SOURCE: Smalley, Beryl. “Robert Holcot.” In English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century, pp. 144-46, 183. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960.

In the following excerpt, Smalley argues that many of the entries in the Gesta Romanorum were derived from a book of exempla for sermons by the fourteenth-century preacher and teacher Robert Holcot.

The title of the collection [of Sermons by Robert Holcot from around 1334, called] ‘Sermons for Sundays and weekdays’, does not mean that each Sunday and weekday has its sermon. Christmas Day, the Epiphany, Easter Sunday and Sundays 8-17 after Trinity Sunday are omitted. Yet the feast of the Circumcision (January 1) is included. Two sermons towards the end are headed ‘Sermo ad curatos’ and ‘Sermo ad religiosos’ respectively,¹ while the last sermon of all has no heading. It is not for preaching on a text for the liturgical year, but is intended for a clerical congregation, perhaps...