CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 397 



" fertur " or " legitur," sometimes without any preamble, localizing- 

 it in time and space, i. e., in the thirteenth century and in the east 

 of England, exceptionally in a foreign land. Still, as the editor 

 says, the compiler has transmitted to us certain new features relating 

 to great personages and others, and permits us to form a condensed 

 sketch of the manners of the day, "qui se refletent plus ou moins 

 fidelement dans ce miroir des laics." 



The enormous extent of exempla-WtitrdiinrQ may be estimated 

 from the hundred and nine manuscript collections in the British 

 Museum alone (so admirably analyzed by Mr. Herbert in his " Cata- 

 logue"), which contain something like eight thousand stories. A 

 few of the typical collections, as, for example, the "Alphabetum 

 Narrationum," were frequently copied, and are found in many of 

 the continental libraries. But, in the main, no two collections are 

 alike, and each represents the individual fancy of the compiler. 

 Very few of these collections have been published, but some have 

 long attracted the attention of scholars. Among these the most 

 interesting is a collection contained in a IMS. in the Library of Tours, 

 of which an incomplete version is in the University Library of Bonn. 

 Both MSS. are of the fifteenth century, but the collection itself goes 

 back to the second half of the thirteenth century, and was probably 

 made by a Dominican monk well acquainted with the French 

 provinces of Touraine, ISIaine and Anjou. Dr. Hilka, the able editor 

 of the " Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte," communicated a con- 

 siderable number of the excmpla in the Tours MS. to the Schlesische 

 Gesellschaft fi^ir vaterlandische Cultur, in whose ninetieth annual 

 report they were printed (1912). The excmpla collections are in 

 a comparatively few instances arranged alphabetically ; sometimes 

 they assume the character of treatises of theology and are disposed 

 according to subjects. In the Tours IMS. alone, I believe, the stories 

 are arranged in nine groups, under the heads of classes and pro- 

 fessions. The number of cxempla is very large ; there are four 

 hundred and ten in the eighth group, which deals with secular and 

 civil society. The exonpla themselves are of great value for the 

 question of the diffusion of popular tales as they contain a large 

 number of stories w4iich belong to the most wadely circulated class. 

 The stories are sometimes told at great length, contrary to the usual 



