398 CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 



abbreviated form of the cxcmpluw, and some deal with themes not 

 hitherto represented in sermon-book Hterature ; one, No. XL, p. 13, 

 belongs to the cycle of the " Maiden with her hands cut off," of 

 which a version is found in the " Scala Celi," fol. 27 vo., " Castitas," 

 and another has been published by Klapper in a work to be men- 

 tioned presently; another, No. XII., a.b., pp. 14, 15, contains ver- 

 sions of the theme of the "False Bride"; in the first version the 

 wife substitutes in her place a maiden, whose finger the faithless 

 bailifif cuts off; in the second, the wife kills the seneschal to whose 

 care she has been entrusted, substitutes for herself a maidservant 

 whom she subsequently kills, and is miraculously saved from the 

 denunciation of wicked confessor. 



The last collections of cxempla recently published which I shall 

 mention are two works containing extensive selections from manu- 

 scripts in German libraries, more particularly those in the Royal and 

 University Library of Breslau. Both are edited by Dr. Joseph 

 Klapper of the city just mentioned, and were published, the first in 

 Hilka's " Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte," No. 2 ("Exempla 

 aus Handschriften des Mittelalters "), Heidelberg, 191 1 ; the second 

 in '"'' Wort itnd Branch. Volkskundliche Arbeiten namens der 

 Schlesischen Gesellschaft fiir Volkskunde," in zwanglosen Heften 

 herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Theodor Siebs und Prof. Dr. Max 

 Hippe, 12 Heft (" Erzahlungen des Mittelalters in deutscher tjber- 

 setzung und lateinischen Urtext"), Breslau, 1914. 



These works contain respectively 115 and 211 exempla, in all 

 326 stories, the largest contribution to the subject yet made by 

 any one editor, and one of the most interesting. The many manu- 

 scripts from which the editor has drawn range from the end of 

 the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century. The editor thus 

 states the principle of selection in his first work : " Only those stories 

 were admitted which are found in the manuscripts without any men- 

 tion of their sources, or the sources of which are no longer known 

 to us." There are exceptions, however, as p. 76, No. 76, " Legitur 

 exemplum in libro de dono timoris." The editor concedes that the 

 investigator can easily discover the sources of some of the exempla, 

 and analogues for others. He gives a few himself, but in general 

 limits his remarks to the age and origin of the MSS. in which the 



