SOURCE: Wailes, Stephen L. “The Tale of the Credulus Provost in Der Stricker's Der Pfaffe Amîs.” JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97, no. 2 (April, 1998): 168-76.

In the following essay, Wailes attributes the omission of an episode from the “Vulgata” manuscript of der Stricker's Die Schwänke des Pfaffen Amîs to its representation of the clergyman Amîs's cupidity.

The most conspicuous difference between the two principal versions of Der Pfaffe Amîs, the first German Schwankroman, is the omission from the “Vulgata” of the tenth episode in the Rieddeger text, in which Amîs plays the role of an illiterate peasant, is welcomed into a monastery by the provost and set in charge of its financial affairs, pretends to inspiration by the Holy Spirit, and then makes off with donations brought from far and wide by the gullible laity.¹ This adventure, and the matter of...