376 CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 



from this work published by A. Lecoy de la Marche in 1877 for the 

 Societe de THistoire de France under the title: "Anecdotes his- 

 toriques, legendes et apologues, tires du recueil inedit d'fitienne de 

 Bourbon, don]inicain du Xllle siecle," gave a great impulse to the 

 study of cxcmpla. The connection of the author with Jacques de 

 Vitry, many of whose exempla he has preserved in his treatise, and 

 the interesting character of the stories themselves, combined to 

 make the book attractive and to increase the interest in the subject.* 



The only other collection of e.vciiipla published before 1890 was 

 the "RecuU de eximplis. Biblioteca catalana," Barcelona, 1881-88. 

 I was able to use the first volume only for my paper on " Mediaeval 

 Sermon-Books and Stories," but in my introduction to Jacques de 

 Vitry I had the second volume also and was fortunate enough to 

 discover the original of the collection, which was the " Alphabetum 

 narrationum," formerly ascribed to £tienne de Besancon, but prob- 

 ably by Arnold of Liege. ^ 



Such was the condition of studies in this field when my edition 

 of the exempla of Jacques de Vitry was published for the Folk- 

 Lore Society at London in 1890. It is the purpose of this paper to 



is the first collection of exempla to be published in modern times should be 

 modified somewhat in view of Thomas Wright's " Latin Stories," 1842, which 

 were taken from "Jacques de Vitry" (although Wright did not know this), 

 and from the homiletic treatises and collections of Bromyard, Herolt, etc. 

 The collection of " Predigt'marlein," by Pfeiffer, published in 1858 in the 

 Germania, III., 407-436, and the extracts, one hundred in number, from 

 the German " Seelentrost," published by K. Frommann in " Die deutschen 

 Mundarten," Nurnberg, 1854, and, finally, the complete Old-Swedish transla- 

 tion of this work, edited by G. E. Klemming, Stockholm, 1871-73, are all 

 anterior to Lecoy de la Marche's " fit'ienne de Bourbon." These works, how- 

 ever, with the exception of Wright's were little known, and were overlooked 

 by me in my paper of 1883, and even in my later introduction to " Jacques 

 de Vitry." 



4 In 1889 Lecoy de la Marche published a popular work, " L'Esprit de nos 

 a'ieux. Anecdotes et bons mots tires des manuscrit's du XIIP siecle," con- 

 taining one hundred and fifty stories translated from the exempla of "Jacques 

 de Vitry" (41), " fitienne de Bourbon" (73), and others. 



5 See Herbert, " Catalogue of Romances," p. 423, and an article by the 

 same writer, " The Authorship of the Alphabetum Narrationum " in The 

 Library, N. S., VI. (1905), pp. 94-101. An early English translation of this 

 famous collection was published by Mrs. M M. Banks for the Early English 

 Text Society, Original Series, 126-7, 1904-5, "An Alphabet of Tales." The 

 third volume of notes, etc., has not yet appeared. 



