GESTA ROMANORUM 



IJKT.I-: 



193 



4.<>*ta Roninnoriini ('the dewU of th.- 

 Roman*'), tlio title <>f a collection of short stories 

 a n. I legends, in the Latin tongue, widely spread 



luring the middle ages, hut of the authorship uf 

 which little is known save that it t<M>k it present 

 I'm in 1110,1 likely in I'ln^'land about the end of the 

 l.'Uh or tin- Iteginning of the 14tli century. The 

 .stories are invariably moralised, ami indeed tlie 

 edi lying purpose throughout U the Mile unifying 

 element of t he eollert ion. The title is only BO far 



descriptive as the nucleus of the collection Con-Ul- 



of stories from Roman history, or rather pieces from 

 I Ionian writers, not necessarily of any greater his- 

 torical value than that of Androcles and the lion 

 from Auliis GelliiiH. Moralised mystical and re- 

 ligious tales, as well as other pieces, many of ulti- 

 mate oriental origin, were afterwards added, and 

 upon them edifying conclusions hung but awk- 

 wardly, bringing the whole up to about 180 chapters. 



i. --terley supposes its origin to have been English : 

 the claims to its authorship of the Benedictine 

 prior at Paris, Petrus Berchorius (died 1362), or of 

 a certain Helinandus. may safely l>e set aside. The 

 style and narrative faculty displayed deserve but 

 little commendation, but the lxx>k has a unique 

 interest as at least the immediate source of many 

 stories that have filled a large place in literature. 

 It is enough to mention the stories ' Of Feminine 

 Subtlety ' ( 120), retold in verse by Hoccleve ; ' Of 

 the Coming of the Devil, and of the Secret Judg- 

 ments of God ' (80), the story of Parnell's Hermit ; 

 ' Of Women who not only betray secrets, but lie 

 fearfully ' ( 125), the story of the sixty black crows, 

 the foundation of Dr Byrom's clever poem, The 

 Three Black Crows ; ' Of too much Pride, and how 

 the Proud are frequently compelled to endure some 

 notable humiliation ' (59), a story of the Emperor 

 Jovinian, the same as that of King Robert of Sicily 

 as versified by Longfellow ; ' Of the Transgressions 

 and Wounds of the Soul' (102), the same as 'The 

 Leech of Folkestone ' in the Ingoldsby Legends ; ' Of 

 Mental Constancy ' (172), a version of the romance 

 of Guy of Warwick ; and ' Of Ingratitude ' ( 25 ), 

 and 'Of Constancy' (66), together supplying the 

 ground work of Rossetti's poem, The Stay and bcrip. 

 Here also may be found what are substantially the 

 same stories as Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale, and 

 Shakespeare's King Lear and Merchant of Venice. 

 One tale, 'Of the Game of Schaci' (166), is a 

 somewhat obscure description of the game of 

 chess. The longest story, ' Of Temporal Tribula- 

 tion ' (153), is that of the adventures of Apol- 

 lonius of Tyre, his wife and daughter, as in 

 Gower's Confesaio Amantis, and in Pericles. 

 Gower, however, took it from the Pantheon (end of 

 the 13th century) of Godfrey of Viterbo. Enough 

 has been said to show that great part of the stories 

 belong alike in form and substance to the ancient 

 story-stock of Europe, and hence the book must be 

 studied side by side with the romance of Barlaam 

 and Josaphat, the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus 

 Alphonsus, the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Til- 

 bury, Voragine's Golden Legend, the Speculum 

 Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, and the medieval 

 fables connected with the name of ^Esop, no less 

 than with such works of literary elaboration as the 

 Arabian Nights, the Talmud, the Fabliaux, the 

 Decameron, and the Canterbury Tales. 



The stories in the Gesta Ronutnorum are mostly 

 bald and inartistic, seldom if ever relieved by a 

 touch of pathos or a gleam of humour, and never 

 by any chance reaching the region of the really 

 dramatic ; yet they have a rare literary charm of 

 their own in their utter naivete and artfessness, as 

 well as in the beautiful simplicity of their moralis- 

 ations, based on a piety that questions nothing or 

 finds relief in an unfathomed mysticism. Some of 

 the best stories are those that gird at the weaknesses 

 221 



or fault* of women a direction in which monkish 

 wit wan ever prone to turn. 



The modern form of the Getta Ittnnanorum in, 

 an ban been said, a collection of 181 utorien, nrxt 

 printed altout 1473, but no MS. correHjHmding 

 exactly to which now exist*. The first printed 

 edition was issued at Utrecht in 150 chapter* ; the 

 second, forming the standard text, within IK1 chap- 

 ters, at Cologne. Although both of then*! are un- 

 dated, Oesterley proves that their publication fallx 

 between 1472 aim 1475. An edition in KngliHh wan 

 printed by Wynkyn de Worde ( 1510-15 ), from .Mxs. 

 diH'ering widely from those reproduced in the early 

 printed Latin versions. Oesterley divides the 

 numerous MSS. into three groups or families: (1) 

 the English group, written in Latin, the Iwst repre- 

 sentative of which has 102 chapters, of which 72 

 are found in the standard text; (2) the group of 

 German and Latin MSS., represented by an edition 

 printed in German at Augsburg in 1489; and (3) 

 a group of MSS. represented by the standard text, 

 influenced by distinct collections of stories, as 

 Robert Holkot's Moral isation en Pulchrce in Urum 

 Prceilicatorum and the like. The striking diver- 

 sity between the MSS. in England and the 

 printed collections led Douce to believe that 

 there were two distinct collections of stories, one of 

 German, the other of English origin. Oesterley's 

 conclusion is that this Gesta was originally compiled 

 in England, that it passed quickly to the Continent, 

 was there altered considerably l>efore being printed, 

 and that both the two first printed editions were 

 compiled from several MSS. The second (the 

 standard ) form was the largest, and, reaching Eng- 

 land l>efore any of the native MSS. had been 

 printed, became accepted as the standard form for 

 the printed text, spite of its many divergences 

 from the MSS. that still existed. 



An English version by the Rev. C. Swan was printed 

 in two volumes in 1824 ; in a revised form, by Wynnard 

 Hooper, in Bonn's * Antiquarian Library,' in 1877. Sir 

 F. Madden edited The Early Enri/i*h Versions of the Gesta 

 Romanorum for the Roxburghe Club in 1838, Mr Sidney J. 

 H. Herrtage for the Early English Text Society in 1879. 

 Critical editions of the Latin text have been edited by 

 A. Keller (Stuttgart, 1842), and H. Oesterley (Berlin, 

 1872), the last with a masterly introduction. See also the 

 Dissertation in Warton's History of Entjlish Poetry, and 

 in vol. ii. of Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare; but 

 these must not now be followed implicitly. 



Gestation, the retention of the mammalian 

 embryo in the uterus. The period of gestation 

 i.e. between the fertilisation of the ovum and the 

 extrusion of the foatus varies greatly, from about 

 18 days in the opossum and 30 in the rabbit 

 to about 280 in man and 600 in the elephant. 

 Rol>ert Chaml>ers in his Vestigrx f ( 'reation em- 

 phasised the importance of prolonged gestation as 

 a factor of evolution, and it is certain that the more 

 highly evolved mammals have longer periods of 

 pregnancy than the lower. The size of the animal, 

 the number of offspring at a birth, and the degree 

 of their maturity at birth have also to be considered : 

 thus, the gestations of cow and sheep last about 280 

 and 150 days respectively, those of mare and bitch 

 about 350 and 60 days, those of giraffe and kan- 

 garoo about 420 and 40 days respectively. In the 

 Marsupials, where the placenta! union Itetween 

 mother and offspring is still undeveloped, the birth 

 is almost always very precocious, but in most cases 

 the young are stowed away after birth in the exter- 

 nal pouch. The lowest mammal.* duckmole and 

 Echidna are oviparous. See F(ETt*s, MAMMA i.^. 

 PLACENTA, PREGNANCY, REPRODUCTION. 



, a people of Thracian extraction, who are 

 lirst mentioned in history as dwelling on the right 

 bank of the Danube, but who in the middle of the 

 4th century B.C. crossed that river and settled in 



