Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 19, 2025
There remains yet the fifth act in which one would think they should show their mastery. And here they bring in some foolish insipid fable out of Speculum Historiale or Gesta Romanorum and expound it allegorically, tropologically, and anagogically. And after this manner do they and their chimera, and such as Horace despaired of compassing when he wrote "Humano capiti," etc.
One of these legends, narrated by Gervase of Tilbury, suggested to Scott the combat of Marmion with the spectre knight. A series of fictions called the "Gesta Romanorum" attained great celebrity. It is composed of fables, traditions, and familiar pictures of society, varying with the different countries it passed through.
Max Deutschbein sees a connection between the Bjarki story and the Gesta Herwardi that would tend to establish the story in the Bjarkarímur as earlier than the corresponding story in the Hrólfssaga. H. Munro Chadwick, basing his opinion on the similarity between the career of Bjarki and that of Beowulf, thinks there is good reason for believing that Beowulf was the same person as Bothvar Bjarki.
The earliest folk-tales of every nation happen "once upon a time," and without any definite localization. In the "Gesta Romanorum," that medieval repository of accumulated narratives, the element of setting is nearly as non-existent as the element of background in the frescoes of Pompeii.
And if we go further back we find in chapter clv. of the printed editions of the "Gesta Romanorum" an interesting picture of domestic life. The whole family is portrayed gathering round the fire in the winter evenings and beguiling the time by telling stories. Such we are informed was the custom among the higher classes.
Bid the sub-chancellor send out to them Thomas the lector to read unto them from the 'Gesta beati Benedicti. It may save them from foolish and pernicious babbling." The Abbot was left to himself once more, and bent his thin gray face over his illuminated breviary.
The Hrólfssaga has, however, preserved the earlier account. The Skjọldungasaga dates from about the year 1200. The conflicting statement that it was Ingjald who slew Halfdan requires, therefore, an explanation. In Saxo's Gesta Danorum, the story about Hroar and Helgi is told twice.
William's work in turn served as the basis of the "Roman de Rou" composed by Wace in the time of Henry the Second. The primary authority for the Conqueror himself is the "Gesta Willelmi" of his chaplain and violent partizan, William of Poitiers.
Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the Gesta Romanorum in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised" the actions of three noodles: We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity.
This memorial with its maps was inserted in the Gesta Dei per Francos, as we are assured by the editor, from one of the original copies presented by Sanuto to some one of the princes. Hence, as Dr. Vincent remarks, it probably contains the oldest map of the world at this day extant, except the Peutingerian tables.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking