Page:Disciplina Clericalis (English translation) from the fifteenth century Worcester Cathedral Manuscript F. 172.djvu/12

   God be my helper in this work." That is to say, the Disciplina Clericalis was written (or compiled) not long after the beginning of the 12th century. It is accordingly the earliest complete collection of oriental tales made known to the western world, and one which enjoyed great popularity and very wide distribution in the literatures of western nations during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteen, and fifteen centuries. One might even say without exaggeration, that the Disciplina Clericalis of Peter Alphonse not only made known for the first time a considerable number of those tales which were soon to become the most popular of western literatures, but that it inaugurated in all probability that later universally popular kind of prose fiction called the Novella. And though the  had for several centuries been employed by the church fathers for illustrating and pointing their sermons, there was probably no collection of exampla, whether culled from sermons of the fathers or derived from other sources, in existence at the time the Disciplina was composed. In Peter Alphonse's work, indeed, the exemplum has taken on much more the character of an independent tale, unconnected with any moralizing plan or distinctly religious purpose, than had hitherto been the case.

Nevertheless, there is a decided thread of moral purpose running through the Disciplina Clericalis, which shows itself clearly, if not in the individual tales themselves, at least in the dialogues of varying length which, in the original Latin, always serve as connecting links between the successive exempla. But the moral, didactic features of the collection seem to be, either with or without the consciousness of the author, already of less consequence—certainly of less interest—to the reader than the tales themselves in their purely literary and artistic aspects. As compared with the early sermons, therefore, illustrated by isolated exempla, in which the moral and