CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 391 



not read, opens the letters and looking- them over says that they con- 

 tain news that the bishop is in need and that Maugrinus will lend 

 him ten marks. 



Among- the usual monastic diatribes on the other sex is the fol- 

 lowing story, Frenken, No. 6i : J. de V. once passed through a cer- 

 tain city in France, where a ham was hung up in the public square 

 to be given to the one who swore that after a year of married life he 

 did not repent of his bargain. The ham had hung there unclaimed 

 for ten years. 



It is now time to pass to the collections of cxcmpla w^iich have 

 been published since 1883. Before that date the only collections of 

 exempla accessible in modem editions were, as we have seen above, 

 the selections from Etienne de Bourbon made by Lecoy de la 

 Marche, and the Catalan translation of the " Alphabetum narra- 

 tionum." It was not until ten years later, in 1893, that there ap- 

 peared a collection of Latin stories composed in Bologiia in 1326, 

 and contained in a manuscript in the library of Wolfenbuttel.^^ 

 The sixty-nine stories are accompanied in some cases by moraliza- 

 tions, and contain many classical anecdotes. In these two respects 

 the collection resembles the " Gesta Romanorum," and Oesterley in 

 his edition of that work, p. 257, was inclined to regard the " Trac- 

 tatus " as a peculiar version of the " Gesta," or at least as an off- 

 shoot. This opinion is hardly correct in view of the great differ- 

 ences between the "Tractatus" and the many versions of the 

 " Gesta." It is likely that the former is an independent collection 

 made in Italy in the fourteenth century, and shows the growing 

 fondness for secular elements in works of this kind. Valerius 

 Maximus is the source most frequently cited, but other historians 

 of classical and Christian times are also quoted, as well as Seneca, 

 Augustine, " Vitse Patrum," Petrus Alfonsus, etc. The compilation 

 has no independent value, and but little interest for the question of 

 the dift'usion of popular tales. 



I must now, in conclusion, consider as briefly as possible the 



1^ " Tractatus de diversis historiis romanorum et quibusdam aliis. Ver- 

 fasst in Bologna i. J. 1326. Nach einer Handschrift in Wolfenbiittel," heraus- 

 gegeben von Salomon Herzstein. Erlangen, 1893. In " Erlanger Beitrage 

 zur Englischen Philologie und vergleichenden Litteraturgeschichte," heraus- 

 gegeben von Hermann Varnhagen. XIV. Heft. 



