388 CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 



the same nature as those already puhHshed in the " Dialogus," a few 

 are found in both works. There is the same tendency to localize 

 well-known stories, and the same absence of mention of literary 

 sources. The " Vit?e Patrum, Historia ecclesiastica," etc., are oc- 

 casionally cited, generally the name of the narrator is carefully 

 stated and the locality is exactly described. 



Of all the mediaeval story-tellers Caesarius is perhaps the most 

 interesting, partly from his gift of narration, and partly from the 

 diversified character of his stories. In most of the great exempla- 

 collections which I shall soon examine, the stories are told in a dry, 

 condensed form, and seem more like memoranda to be expanded at 

 the preacher's will than like independent tales. Caesarius is a happy 

 exception and his book is one of the most valuable sources for the 

 history of mediaeval culture. 



While engaged in the study of Jacques de Vitry I learned of the 

 existence in Belgian libraries of a collection of sermones communes 

 vel qiiotidiani by him, but made no effort to trace these, for the 

 author had said in the proceminm to the sermones dominicales (Ant- 

 werp, 1575) that his work was to consist of six divisions, the first 

 four being represented by the sermones dominicales, the fifth by 

 the sermones de Sanctis, and the sixth by the sermones vulgares. 

 As it was supposed that all the existing collections of sermons by 

 Jacques de Vitry were written late in life, I did not think that after 

 the sermones vulgares which, in his own words, were to complete 

 his work, he would have added anything. It now seems that I was 

 mistaken and that the sermones communes vel qiiotidiani also con- 

 tain a considerable number of exempla, two editions of which, by a 

 strange coincidence, appeared simultaneously three years ago.^® 



1" Greven, Joseph, " Die Exempla aus den Sermones feriales et communes 

 des Jakob von Vitry," Heidelberg, 1914, 8vo, pp. xviii, 68 (Sammlung mittel- 

 lateinischer Texte herausgegeben," von Alfons Hilka, 9) ; Frenken, Goswin, 

 " Die Exempla des Jakob von Vitry," Munich, 1914, Lex. 8vo, pp. iv, 152 

 (" Quellen und Untersuchungen zur mittellateinischen Philologie des Mittelal- 

 ters," V. i). As I have reviewed these two editions recently at length in 

 the Romanic Review, Vol. VI. (1915), pp. 223 et seq., I shall not enter into 

 details here. I may, however, remark that Greven's edition is part of Hilka's 

 " Sammlung" and is, like the other text's in that collection, edited in the most 

 concise form, with brief introduction, and briefer annotation. Frenken's edi- 

 tion, on the other hand, contains not only a biography of " Jacques de Vitry," 



