The English Moral Plays 299 
canons, crusaders, husbandmen, or tradesmen, as the case might be. 
Equally full is the section of Humbert’s treatise that exemplifies 
concretely this same sort of adaptation. The sixty-sixth specimen 
is addressed “to students of medicine.” They should be told, 
Humbert explains, that the liberal arts and the sciences of law and 
of medicine were devised, each in its own proper sphere, to restore 
to man in part the perfection of mind and of body and the instinct 
for right conduct that were lost through Adam’s sin. Of the three 
means, he continues, medicine is the most valuable, for it advances 
not only health of body, but may also further works of mercy and 
the attainment of spiritual health. In the pursuit of this high call- 
ing, however, all physicians are not capable or faithful. For these, 
the author indicates what sort of exhortation should be used, re- 
commending especially the general warning that they trust less to 
their own skill than to prayer. At the close, the theme as usual is 
plainly stated, and the leading points embraced by it are listed. 
In this sermon we have a typical specimen of Humbert’s method, 
which, in general, was the method of all who compiled these 
manuals of practical instruction; for all had in view the end of 
furnishing the pulpit of the day with matter and modes of treatment 
that would convey the teaching of the church most directly to all 
classes of people. 
These sermonnaires, however, could be but partially successful in 
effecting this end. That they were widely circulated, the student 
of medieval literature finds abundantly proved, and that their formal 
suggestions for adaptation may have guided practical churchmen 
to some extent, one may readily believe. But they could be really 
serviceable only on academic occasions when the preacher would 
find a homogeneous audience, and not in services that the ordinary 
parish priest or itinerant preacher would conduct. Hence some 
more popular means of adaptation was needed; doctrine had to be 
rendered tangible by pointed illustrations. To supply this want, 
collections of interesting and even humorous stories, commonly 
called in ecclesiastical literature exempla, were made to serve as 
clergymen’s commonplace-books. They are not to be regarded as 
distinct either in purpose or character from the sermonnatres already 
discussed ; for the most famous collection of exemp/a was made up 
of stories found in Jacques de Vitry’s Sermones ad Status; they 
were to supplement the homilaria by supplying in greater plenty, 
and in more compact shape, anecdotes that even inferior preachers 
could use to rouse the interest, or sharpen the understanding, of 
their audiences. 
