¹ Some of these versions must have circulated widely and seem to have been copied and recopied by scribes of different provinces.

² Very unsatisfactory, but the English language offers no better term. Even Netherlandish, to British or American ears, suggests the Netherlands and seems to exclude the Belgian provinces.

³ For instance, Beile van Beersele, an unpublished fabliau distantly related to Decameron, day iii, novel 4 (See A. Barnouw, The Milleres Tale van Chaucer, Handelingen van het zesde Nederlandsche Philologencongress [Leiden, 1910], 125–139, and M.L.R., vii [1912], 145–148), or Een Oud Liedeke, which recalls the Shipman's Tale and Dec. viii, 1 (See Hoffman von Fallersleben, Horae Belgicae, xi, 50).

A somewhat misleading note by J. te Winkel in Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (Haarlem, ed. 1922), ii, 83, note 5, compels us to give one of these so-called analogues more attention than it deserves. This is the fabliau of Reynardie, published by Napoleon de Pauw, Middelnederlandsche Gedichten en Fragmenten, ii (1903), 112–116. J. te Winkel writes: “Het verhaal komt ook, maar met ander slot, voor bij Boccaccio, Decameron vii, 8.” “Another ending”—we might almost say ‘another story.‘ For in the very extensive cycle of stories belonging to the family of Dec. vii, 8—on this cycle see A. C. Lee, The Decameron, its sources and analogues (London, 1909), 222 ff.; and G. Bédier, Les Fabliaux, (Paris, ed. 1925), 164–199—three motifs must be distinguished: (a) the string tied to the toe of the woman; (b) the substitution of some animal (horse, mule, ass) for the lover; and (c) the substitution of one woman for the other. Boccaccio has only motifs a and c, while the Flemish has only motifs a and b. Even this a motif is treated very differently: in the Dutch it is a half-remembered detail the point of which is lost (the husband does not notice the string), so that the action has to be started as in the French versions, which have only the b and c motifs. See Des tresces, Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil des Fabliaux, vol. iv, 67 ff., or De la dame qui fist entendant son mari qu'il sonjoit, vol. v, 132 ff. It may be worth remarking that motifs a and b, before being connected in the Dutch boerde, had appeared together in German tales. See Verkerte Wirt, by Herrand von Wildonie, Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer (Stuttgart, 1850), no. 43, vol. ii, 337 ff.; and Der Pfaff mit der Snur, Keller, Erzählungen aus Altdeutschen Ess., Stuttg. Litter. Verein, xxxv (1855), 310.

This text of Reynardie is the same as Van der vrouwen die boven haren man minde, erroneously mentioned as unpublished by G. Kalff in 1906 (Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, i, 505, note 9).

⁴ See e.g., Fl. Van Duyse, Het Oude Nederlandsche Lied, i, 200 (the legend of the eaten heart, an analogue to Dec. iv, 9) or i, 209 (the familiar motif of the accusation of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, an analogue to Dec. ii, 8).

⁵ We shall use the word boerde in the sense of Dutch or Flemish fabliau.

⁶ I.e., the versions of the fifteenth, possibly the end of the fourteenth century. See J. H. Gallée, Een Nedersaksische Novelle van Griseldis, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal en Letterkunde, iv (1884), 1–45; J. Verdam, De Griseldis Novelle in het Nederlandsch, Tijds. voor Ndl. T. en L., xvii (1898), 1–18; F. Van Veerdeghem, Een Toemaatje tot de Griseldis Novelle in het Nederlandsch, Tijds. voor Ndl. T. en L., xviii (1899), 46–47; J. Daniels, Een nieuwere tekst van de Griseldis Legende, Tijds. voor Ndl. T. en L., xix (1900), 111–127.

Griseldis not being taken into account, the first translator of any important part of the Decameron into Dutch was D. Coornhert: Vijftigh Lustighe Historien of Nieuwicheden Johannis Boccatii (Haerlem, 1564). Coornhert seems to have used Le Maçon's 1545 translation into French: see G. A. Nauta, XX Lustighe Historien (Groningen, 1903), pp. xiii-xiv. A Dutch translation of the other fifty stories by Gerrit Hendrickcz Van Breughel appeared in Amsterdam, 1605. (Nauta, op. cit., p. xii).

⁷ Though the Latin text probably never reached the Dutch translators, who seem to have used a French adaptation of Petrarch's version. See Verdam and Van Veerdeghem, op. cit. For a comparison of the Dutch texts with the Italian and Latin versions, see J. Daniels, op. cit.

⁸ These Dutch versions of the Griseldis story are found in very edifying surroundings.

⁹ Written about 1411. The other version in verse, the Historielied van de verduldige Grisella is of later date and goes back to Petrarch through the French. See Fl. Van Duyse, Het Oude Nederlandsche Lied, i, 270–271.

¹⁰ Der Minnen Loep door Dirc Potter, uitgeg. door P. Leendertz, (Leiden, 1845), Book iv, ll. 1095–1266.

¹¹ Een bispel van ii clerken ene goede boerde, published by Eelco Verwijs in Dit Sijn X Goede Boerden ('s Gravenhage, Martinus Mijhoff, 1860), 11–18.

¹² Montaiglon et Raynaud, i, 238–244.

¹³ In one episode, however, the correct sequence of events is slightly disturbed: the clerk, taking it for granted that the displacement of the cradle will lead Gobert to the wrong bed, does not even wait for him to be back. Incidentally, this is not the same wrong sequence as that found in the Reve's Tale and also in the modern Breton narrative given by Wilhelm Stehmann in “Die mittelhochdeutsche Novelle vom Studentenabenteuer,” Palaestra lxvii (Berlin, 1909), 101–102.

¹⁴ Van Lacarize den Katijf …, Verwijs, op. cit., 19–22.

¹⁵ Montaiglon et Raynaud, vol. iv, 212–216. The French and the Flemish vary only in unimportant details: (a) the Flemish has some general considerations of its own (ll. 89–98); (b) in the boerde the husband who comes home for his meal finds the priest already in his house, while in the Vilain de Bailluel the chapelain is only expected. Would the Flemish be even more closely related to some lost version such as that summarized by Legrand d'Aussy in Fabliaux ou Contes, 3d ed. (Paris, 1839), iv, 218?

¹⁶ Dec. iii, 8.

¹⁷ The boerde has no title. It was published by Eelco Verwijs in Van Vrouwen ende van Minne, Middelnederlandsche Gedichten uit de XIV de en XV de Eeuw (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1871), 34–36.

¹⁸ The manuscript that contains the boerde was written certainly after 1413 and probably before 1450. See E. Verwijs, Van Vrouwen ende van Minne, pp. ix-x and xxxiii.

¹⁹ Especially the first act, in contrast with the abrupt entrée en matière of most fabliaux.

²⁰ Eight-line stanzas rhyming a b a b b c b c. Such is the stanza of two (no. i and no. x) out of the ten boerden in E. Verwijs' Dit Syn X Goede Boerden. (For the use of this same stanza in other genres, see, e.g., the poems published in Vaderlandsch Museum, vol. i, 86, 303, 328.) Other forms of stanzas are found in boerden too. Cf. the French Le Prestre qui fut mis au tardier, Montaiglon et Raynaud, vol. ii, 24, and G. Bédier, Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1925), 32.

²¹ I am leaving entirely out of consideration a very large number of distant analogues. Again and again La Borgoise d'Orliens (Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil, vol. i, 117) has been given as Boccaccio's source. This fabliau is more closely related to a group of six stories in which Dr. Schofield traces the birth and development of a theme undoubtedly related to Dec. vii, 7, but far too distantly to be of any interest in the present study. (W. H. Schofield, The Source and History of the Seventh Novel of the Seventh Day in the Decameron, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology, ii (1893), 185–212). Dr. Schofield's study is of great interest, though some features in the versions numbered v and vi (the Castiagilos of the troubadour Raimon Vidal, and the Anglo-Norman poem Li Romanz de un chivaler e de sa dame e de un clerk; see Schofield, op. cit., 194–195) make it difficult to accept those texts as representing the bridge between the stories numbered i to iv (op. cit., 191–194) and La Borgoise d'Orliens, i.e., between the story of a chaste wife and that of the very different Borgoise. Versions v and vi, on the contrary, seem to me to bear the characteristics of halfhearted attempts at presenting, dressed up in courteous fashion, an already very gaulois story.

²² Li Romans de Bauduin de Sebourg, IIIème roy de Jerusalem (Valenciennes, 1841). The episode that interests us is in Book iii, ll. 953–1230 (vol. i, 90–98).

²³ Dr. Schofield was the first to notice the similarity between Dec. vii, 7 and the episode in Bauduin (op. cit., 188.)

²⁴ The summary given above will apply to this version.

²⁵ Published by Singer in Shakespeare's Jest Book (1814), pp. xv ff., where W. H. Schofield read it. A few obscure passages in this text become clearer in the Trinity MS. published by P. Meyer, “Les manuscrits français de Cambridge,” Romania, xxxii (1903), 18–120, pp. 60–62.

²⁶ On the date of this version see W. H. Schofield, op. cit., 202, text and note 3, and P. Meyer, op. cit., especially pp. 47 ff. (about the date of some dialogues found in the same manuscripts as our text) and pp. 59–62.

²⁷ Li Romanz de un chivaler e de sa dame et de un clerk, Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil, vol. ii, 215 ff. This, however, is only one of those many stories where a husband tests his wife's fidelity by disguising himself as a lover, a theme not very closely related to ours.

Li Romanz de un chivaler was written in England, while the story by Ramon Vidal (Schofield, op. cit., 194–195 and 197) is said to be told in the presence of an English princess. Some not very distant relation may have existed between our Dutch boerde and English versions. It may be worth noting that, in the later Cobbler of Caunterburie, the wife—just as in the boerde, and, to my knowledge, nowhere else—gives her husband a sum of money which she says her suitor gave her for a promise of granting him her favors. The text of the Cobbler of Caunterburie is printed in Shakespeare Society (1844), 117–119.

²⁸ Keller, Erzählungen aus Altdeutschen Handschriften, Stuttgart: Bibl. des Lit. Vereins, vol. xxxv (1855), 289–297.

²⁹ Keller, Verzeichnis Altd. Hdschr. (Tübingen, 1890), 2.

³⁰ This feature, of course—the main theme being given—could have been independently reinvented by too many mediæval story tellers to suggest any borrowing!

³¹ One of them suggests some crossing with another theme: the pulling at the woman's foot to wake her up.

³² L. Uhland, Alte Hoch-und Niederdeutsche Volkslieder (Stuttgart, 1845), no. 289, p. 747, and Erk und Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort (Leipzig, 1893), i, no. 143, p. 474.

³³ Dr. C. A. Williams kindly gave me his opinion as to the date of the poem: he places the text in the second rather than the first half of the fifteenth century.

³⁴ W. H. Schofield, op. cit., 210.

³⁵ Even this important point in the story is altered: the lovers have been together until midnight when the master unexpectedly comes home; the usual scheme is apparently brought forward to provide for the lover's escape.

³⁶ Fabeln, Schwänke und Erzählungen des XV. Jahrh., published by J. J. Baebler, Germania, xxxiii (1888), 257–286, no. 13.

³⁷ Another fifteenth-century German version is given by Dr. Schofield (op. cit., 211) as “probably from the Decameron.” It is a poem by Hans Rosenblüt—see Clara Hätzlerin's Liederbuch, Bibl. der Gesammten Deutsch. Nat. Lit., viii (1840), 290—who was writing about the middle of the fifteenth century. The events and their sequence are nearly the same as in Boccaccio. Yet Rosenblüt is not known to have made use of the Decameron elsewhere. Perhaps the link, in this particular case, might be a fifteenth century Latin prose text not mentioned by Dr. Schofield but later published by Bolte. See his edition of Montanus Schwankbücher, Bibl. des Lit. Vereins, ccxvii (Tübingen, 1899), pp. xxix and text, pp. 546–554.) The writer of this Latin version was Samuel Karoch, an early humanist and a traveller to Italy (Allg. Deutsch. Biogr.), whose indebtedness to Boccaccio could not surprise us. His version is close to Dec. vii, 7, not only in the general sequence of events, but also in some details, e.g., the fear of the young man at night. Other features that seem to be Karoch's contribution are present in Rosenblüt: the long half-feigned resistance of the woman, her securing a promise that the young man will follow her instructions, and finally, the lover's hiding under the bed. Rosenblüt, however, must have known others versions of the story: he sends the husband to the garden, as in every other version except that of Karoch, who for some reason prefers a room in the basement near a cistern!

³⁸ Dirk Potter's version (Der Minnen Loep, Book ii, ll. 3642–3752) is close enough to Boccaccio's to raise the puzzling question: if he knew the Decameron, why did he make such scant use of it in writing his Minnen Loep? Oral transmission, or circulation of a small number of separate stories of the Decameron in fifteenth century Italy are possible suggestions. Also the old boerde may have been in Dirk Potter's memory and have led him to pick up a better rendering of an already familiar theme. It seems strange that it should never have been mentioned in connection with Der Minnen Loep and its sources. Jan ten Brink, for instance, thinks that the versions of Boccaccio and Potter are the only two where the husband disguises himself in woman's clothes. See Gesch. der Ned. Lett. (Amsterdam, 1897), i, 211. See Also A. Worp, Noord en Zuid, xx, 389.

In this connection, it may be worth noting that the Dutch fabliaux have, on the whole, been given very little attention. For instance, Verwijs' edition of X Goede Boerden (1860) was unknown to P. Tack in 1913 when he studied the question of date of the Hulthemse Handschrift, the only manuscript containing Verwijs' ten boerden (Het Boek, ii, 1913, 82). Concerning the possible influence of the Decameron on the plan of the Minnen Loep, see Jonckbloet, Gesch. der Middelndl. Dichtkunst (Amsterdam, 1855), iii, 462.

³⁹ First published, the end being omitted, by J. F. Willems, Belgisch Museum, iii (1839), 108–114; then published entirely by Eelco Verwijs, Bloemlezing uit Nederlandsche Dichters, (1858), iii, 23–28.

⁴⁰ P. Tack, Onderzoek naar den Ouderdom van het Hulthemse Handschrift, Het Boek, ii (1913), 81–91.

⁴¹ Gesch. der Nel. Lett., (1897), 206.

⁴² Drama's en Kluchten naar den Decamerone, Noord en Zuid, xx (1897), 385–401, p. 389.

⁴³ A. Brants, Wisen Raet van Vrouwen, Taal en Letteren, viii (1898), 279–285. As Mr. Brants appears to have gone through Dec. iii, 3 rather quickly, reading some of his boerde into it, his argument fails to carry much weight: “Maar daar (in the Decameron) is de dame in kwestie een getrouwde vrouw die door haar man in een toren is opgesloten.” (Op. cit., 284). Just the opposite, as, ironically enough, Brants himself points out, was the mistake of te Winkel in Gesch. der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (Haarlem, 1887), 458, and of ten Brink in his work of the same title (Amsterdam, 1897), 206—we might add Worp, op. cit., 389–390—who read some of the Decameron into the boerde, presenting the young woman as married. Te Winkel later gave a correct summary in Ontwikkelingsgang …, Eerste Tijdvak (Harriera, 1922), ii, 82.

⁴⁴ This is only the first chapter of a very scholarly study of the history of the theme through the world's literature: Vrouwenlist, ed. Wolters (Groningen, 1926).

⁴⁵ For comparison with the German analogues see further pp. 937–938.

⁴⁶ The difference between the woman's saying that a purse and girdle have been sent to her, or that they have been thrown through her window—the only point that Dr. Borgeld mentions in this connection—strikes me as a rather minor feature compared to the fact that in both cases the present does consist of a purse (with or without money) and a girdle.

⁴⁷ I shall quote the Decameron from the edition of Pietro Fanfani, and Wisen Raet as published by Verwijs.

⁴⁸ The Dutch writer shows inventiveness only in realistic details of a very different character. For instance, the girl makes the “gordel ende aelmoesnier” herself and fills the purse with gold coins (ll. 66–69). The young man is supposed to have suggested how to use that money:

The friar, when called for the third time, has to interrupt his reading (ll. 144–146, 164–165) to go and find the young man,

Finally, the somewhat prosaic ladder:

and the equally realistic climbing:

⁴⁹ Borgeld, op. cit., 11: “Alles samengenomen lijkt mij het aannemelijkste, dat er een (en dan waarschijnlijk Fransch) verhaal heeft bestaan, waarop—wellicht door mondelinge overlevering—zoowel de novelle van Boccaccio, als de Duitsche en Nederlandsche redacties teruggaen.”

⁵⁰ The last fabliaux in French were written about 1340. The only other genres (the long allegories, the works of the fourteenth-century poets) that occasionally included short stories on similar themes contain no analogue to Dec. iii, 3, and a loss in this field seems improbable. In the exempla literature an hypothetical analogue would be too brief a summary to offer any solution to our question.

⁵¹ The definition of a fabliau: “un conte à rire” (Bédier, op. cit., 32) excludes of course such lays as La Chastelaine de St. Gille, le Vair Palefroi, le Chaisne, etc. (though published in the Recueil), some of which poems are quite sentimental and slow.

⁵² Les Fabliaux, p. 39.

⁵³ Le vilain de Bailluel. See section ii.

⁵⁴ De Gombert et des II clers (see section ii) is found in three manuscripts. Besides the same cradle story forms the second part of Le meunier et les II clercs, preserved in two different versions.

⁵⁵ See W. Farnham, “England's Discovery of the Decameron,” PMLA, xxxix (1924), 123–139.

⁵⁶ Von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer (Stuttgart, 1850), i, 281. (See Borgeld, op. cit., 8–10.)

There are three other German analogues (Borgeld, op. cit., 17–18): a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century poem by Heinrich Kaufringer, Stuttgart Litter. Verein, clxxxii (1888), 87, and two of probably later date edited by Keller in Erzählungen aus Altdeutschen Handschriften, Litter. Verein, xxxv (1855), 232 and 242. A. L. Stiefel and A. Borgeld incline to think that Kaufringer received his material from France rather than Italy, while K. Euling suggests both a French fabliau and Italian influence (Borgeld, op. cit., 17). In any case, the German poem differs from Dec. iii, 3 and Wisen Raet in too many important points for the problem of its possible French origin to interest us here. The same can be said of the first (p. 232) of the two versions edited by Keller. The other (p. 242) is clearly derived from Boccaccio. On these German stories, see also Wilhelm Stehmann, “Die mittelhochdeutsche Novelle vom Studentenabenteuer,” Palaestra lxvii (Berlin, 1909), 153 ff.

⁵⁷ See A. Thomas, “Les Proverbes de Guylem de Cervera, Poème Catalan du XIII^e siècle,” Romania, xv (1886), 25–110. Ours is stanza 1166, p. 108:

Professor Morel Fatio translated this into French for Dr. Borgeld: “Une riche bourgeoise a su faire d'un prédicateur, sous de bonnes apparences, un entremetteur.”

⁵⁸ One message suffices to reunite two lovers temporarily separated; there is disguise, feigned illness, different presents, etc.

⁵⁹ In the location of this German Schuoloere ze Paris I also fail to see any suggestion of a lost French analogue to the confessor story (as does Dr. Borgeld, op. cit., p. 10). For here the story goes on after the lovers' reunion until both lovers die; in fact it goes on even after that. The tragic episodes of the two deaths, etc., are found in an older German tale, which does not have the confessor-go-between introduction. As that tale already places the scene in Paris (see Wilhelm Stehmann, op. cit., pp. 146–9) the location in the younger Schuoloere cannot be said to suggest anything as to the origin of its newly annexed first chapter.

⁶⁰ The same might be repeated in connection with two details common to the boerde and to a German version of somewhat later date which, in other features, suggests derivation from the Italian: (a) the purse and girdle are said to have been thrown in through the window, and (b) the woman helps her lover in. See Du falsch peicht, Keller, Erzählungen aus Altdeutschen Handschriften, Stuttg. Lit. Verein, xxxv (1855), 232.

⁶¹ “Sono adunque, discrete donne, stati alcuni che, queste novellette leggendo, hanno detto …” (Dec., introduction to the fourth day).

⁶⁴ See Willems, Belgish Museum, i (1837), 350.

⁶⁵ Pp. 1–3.

⁶⁶ Introduction, p. x.

⁶⁷ Du clerc qui se cacha derrière un coffre. Legrand d'Aussy only summarizes the fabliau. For the text, see Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil, iv, 47 ff.

⁶⁸ Te Winkel, Gesch. der Nederlandsche Lett. (Haarlem, 1887), p. 460, and Ontwikkelingsgang der Nederlandsche Lett. (Haarlem, 1922), Eerste Tijdvak, ii, 84, note 1.

⁶⁹ Ten Brink, Gesch. der Nederlandsche Lett. (Amsterdam, 1897), 204, note 4.

⁷⁰ Te Winkel, op. cit., and J. A. Worp, “Drama's en Kluchten naar den Decamerone,” Noord en Zuid, xx (1897), 389, text and note 2.

⁷¹ See A. C. Lee, op. cit., p. 261 ff. To the analogues listed there we might add the thirty-sixth story of Arienti's Porretane.

⁷² In this fabliau the lover hides behind a chest; in our boerde he hides in a chest. The erroneous belief in the closeness of the two tales is probably due to this slight point of contact emphasized in the titles of the French and Dutch stories. The Dutch scrine means trunk, chest.

⁷³ Excluding of course, well-established derivations from Dec. viii, 8.

⁷⁴ Cf. Dec. vii, 3; vii, 10, and ix, 4, and see Michele Scherillo's edition of the Decameron (Milano, 1814), pp. xxxvi-vii.

⁷⁵ Keller, Erzählungen aus Altdeutschen Handschriften (Stuttgart, 1855), 387–389. In Keller's Fastnachtspiele, (Stuttgart, 1853), p. 1443, the manuscript containing Wiedervergeltung is classed as fifteenth-century manuscript.

⁷⁶ E.g., Constant du Hamel, Montaiglon et Raynaud, vol. iv, 166.

⁷⁷ The woman is ordered to go and tell her lover's wife that she must come at once to her sick husband. In other details, the German and the boerde differ.

⁷⁸ How the husband knows that the lover is in the trunk is not explained.

⁷⁹ ll. 6 and 10.

⁸⁰ The dropping of the t in moesse (l. 38), the shortening of e in creghse (l. 46) and even the form zitte (l. 55) are familiar features of the dialect of Limburg.

⁸¹ Published first by E. Verwijs under the title Vriendentrouw, in Bloemlezing uit Middelnederlandsche Didders (Zutphen, 1858), iii, 9–17; republished by E. Kausler in Altnieder ländische Gedichte (Leipzig, 1866), iii, 165–176.

⁸² Often referred to as Stuttgartsche Handschrift.

⁸³ See Kaakebeen en Ligthart's edition of Reinart de Vos (Groningen, 1909), p. 5.

⁸⁴ Petri Alphonsi, Disciplina Clericalis, hrsg. von F. W. Schmidt (Berlin, 1827), third story, p. 36.

⁸⁵ E.g., Jacob van Maerlant's thirteenth century translation into Flemish verse in Alexander, Book vi, ll. 613–718, or the Castoiement d'un père à son fils, published by Michael Roesle (Munich, 1897), second story, pp. 5–9. This is the story found in Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux et Contes (Paris, 1808), ii, 52–64.

⁸⁶ Some of the short versions derived from the Disciplina Clericalis would fail to account for Baldak, e.g., the version of Thomas Cantimpré in De Apibus. To this rather independent version our Vriendentrouw clearly owes nothing. The translation of the De Apibus into Dutch probably dates from the fifteenth century.

⁸⁷ In the Disciplina Clericalis, and in the Gesta Romanorum, hrsg. v. A. Keller (Stuttgart, 1842), no. 171, the girl is brought up by the man who plans later to marry her.

⁸⁸ Compare the treatment of religious subjects by those marvellous realists, the great fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Flemish painters.

⁸⁹ Li Romanz d'Athis et Profilias (L'estoire d'Athenes) hrsg. von Alphons Hilka, Gesellsch. für Roman. Lit., xxix and xxx (Dresden, 1912–16). The sources used by Boccaccio were this twelfth- or thirteenth-century French Roman and the Disciplina Clericalis. See “Letterio di Francia, Alcune Novelle del Decameron,” Giorn. Stor. della Lett. It., xxxxiv (1904), pp. 33–56; and Staël von Holstein, Le Roman d'Athis et Profilias, Etude Littéraire su ses deux Versions (Upsala, 1909), 120. Among the features suggested to Boccaccio by Athis (i.e., not found in the Disciplina Clericalis) the most striking are the location (Rome and Athens), the two main characters as students of philosophy, the rôle played by their fathers, the failure to attract the rich friend's attention in the street, the marriage of the poor man with the rich friend's sister. But Boccaccio owes to the Disciplina Clericalis the simpler circumstances of the murder, the self-denunciation of the murderer and his subsequent release, the appeal to the king or to Caesar, etc.

⁹⁰ In the Disciplina, the Castoiement, etc., the visitor meets the fiancée of his friend accidentally, at a great festivity given in his honor. In Dem Pfarrer zum Hechte (Zeitschr. fuer deutsch. Alt., xvii, (1874), 287) this episode of the festivity is suppressed without being replaced by any other.

⁹¹ Corresponding to the scene in the Disciplina Clericalis in which all the women formerly gathered at the festivities are made to pass through the sick man's room so that he may recognize the one he loves.

⁹² This is condensed in one line in the Dec.; the French Athis dwells on the episode.

⁹³ In this list of details not present in the Disciplina Clericalis and suggesting indebtedness of the Flemish to the Dec. or Athis, I hesitate to include the marriage of the poor man with the sister of his rich friend, a similar motif occurring in Den Pfarrar zum Hechte, which is found in a fourteenth-century manuscript, and Cantimpré's version (marriage with the friend's cousin).

⁹⁴ Unless, of course, some sister version of our Athis should have been lost. This, however seems very improbable: we possess no less than eight manuscripts of this obviously much appreciated Roman. Seven of them are very close to one another. Of the other (the manuscript of Tours) we possess only fragments from which it seems clear that the first part of the Roman, the only one that interests us, was exactly the same as in the other seven (see Staël von Holstein, Le Roman d'Athis et Profilias, 27–8). The German fragments throw no light on the question. See Wilh. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin, 1883). 315 ff.

⁹⁵ As shown later by the translation into Latin of Beroaldo and Roberto Nobili. See Manni, Istoria del Decamerone (Firenze, 1742), 561–600.

⁹⁶ Needless to say, we are leaving out of consideration every feature that the Disciplina Clericalis might have suggested to the Flemish writer, e.g., the presentation of our story, not as first act of a long play, but as a full unit; the murderer—just one—willingly confessing his crime; his being forgiven, etc.

⁹⁷ … e diventato non solamente provero ma mendico, come potè il men male a Roma se ne venne …

⁹⁸ Trying to hide. Cf. Mod. Fr. en tapinois.

⁹⁹ The other features found only in the Athis and Vriendentrouw are of less significance: (a) the two friends' first parting: the mutual embraces, the sorrow, etc.; (b) the delay between the self accusation of the miserable friend and the arrival of the other. These features would rather naturally be introduced by any writer wishing to enlarge upon the theme of the Disciplina Clericalis.

¹⁰⁰ Primieramente con lui ogni suo tesoro e possessione fece comune et appresso una sua sorella giovinetta, chiamata Fulvia, glie diè per moglie.

¹⁰¹ In the Athis, the same marriage is presented in a very different way. The rich friend has already given the other all the land and gold he meant to give, and the generosity episode seems closed. Three days later, Athis sees Gayete and falls in love with her. We have to go through endless scenes of hesitation and shame (an echo of the first act) before Profilias finds out the cause of his friend's disease and prepares to fight the king of Sicily who claims the hand of Gayete.

¹⁰² The division of the treasures is found in nearly all known versions, including the Disciplina Clericalis. The marriage with the friend's sister or cousin is the object of a similarly brief mention in Den Pfarrer zum Hechte and De Apibus.

¹⁰³ All other analogies appear insignificant: (a) both the Italian and Flemish versions suppress the episode of the medical consultation (found in the Disciplina, Athis, etc.); (b) both versions tell us how the young man's confession as to the object of his love impresses his friend rather disagreeably at first; and (c) in connection with the reception of the miserable friend, his former fiancée is mentioned in both versions (a rather natural insertion: the Castoiement has the same).

¹⁰⁴ Griseldis being left out of consideration. See Section i.

¹⁰⁵ The analogues to Dec. vii, 8 (treated in footnote 3); vii, 7; iii, 3; and viii, 8.

¹⁰⁶ I am only giving a little support to an idea expressed before (see e.g., Kalff, Gesch. der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, i, 456). But on the whole, there still seems to be a tendency to make the share of France too large, at least in the fabliau genre.