Crane.] 72 [March 16, 
mentioned here, although, strictly speaking, it is not a treatise in the same 
sense as the works already described. We refer to Robert Holcot’s Opus 
super Sapientiam Solomonis.* The author was, like Bromyard, an English 
Dominican, born at Northampton, and professor of theology at Oxford, 
where he died in 1349, leaving a large number of commentaries on various 
books of the Bible, the best known being, the one on the Wisdom of Solo- 
mon.} This work consists of two hundred and twelve lectiones on the nine- 
teen chapters of the wisdom with the usual extensive index. Mxempla 
properly so-called are very sparingly used by the author, one of them 
(Pauli, 647), has already been given above, and one of La Fontaine’s most 
celebrated fables (Bk. vi, 4, “Jupiter et le Métayer’’) is found in Lectio IX. 
On the other hand, the work is a vast repertory of historical anecdotes em- 
bedded in the most elaborate metaphors. A. good example of Holkot’s 
method may be found in the Lectio LXIV, where he discusses Chap. V, v. 
9-10 of his text, ‘‘ All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as 
a post that hasteth by ; And as a ship that passeth over the waves of the 
water, which, when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither 
the pathway of the keel in the waves.’’ As there are three kinds of sin ; 
original, venial, and mortal, so there are three kinds of shadows corres- 
ponding in shape to the cylinder, cone, and inverted cone (chilindroydes, 
conoydes, and calathoydes). In speaking of the simile of the ship, Holkot 
quotes from St. Jerome’s epistolac, cxv, the story of Xerxes weeping because 
none of those he beheld at a review of hisarmy would be alive in a hundred 
years, He then compares penitence to a ship on account of its figure, capac- 
ity for carrying, and possibility of wreck. This affords Holkot an oppor- 
tunity, after citing Job, Boethius, and Gregory, to describe the Sirens and 
Ulysses’sadventure with them. His sources are, ashe states : Alewander in 
seintillario poesis,{ and Boethius, de Consolat, iii. 8. In his third lecture he 
*See Hain, Nos, 8755-61, The first edition is of Cologne, no date, our copy is the 
third edition (Hain, No, 8757); Spires, 1483, Petrus Drach, For other editions, see 
Greesse, op. cit, 11, 2, 1, }. 470. 
+ Holeot left another work which would also come within the scope of this 
article, but which we have not been able to procure. It is the Moratitates pul- 
chrae historiarum in usum praedicatorum, Venet, 1505; Paris, 1510, and with the 
LAber Sap., 1580, This work varies somewhat in the different editions, but the 
original form seems to have consisted of forty-seven stories, afterwards ampli- 
fled to seventy-five, This collection is of great importance for the question of the 
mode in which the Gesta Romanorum was put together, and Oesterley in his 
edition of that work, atter an analysis of the Moralitates, says, p.251: “Die Wich- 
tigkeit dieses Werkes braucht nicht besonders hervorgehoben zu werden, es ist 
in ihm nicht allein die Quelle vieler Nummern des Gesta Romanorum nachge, 
wiesen, die bisher unbekannt geblieben war, sondern dasselbe hat auf die Gestal. 
tung unserer Sammlung einen so entscheidenden Hinfluss ausgeiibt, dass 
man die simmtlichen Handschriften in zwei Classen theilen kénnte, deren eine 
von Holkot beeinflusst ist, deren andere aber einen solehen Hinfluss nicht 
zeigt, und es ist das ein nicht unwichtiges Moment ftir die Kntscheidung der 
Frage tiber das Alter der Gesta Romanorum,”’ 
{This is Alexander Neckam, see Leyser, Hist, Poetarwm et Poematum Medii 
Aevi, Halle, 1721, p. 993. 
