386 CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 



tiones, the subjects of which are : Conversion, Contrition, Confession, 

 Temptation, Demons, Simple-mindedness, the Virgin Mary, the 

 Body of Christ, Divers Visions, Miracles, the Dying, and Rewards 

 of the Dead. The large number of stories, 746, purport to have 

 been told, and probably were, by the master ("monachus") to the 

 novice. The stories are connected by a thread of dialogue between 

 the master and pupil. The name of the author is not mentioned, 

 but the reader is told it can be learned from the first letters of the 

 distinctiones ("Cesarii Munus"). "Many things," he says, "have 

 I introduced which happened outside of the order, because they were 

 edifying and told me, like the rest, by religious men (i. e., members 

 of an order). God is my witness that I have not invented (finxisse) 

 a single chapter in this Dialogue. If perchance things have happened 

 differently from what I have written, this should be imputed to those 

 who related them to me." 



As Herbert remarks, p. 349, " Csesarius professes to have learnt 

 most of the miracles at first or second hand, and a large proportion 

 of them are connected with Heisterbach, Himmerode, and Cologne, 

 and places in the neighborhood. But in many cases he has merely 

 drawn on the common stock; e. g., in Dist. VIII., Cap. 21 he tells 

 the story of the merciful knight to whom the crucifix bowed, as a 

 miracle which occurred " temporibus nostris in provincia nostra, 

 sicut audivi " ; but it has been pointed out in this " Catalogue" (Vol. 

 II., p. 665) that the story occurs, as early as the eleventh century, 

 in the Life of the Italian St. John Gualbertus."^^ 



i'"' The sources of the stories in the " Dialogus " have never been sys- 

 tematically investigated, but a brief enumeration of the principal ones may 

 be found in Meister's work, to be mentioned presently. " We know," he 

 says, p. xxxii, "that he was acquainted with the 'Life of Bernard of Clair- 

 vaux,' Bernard's ' Life of St. Malachiae,' the ' Book of Visions of St. Aczelina,' 

 Herbert's ' Exordium miraculorum ' and ' Liber miraculorum,' and that he 

 used the ' Life of St. David ' — all these writings of the Cistercian order. He 

 also drew on the ' Historia Damiatina ' and ' Historia regum terrse sanctse' 

 of Oliver Scholasticus, the 'Dialogues' of Gregory the Great were his model 

 and the ' Vitae Patrum ' were known to him. Most of his stories, however, 

 he owed to oral communication, but all are not new on that account; an old 

 germ lies oftener at bottom. Many of his stories have wandered far before 

 they reached the half hidden cloister of Heisterbach. On this long journey 

 they have worn out their garments and must be clothed anew, so that in their 

 changed exterior it is hard to recognize their weather-beaten figure. Some- 



