Gesta Romanorum

Gesta Romanorum, a collection of mediaeval tales, which professed to be taken from Roman history, but were in reality fictitious. Probably the original series was really derived from Roman writers, but other tales were afterwards added, some of which can be traced to the Clericalis Discipline of Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Jew of the 12th century, who was indebted to certain Arabian fabulists. According to the best authorities, the collection, as it has been handed down, was formed in England at the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century. An English edition issued from the press of Wynkyn de Worde in 1510-15. The tales are entirely devoid of literary merit, but they are interesting as having furnished material to many famous writers, including Gower, Parnell (in the Hermit), and Schiller, while others bear a close resemblance to Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.