CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 383 



Jacques de Vitry I did not take into consideration, however, two 

 other contemporary writers with whose works I subsequently became 

 acquainted. I refer to the sermons of Odo of Cheriton and the 

 homilies of Caesarius of Heisterbach. 



The fables of the former had long been known, but the author to 

 whom they were attributed was, until recently, a mysterious person- 

 age, confused with another Kentish ecclesiastical writer, Odo of 

 Canterbury. It is now definitely settled that the Odo of the fables 

 and sermons with which I am now concerned was from Cheriton 

 and died in 1247, seven years after Jacques de Vitry. Some of 

 Odo's fables were published as early as 1834 by Jacob Grimm in 

 his edition of " Reinhart Fuchs," and thirteen were printed by INIone 

 in the following year, while Wright used seventeen in his " Latin 

 Stories." Other German scholars published a considerable number, 

 but the fables were first adequately edited by L. Hervieux in the 

 first edition (1884) of his monumental work, " Les fabulistes latins." 

 In the second edition (1896), both fables and paraholce from the 

 sermons (of which there is only one edition printed at Paris in 1520) 

 were published in a separate, fourth, volume, with an exhaustive 

 examination of the birthplace and life of the author. I am in- 

 terested at present only in the exempla contained in the sermons. ^- 



second volume there is one story from Gregory's " Dialogues," and in the 

 third volume there are no stories. In Hofifmann's " Fundgruben," Vol. I., 

 there are only half a dozen stories. In Werner's " Libri Deflorationum," 

 Migne, Vol. CLVII., I do not find exempla of any kind, unless the occasional 

 references to animals, birds, fishes and plants moralized in the usual way 

 may be considered exempla. On the other hand there are many exeynpla in 

 the "Speculum Ecclesise " of Honorius of Autun (who died, it is supposed, 

 shortly after 1152), and I should not have overlooked Cruel's reference on 

 p. 137 of his " Geschichte der deutschen Predigt " : " Ausserdem treten die 

 nach Gregor's Beispiel einzein auch in deutschen Predigten vorkommenden 

 Exempel bei Honorius massenhaft als stehender Schlussfheil auf." Still it 

 is evident that Honorius was an exception; and the statement that the use of 

 exempla systematically in sermons was not common until the end of the 

 twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century is, I still think, correct. 

 There are, of course, many exempla to be found sporadically in homiletic 

 treatises and similar works of the second half of the twelfth century, such as 

 Petrus Cantor's " Verbum abbreviatum " (Aligne, CCV.), etc. 



12 Hervieux's edition, printed from MS. 16506 of the National Library 

 of Paris, contains 195 exempla; the manuscript (Arundel 231) analyzed by 

 Herbert in his " Catalogue," pp. 58-78, contains 201, of which 43 are not in 



