There is a remarkable work to which the preachers of the middle ages appear to have been indebted, and which deserves mention here not only on that account, but also from its having hitherto remained in unmerited obscurity. This may be partly owing to its having never been printed. It is a collection of tales and fables that has been ascribed to Odo de Ceriton, Shirton, or Cirington, for all these names are mentioned, a Cistercian monk of the twelfth century. In one manuscript they are called proverbs, and given to Hugo de Sancto Victore, of the monastery of Saint Victoire at Paris, and who lived much about the last-named period.[105] There is perhaps no task more difficult than that of ascertaining the real authors of many works of the middle ages, especially where, as in the present instance, there occurs any thing satirical against religious abuses. The evidence with respect to authorship is in favour of the Englishman, because in some of the stories English sentences are found. Nor do the sarcasms against the clergy militate in the least against ecclesiastical manufacture. Numerous instances could be brought to show the satirical spirit of the clergy, frequently towards each other, and generally against the church of Rome.
The work in question is an extraordinary mixture of Æsopian fables with pious and profane histories in great variety. One or two specimens have been already given,[106] but the reader may not regret the trouble of perusing the following in addition. "There is a kind of wren, named after Saint Martin, with very long and slender legs. This bird sitting one day in a tree, in the fullness of his pride suddenly exclaimed; 'It matters not to me though the heavens fall; for with the aid of my strong legs I shall be able to support them.' Presently a leaf fell upon the foolish boaster, who immediately flew away in great terror, exclaiming, 'O Saint Martin, Saint Martin, help your poor bird!'" The moral compares Saint Peter denying Christ to this wren, which it also assimilates to certain pot-valiant soldiers, who boast, in their cups, that each of them can beat three of the stoutest Frenchmen. Again: "Isengrin the wolf, to expiate his sins, became a monk. His brethren endeavoured to teach him his letters, that he might say Pater noster; but all that they were able to get from him was, 'lamb, lamb.' They told him to look up to the cross, but could never make him turn his eyes from the sheep. In like manner do the monks cry out for good wine, and fix their eyes on dainty viands and full trenchers; whence the English proverb, Yf alle that the wolf unto the prest worthe and be sette on to boke salmes to ler, ȝit is ever hys onne eye to the wodeward."[107] To conclude with one more, "The wolf being dead, the lion assembled the rest of the beasts to celebrate his obsequies. The hare carried the holy water, and the hedge-hogs the wax tapers. The goats tolled the bells; the badger dug the grave; the fox carried the coffin; Berengarius the bear celebrated mass; the ox read the gospels, and the ass the epistles. Mass being finished, and Isengrin duly buried, the beasts partook of a splendid feast, the expense of which was defrayed out of the deceased's property. The parties wished for nothing better than a similar ceremony. So, says the moral, on the death of any rich usurer, the abbots assemble all the beasts of the monastery; for in general, the black and white monks are really brutes, that is, lions in pride; foxes in cunning; hogs in gluttony; goats in luxury; asses in sloth; and hares in cowardice."
Besides the storehouses of this sort of knowledge that have been already described, there were doubtless many others that are now lost; but there is one that ought not to be passed over without some notice. It is the Summa prædicantium of John Bromyard, an English preacher, and a violent opponent of Wicliffe. It is an immense repertory of matter for the use of the clergy, every page containing stories and examples in all possible variety.[108] It is divided into classes of such subjects as were adapted to the pulpit, and must have been a work of immense labour, and the result of much reading. In the article rapina he has a story resembling chap. viii. of the Gesta Romanorum, which he probably cites under the title of Antiqua gesta.
Although most of these works were undoubtedly composed for the immediate purpose of assisting the preachers, it by no means follows that they were exclusively so, or that other uses might not be made of some of them. Not that they could be accessible to the laity in any great degree, inasmuch as they were wrapped up in a learned language. But the private readings of the monks would not be always of a serious and ascetic nature. They might be disposed occasionally to recreate their minds with subjects of a lighter and more amusing nature; and what could be more innocent or delightful than the stories of the Gesta Romanorum? They might even have indulged in this kind of recreation during their continuance in the refectory after meals. For this purpose one of the fraternity, more eminently qualified than the rest, might entertain them with the recital of matters that would admit of some moral application to be made by the reader, or which was already attached to the subject. The word carissimi, so frequently to be found in the moralizations, seems as much adapted to this purpose, as to the addressing of an auditory from the pulpit. Perhaps the same idea had occurred to him who chose to apply the term liber monasticus to the Gesta Romanorum.[109]
The excellent analytical account that has been given of this work would admit of no other improvement than some augmentation of the sources of the stories, and of their several imitations; but with respect to the author of it, some further inquiry may be necessary. Mr. Warton has attempted to show, with considerable ingenuity as well as plausibility, that the Gesta Romanorum was composed by Peter Bercheur, a native of Poitou, and prior of the convent of Saint Eloy at Paris, where he died in 1362.[110] He has founded this opinion on a passage in the Philologia sacra of Salomon Glassius, who, in his chapter de allegoriis fabularum, after censuring those writers who not only employed themselves in allegorizing the scriptures, but affected to discover in profane stories and poetical fictions certain matters that seemed to illustrate the mysteries of the Christian faith, makes the following observation: "Hoc in studio excelluit quidam Petrus Berchorius Pictaviensis, ordinis Divi Benedicti: qui peculiari libro, Gesta Romanorum, necnon legendas patrum, aliasque aniles fabulas, allegoricè ac mysticè exposuit." On this single testimony, or rather assertion, which is unaccompanied by any proof or reference to authority, Mr. Warton proceeds to assign his reasons for concluding that Bercheur was the author of the Gesta, and they are principally these: 1. A general coincidence between the manner and execution of the works of Bercheur and the Gesta. 2. A resemblance in their titles. 3. The introduction of some of the stories of the Gesta into the Repertorium morale of Bercheur.[111] 4. His having allegorized the Metamorphoses of Ovid. And 5. His writings being full of allusions to the Roman history. To these might have been added the quotations common to both the Gesta and the Repertorium from Pliny, Seneca, Solinus, and Gervase of Tilbury, and the time in which Berchorius lived, which certainly corresponds with that of the composition of the Gesta Romanorum, as far as can be collected from internal evidence. It may be remarked in this place, that Mr. Tyrwhitt, in supposing it to have been written at the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century, has fixed on too early a date.[112] It could not have been written before 1256, because the chronicle of Albertus, which is cited in one of the chapters, terminates with that year.
It might be supposed that very little could be urged in opposition to the foregoing reasons, nor is it here intended to deny absolutely that Bercheur was the author of the Gesta: but certain doubts having arisen on the subject, they shall be submitted to the reader, that he may then be enabled to use his own judgment and discretion in deciding the question. With respect to the similitude between the works of Berchorius and the Gesta Romanorum, no one would think of maintaining, on this ground alone, that any two compositions, the one anonymous, were written by the same author. It shows, generally speaking, nothing more than coincidence, or, what is more likely, simple imitation; and it is as probable that the author of one of the works should have imitated the other, as that one person should have written both. Perhaps the other reasons might be disposed of in the same way, but it will be better to state specific objections to them; and here Mr. Warton's own evidence might be turned against himself. He had stated on a former occasion,[113] his having seen a manuscript of the Gesta in almost Saxon characters; but it is certain that this manuscript had doubly deceived him, and that his eye had caught one or two of the Saxon letters which continued to be used in writing long after Saxon times.
In the preface to the Repertorium morale Bercheur tells us that he was by birth a Frenchman, a Benedictine monk, and the familiar servant of Cardinal de Pratis, or Des Prez, to whom he was indebted for books and other necessaries towards the completion of his works. Now throughout the ponderous tomes that have been consulted for this purpose, there are no Gallicisms to be traced, nor any other symptom of French authorship. On the other hand, there are strong marks that the Gesta Romanorum was composed by a German. In the moralization to chapter 144, there is, in most of the early editions, a German proverb; and, in chapter 142, several German names of Dogs. Many of the stories are extracted from German authors, as Cesarius, Albert of Stade, and Gervase of Tilbury, who wrote his book De otiis imperialibus, in Germany. In this country likewise the earliest editions of the Gesta were printed.
Mr. Warton, anticipating an objection that might be taken from the omission of any mention of the Gesta by the biographers of Bercheur, has remarked, that it might have been among his smaller pieces, or proscribed by graver writers, or even discarded by its author as a juvenile performance, unsuitable to his character and abounding in fantastic and unedifying narration. But this description does not accord with the general use that we know to have been made of it in the pulpit; nor can it come under the denomination of a work that is not altogether grave, serious, and moral, nor likely to have been the effusion of a glowing or youthful mind. Besides, the biographers of Bercheur are not alone silent as to the Gesta; the editors of his printed works were entirely unacquainted with it as his composition, and they were more likely to have been better informed on the subject than Glassius, whose opinion, like Mr. Warton's, seems to have been mere inference, and unsupported by any evidence. But what is more to the point, Bercheur has himself, in the prologue to his Repertorium, and in the preface to a French translation of Livy, given a very particular account of his works, among which his moralizations of the Fabulæ poetarum, never printed, are mentioned; yet this is certainly not the Gesta Romanorum, any more than the Chronicon mentioned by Mr. Warton.[114] Again; most of the known works of Bercheur are still existing in manuscript, but not a single manuscript that can be pronounced to be the Gesta Romanorum in question has occurred after the most diligent research. Such indeed might be supplied from the libraries in Germany, and possibly throw new light on this difficult and mysterious inquiry. Some stress has been laid on the circumstance of four of the stories in the Gesta being related in the Repertorium morale,[115] but they are not told in the same words, and the moralizations are entirely different. This has very much the appearance of different authorship. The title of Reductorium to some of the editions of the Gesta, together with many other matters, might have been borrowed from the writings of Bercheur by some German Monk, whose name has been irretrievably consigned to oblivion. It is scarcely worth while to mention the blunder that Foppens has committed in ascribing the composition instead of the printing of the Gesta, to Gerard De Leeu, of Gouda in Holland.[116]
It remains to offer some account of the various forms in which this once popular and celebrated work has appeared; and the rather, because what has been said on this subject is widely scattered, unconnected, and frequently erroneous.