[1576] For instance Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Strange (1851); Thomas of Chantimpré (Cantimpratanus), Bonum Universale de Apibus (Douay, 1597); and the knight of la Tour Landry, who wrote a book of deportment for his daughters, copiously illustrated with stories. The Book of the Knight of la Tour Landry, ed. T. Wright (E.E.T.S. revised ed. 1906). For some account of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s stories, other than those quoted in the text, see below [Note K].
[1577] Collections of stories, such as those of the Decameron, the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, the Il Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, the Novelle of Bandello, the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, became very popular. But individual stories have also given plots to many great writers from the middle ages to the present day; it is only necessary to mention Chaucer, Shakespeare, Molière and La Fontaine, to illustrate the use which has been made of them.
[1578] For examples of medieval mission sermons, with their colloquialisms, interruptions from the audience and strings of stories, the reader cannot do better than turn to the sermons of Berthold of Regensburg (1220-72) and of St Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444). Specimens of these are translated in Coulton, Med. Garn. pp. 348-64, 604-19. See also for Berthold, Coulton, Medieval Studies, 1st series. No. II (“A Revivalist of Six Centuries Ago”) and for St Bernardino, Paul Thureau-Dangin, St Bernardine of Siena, trans. Baroness von Hügel (1906), and A. G. Ferrers Howell, St Bernardino of Siena (1913).
[1579] Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Wife of Bath’s Prol. ll. 556-8.
[1580] Translated from Jacques de Vitry (Exempla ..., ed. T. F. Crane, p. 22) in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 95 (No. CXXXVI). The story is a very old one, first found in the Vitae Patrum, X, cap. 60. It is sometimes attributed to St Bridget of Ireland, but Etienne de Bourbon, who repeats the story twice, tells it of Richard King of England and “a certain nun” (Anec. Hist., etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, Nos. 248 and 500); and other medieval versions make the persecuting lover “a king of England.” (See T. F. Crane, op. cit. p. 158.)
[1581] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. LVIII, pp. 22-3. For other versions of this story, see ib. p. 159.
[1582] Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange, I, p. 389. I have used the translation by Mr Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 124. The story is a variant of the theme of “the novice and the geese,” one of the most popular of medieval stories (see Coulton, ib. p. 426); for analogues, see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues, pp. 110-16.
[1583] Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall (Roxburghe Club, 1862), pp. 50-52. (This is an amplified translation of William of Wadington’s Le Manuel des Pechiez.) See also Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CCLXXII, p. 113, which is translated in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 303.
[1584] Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, No. CXXX, p. 59. For other versions, see ib. p. 189. There is an English version in An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 78 (No. CVIII).
[1585] Caesarius of Heisterbach, II. pp. 160-1. Compare the tale of Abbess Sophia whose small beer was miraculously turned into wine. Ib. p. 229.