SOURCE: Jackson, Timothy R. Review of “Gesta Romanorum,” I: Untersuchungen zu Konzeption und Überlieferung; 2: Texte, Verzeichnisse, by Brigitte Weiske. Speculum 71, no.2 (April 1996): 503-04.

In the following review, Jackson summarizes some of the major ideas in Weiske's study of the Gesta Romanorum.

In the Gesta Romanorum we have the most popular collection of exempla to have been produced in medieval Europe. That popularity is attested by our knowledge of some 270 Latin manuscripts, not to mention a substantial corpus of versions in English and German. The tradition extends down through early printings to Cammerlander's reworking of the text in the interests of the Protestant Reformation (Strasbourg, 1538), after which interest seems to have come to a somewhat abrupt end. And yet, for all its cultural importance and intrinsic interest, and despite having been the subject of scholarly attention for some 150 years, we must go back to Hermann Oesterley's edition of 1872 for...