears with these early uses of the word ‘jest’, carried over from the expression ‘merry tale’. The term ‘jest-book’ is now too useful to be discarded, but it should be recognized that the more common term for such collections in the sixteenth century was ‘merry tales’.

4. Re-ed. S. J. H. Herrtage (London, 1879, E.E.T.S.E.S. [Early English Text Society] 33).

5. Basel, [1484?]. In a note on page c of his introduction to The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (London, 1890), T. F. Crane lists the following further printed editions of Bromyard's Summa: Nuremberg, 1485, 1518, 1578; Paris, 1518; Lyons, 1522; Cologne, 1553; Venice, 1586; and Antwerp, 1614.

6. Ed. H. Oesterley (London, 1866).

7. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt in Shakespeare Jest-Books (London, 1864), I, hereafter cited as SJB. See also the more recent edition in P. M. Zall's A Hundred Merry Tales, etc. (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963).

8. The most complete survey of the different English jest-books appears in Ernst Schulz's Die englischen Schwankbücher bis herab zu “Dobson's Drie Bobs” (1607) (Berlin, 1912, Palaestra CXVII), but see also F. P. Wilson, “The English Jestbooks of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, HLQ [Huntington Library Qaurterly] II (1939), 121-158.

9. See the notes of H. Oesterley to A Hundred Mery Tales.

10. A. L. Stiefel, ‘Die Quellen der englischen Schwankbücher des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Anglia XXXI (1908), 453-520.

11. H. de Vocht, ‘“Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres” and their Sources’, Anglia XXXIII (1910), 120-132.

12. Ernst Schulz, Die englischen Schwankbücher, p. 4.

13. The Facetiae of Poggio and Other Medieval Story-Tellers, tr. Edward Storer (London, [1928], Broadway Translations), p. 6.

14. G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (2d ed., New York, 1961), p. 167.

15. Analysis of a literary narrative style to establish sources may seem an act of temerity when dealing with material as obviously popular as jests, where oral transmission clearly played a major part in the process of dissemination. Support for this approach has recently been offered by Gershon Legman in a discussion of his progress ‘Toward a Motif-Index of Erotic Humor’ (Jour. American Folklore LXXV, 1962, p. 230). ‘Printed joke collections are now, and have apparently always been, eagerly sought, bought, and memorized by professional and semiprofessional entertainers, and their contents have thus been continually “fed back” to the orally-transmitting audience, for at least the 500 years since the introduction of printing in Europe. The evidence also indicates that such printed (earlier manuscript) collections have not only been of seminal importance, as just described, but that their transmission partakes more particularly of the literary conventions of signed and theoretically unchanging texts, than of the anonymity and fluidity traditional to folklore.’

16. J.-Th. Welter, L'Exemplum dans la littérature religieuse et didactique du moyen age (Paris, 1927), p. 76.

17. Welter, pp. 66-79.

18. Welter, p. 75.

19. Welter, pp. 72-73.

20. In his review of medieval tractates dealing with rhetorical invention, Professor Harry Caplan comes to a similar conclusion. ‘One is struck by the failure of all the authors, and especially the later ones, to formulate a clearcut treatment of the exemplum’ (‘Rhetorical Invention in some Medieval Tractates on Preaching’, Speculum II (1927), 294).

21. Ed. Lucy T. Smith and P. Meyer (Paris, 1889), pp. 180-181.

22. See also the names of the Devil's hounds in tale no. 22 (pp. 29-37), and the three thieves Croket, Hoket, and Loket in the fabula moralis to tale no. 117 (pp. 136-138).

23. Bozon, Contes, p. 180.

24. Alphabet, ed. Banks, DCCLXV (pp. 510-511).

25. Fabula to tale no. 132 (pp. 158-159).

26. Welter, L'Exemplum, p. 81.

27. Alphabet, ed. Banks, p. 85.

28. Quicke Answeres, ed. Hazlitt, SJB, I, 45-46. In the first and third volumes, but not the second, Hazlitt's pagination runs consecutively within each text rather than throughout each volume.

29. See Stiefel, p. 472.

30. There can be no question that both The Conceits of Old Hobson and Pasquil's Jests (both in SJB, III) are little more than the Quicke Answeres reworked.

31. Ed. Banks, p. 303.

32. SJB, II, 325-326.

33. SJB, I, 83.

34. Bk. V, no. 34 (Opera omnia, IV, 256).

35. Stiefel, p. 486.

36. Summa prædicantium (Venice, 1586), H8^v-I1^r.

37. Opera omnia, IV, 256.

38. SJB, I, 83.

39. Cf. J. A. Herbert's epitomes in the Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (London, 1910), vol. III. The recognition of this essential quality lies behind the story of the jokesters' convention where the individual stories are told simply by reciting the joke's code number. The biggest laugh arises when a number is mentioned ‘that they hadn't heard before.’

40. The comparison of epitomes provided Bédier with one of his major points of attack on the study of folklore. Cf. Les Fabliaux (3d ed., Paris, 1911), particularly pp. 164-199 on ‘oriental’ influences. For a recent analysis of the danger inherent in classifying narrative material by motifs, the ultimate in epitomes, see Gershon Legman's discussion of the Stith Thompson Motif-Index in Jour. American Folklore LXXV (1962), 227-229.

41. Palace of Pleasure, ed. J. Haslewood (London, 1813), I, 74, ‘The Twenty-First Nouell’.

42. Painter, p. 74.

43. The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. N. Bailey (London, 1725), p. 307.

44. Erasmus, Colloquies, p. 309.

45. SJB, 1, 28.

46. Erasmus, Colloquies, p. 312.

47. SJB, 1, 38.

48. Printed by John Koelhoff (Cologne, 1480?). Having noted a slight tendency toward increased use of the ‘exemplum profane’ in fifteenth-century religious writing, Welter (p. 445) nevertheless concludes that ‘il faut arriver aux traités de courtoisie, de bonnes manières et de bon maintien pour voir l'exemplum assumer un caractère profane plus accentué. Ici, en effet, il se dépouille largement de son caractère religieux et moral pour devenir un conte amusant ou un trait plaisant, bref il se sécularise. Le traité où cette sécularisation se manifeste nettement est la Mensa philosophica, compilé par un dominicain allemand dans la seconde moitié du XV^e siècle.’

49. For the extent of the borrowing from the Mensa on the continent, see Thomas F. Dunn, ‘The Facetiae of the Mensa Philosophica,’ Washington Univ. Stud. n.s., Language and Literature (1934), p. 17.

50. For English jest-books utilizing the Mensa as a source, see Dunn, pp. 20-55.

51. The Schoolemaster, or Teacher of Table Philosophie, tr. T[homas] T[wyne], S.T.C. 24412, E4^r. Dunn also references this second edition (1583), which is a page-for-page reprint of the first, S.T.C. 24411 (1576). For his list of editions, see ‘The Facetiae, etc.,’ pp. 9-13. A discussion of the arguments for and against Twyne as translator appears under his name in the Dictionary of National Biography. For convenience, we may accept the traditional ascription to Twyne. English quotations throughout are from the 1583 edition of Twyne's translation.

52. Apparently Twyne felt the duplicate titles to be awkward, and in many cases added to the titles of individual chapters such words as ‘… and their merie jests’, which he took from the running-title in book four.

53. ‘Vinum vilius esset’, Mensa, B4^r.

54. ‘Carum si que quisque vellet bibat’, Mensa, B4^r; Twyne, F1^r.

55. Twyne, O4^v.

56. Mensa, B3^v.

57. Mensa, F1^r.

58. ‘[The tales] sont empruntés directement, soit au Communiloquium de Jean de Galles (2^e partie), soit a la Compilacio singularis et aux traités d'Albert le Grand, de Thomas de Cantimpré, de Géraud de Frachet, d'Et. de Bourbon et de Humbert de Romans ainsi que parfois à l'expérience personnelle du compilateur (2^e et 4^e parties)’ (Welter, L'Exemplum, p. 447).

59. Dunn's list of sources and analogues has been invaluable in establishing the character of these jests.

60. See, for example, the widespread tale of the usurer who was buried with a bag of gold, and was later discovered in his tomb receiving it down his throat in molten form from either toads or devils (Mensa, H7^v; Dunn, p. 54).

61. Twyne, P2^v.

62. Twyne, P2^v.

63. A failure to recognize this phenomenon has led to much of the praise for Chaucer's ‘modern’ scepticism. See G. R. Owst's violent attack on this attitude, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 229-230.

64. Literature and Pulpit, pp. 210-286, particularly the introductory survey of non-sermon literature, pp. 210-236. For other anecdotes at the expense of fellow clergy, see Owst's earlier chapter on the exempla, pp. 164-165.

65. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 235.

66. Twyne, S2^r.

67. A. Lecoy de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, légendes, et apologues, tirés du recueil inédit d'Etienne de Bourbon (Paris, 1877, Soc. de l'histoire de France 185), p. 216.

68. Herbert, Catalogue, III, 422, no. 94. Herbert (p. 414) describes the work as ‘a manual of moral sentences, similitudes, and examples, arranged for the use of preachers in alphabetical order according to subjects’. This story appears under ‘Verbum Dei’.

69. Lecoy de la Marche, p. 216.

70. Lecoy de la Marche's note (p. 217) testifies to the popularity of this tale on the continent: ‘On en a fait plus tard l'application aux Jésuites, en plaçant dans la bouche de la matrone scandalisée ce mauvais jeu de mots, qui court encore dans certains receuils: Jesuita, Jesuita ❙ Non ibat Jesu ita.’

71. M.P., G5^v.

72. Twyne did not hesitate to include some historical anecdotes later on, however, which are not notable for their humor, and which he expands in the moral tone of a post-Reformation Anglican, See S1^r.

73. See Dunn's notes, pp. 36-37.

74. Twyne, Q1^r.

75. Twyne, Q1^r.

76. This tale had considerable circulation. See Dunn, p. 26.

77. Twyne, Q4^v. This tale appears as number 85 in the Quicke Answeres.

78. More's Utopia and Dialogue, p. 185.