Il n’est péché qui vive
Quand l’amour a prié;
Il n’est âme qui meure
Quand l’amour a pleuré....
Davidson’s sacristan (in A Ballad of a Nun) cries:
“I care not for my broken vow;
Though God should come in thunder soon,
I am sister to the mountains now
And sister to the sun and moon,”
and the Virgin, welcoming her back on her return, tells her:
“You are sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the day and night;
Sister to God.” And on her brow
She kissed her thrice, and left her sight.
[1571] “Cum in hyemis intemperie post cenam noctu familia divitis ad focum, ut potentibus moris est, recensendis antiquis gestis operam daret.” Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (1872), ch. CLV. Quoted in Jusserand, Lit. Hist. of the Eng. People, I, p. 182.
[1572] One particular kind of story, the fabliau (defined by Bédier as “un conte à rire en vers”) was brought to great perfection by French jongleurs. See Montaiglon and Raynaud, Recueil général et complet des Fabliaux (Paris, 1872-90), 6 vols.; and Bédier, Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1873).
[1573] See Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 11, for a violent attack on the practice. Compare the decree of the Council of Paris in 1528: “Quodsi secus fecerint, aut si populum more scurrarum vilissimorum, dum ridiculas et aniles fabulas recitant, ad risus cachinnationesque excitaverint, ... nos volumus tales tam ineptos et perniciosos concionatores ab officio praedicationis suspendi,” etc., quoted in Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. T. F. Crane (1890), Introd. p. lxix. The great preacher Jacques de Vitry himself, while advocating the use of exempla, adds “infructuosas enim fabulas et curiosa poetarum carmina a sermonis nostris debemus relegare ... scurrilia tamen aut obscena verba vel turpis sermo ex ore predicatoris non procedant.” Ib. Introd., pp. xlii, xliii.
[1574] For instance exempla were much used by Jacques de Vitry (see op. cit.). Etienne de Bourbon (see Anecdotes Historiques, etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Soc. de l’Hist. de France)), and John Herolt. On the whole subject of exempla see the Introduction to T. F. Crane’s edition of the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, and the references given there.
[1575] The most famous is the Gesta Romanorum. Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (Berlin, 1872); and see The Early English Version of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. S. J. H. Herrtage (E.E.T.S. 1879). The largest is the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, a fourteenth century English Dominican. See also an interesting fifteenth century English translation of a similar collection, the Alphabetum Narrationum (which used to be attributed to Etienne de Besançon), An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks (E.E.T.S. 1904-5); many of the exempla in this come from Caesarius of Heisterbach. Specimens of exempla from these and other sources are collected in Wright’s Latin Stories (Percy Soc. 1842), and many tales from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Jacques de Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Thomas of Chantimpré, etc., are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn.