384 CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 



Their sources are infrequently mentioned: " Vitse Patrum," four 

 times, Gregory's "Dialogue" three, the "Book of Kings" and 

 " Saint Bernard " once each. As a matter of fact, however, a very 

 large number of the cxcmpla are taken from the " Vitse Patrum." 

 The name of Jacques de Vitry is not mentioned; but many of Odo's 

 parabolcc occur in the sermons of the former, and Frenken is in- 

 clined to think that Odo borrowed them directly or indirectly from 

 him. The value of Odo's parabolce consists largely in the fact that 

 they are a popular channel through which many stories have entered 

 into circulation, for although there is only one printed edition of the 

 sermons and that of the sixteenth century, there are many manu- 

 scripts left to attest their popularity. 



In my introduction to " Jacques de Vitry " I did not include among 

 the preachers using exempla Caesarius of Heisterbach, the most 

 delightful perhaps of all the mediaeval story-tellers. I was not at 

 that time acquainted with his homilies, of which there is only one 

 edition, a very rare book, by J. A. Coppenstein, printed at Cologne 

 in 1615.'^ As the "Homilies" were composed between 1222 and 



Hervieux. In the sermon for Sexagesima Odo defines the word he uses as 

 follows: "Parabola dicitur a para, quod est juxta, et bole, quod est sententia, 

 quasi juxta sententiam. Parabola enim est simiHtudo quae ponitur ad sen- 

 tentiam rei comprobandam." Hervieux, p. in, endeavors to establish a dif- 

 ference between apologues, paraboles and exemples ; he says : " En efiFet, il 

 ne faut pas dans les sermons d'Eudes confondre les apologues ou paraboles 

 avec les exemples; ou, si Ton veut qualifier d'exemples les paraboles, il faut 

 admettre deux sortes d'exemples : ceux qui, contenant le recit d'un fait imagi- 

 naire, offrent les caracteres de la fable et sont appeles paraboles, et ceux qui 

 se bornent, sans application a aucun cas special, a faire mention des habitudes 

 d'une categoric d'etres quelconques." He finally ends, p. 112, by confessing 

 that it is safer to consider the exemples as true paraboles and print them all. 

 Frenken in his edition of the exempla in the " Sermones communes" of 

 " Jacques de Vitry," to be mentioned later at length, has a chapter on " Die 

 Geschichte des Begriffes ' exemplum,' " in which he connects the word with 

 its use in classical rhetoric, and remarks, p. 14, " Dass man zuniichst nach 

 anderen Ausdriicken wie parabola, narratio, historia, suchte, lag wohl nur 

 daran, dass man nicht recht wusste, dass das, was man so in der Predigt 

 erzahlte, auch das war, was die Grammatiker exemplum nannten. Die kurzen 

 Erklarungen der Tropen in den Grammatiken wurden mit denselben Bei- 

 spielen Jahrhunderte lang auswendig gelernt, aber man dachte sich nicht viel 

 dabei." 



13 I still know this work only through A. Schonbach's masterly " Studien 

 zur Erziihlungsliteratur des Mittelalters," V., VII., VIII., Vienna, 1902, 1908, 



