706 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
ion continued till as late as the middle of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury. The tract literature of the time of Cromwell is full of 
parodies. 
The first form in which parody showed itself as a decided 
fashion was in imitations of parts of the Bible and of the of¬ 
fices of the church. These were things most universally known, 
and parodies based on them have the widest appeal. These par¬ 
odies began first about the twelfth century in Trance, “la madre 
patria di tutta codesta letteratura di chierci scapestrati e di 
studenti libertini.” Thence they spread to neighboring coun¬ 
tries. They took the form of parodies (1) of the Old and New 
Testaments or of passages from these, (2) of prayers, (3) of the 
Credo, (4) of the Litany, (5) of the Mass, (6) of hymns, (7) 
of the Confession, (8) of the Dirige, (9) of the Epitaph, and 
of other well-known forms, more or less connected with the 
church. 1 
Another institution that easily lent itself to parody was the 
State and its laws. So we find parodies of both the feudal 
court and the court of justice. Examples of these are the Mid¬ 
dle English Court of Love 2 and Martial de Auvem’s Les Arrests 
d’Amours. 3 Several legal forms were also parodied such as the 
Bill in Chaucer’s Pitee and the inventory in Linveniaire des 
biens demorez du deces de lamant trespasse de dueil . 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is 
1 See for examples of some of these: (1) James Maidment, Scottish 
Pasquils, Edinburgh, 1868, pp. 297, 348; Montaiglon, Recueil, I, 210; 
S07hers Tracts, London, 1810, VII, 61. 
(2) Barbazan, IV, 99 and 441; Montaiglon, I, 68 and 125; 
(3) Maidment. p. 159; Barbazan, IV, 106 and 445; Montaiglon, XIII, 
186. 
(4) Maidment, pp.^ 51, 251, 263, 292, 386; James Hogg, The Jacobite 
Relics of Scotland . Edinburgh, 1819, I, 393; Studii Critici, p. 189. 
(5) Studii Critici, pp. 187 ff.; Martin, pp. 7, 10; “As early as the 
thirtenth century the Council of Treves forbade clerks and students 
to parody certain parts of the Mass.”—Martin. 
(6) Martin, p. 10. 
(7) Gower’s Confessio Amantis. 
(8) J. Schipper, The Poems of William Dunbar, Vienna, 1891, p. 41. 
(9) Montaiglon, IV, 304; VI, 157; VIII, 5 and 91; Reliquae Scot- 
icae, Edinburgh, 1828, passim; Maidment, Pasquils, pp. 8, 108, 193, 
361, 370, 407; Maidment, Court of Session Garlands, Edinburgh, 1839, 
pp. 19, 68, 100; Poems of Gascoigne, ed. Hazlitt, 1819, I, 75. 
2 W. A. Neilson, The Origin and Sources of the Court of Love , 
(Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature), Boston, 1889. 
3 Edited by Lenglet-Dufresney, Amsterdam, 1731. 
4 H. A. von Keller, Romvart, Paris, 1844, p. 180. 
