simple than most of these
pieces.

[Sidenote: Preachers.]

Few of the miscellaneous branches of literature at this time deserve
notice. But there was a group of preachers who have received attention,
which is said by students of the whole subject of the mediaeval pulpit
in France to be disproportionate, but which they owe perhaps not least
to the citations of them in a celebrated and amusing book of the next
age, the _Apologie pour Herodote_ of Henri Estienne. These are Menot
(1440-1518) and Maillard the Franciscans, and Raulin (1443-1514), a
doctor of the Sorbonne. These preachers, living at a time which was not
one of popular sovereignty, did not meddle with politics as preachers
had done in France before and were to do again. But they carried into
the pulpit the habit of satirical denunciation in social as well as in
purely religious matters, and gave free vent to their zeal. No
illustrations of the singular licence which the middle ages permitted on
such occasions are more curious than these sermons. Not merely did the
preachers attack their audience for their faults in the most outspoken
manner, but they interspersed their discourses (as indeed was the
invariable custom throughout the whole middle ages) with stories of all
kinds. In Raulin, the gravest of the three, occurs the famous history of
the church bells, which reappears in Rabelais, _a propos_ of the
marriage of Panurge.

FOOTNOTES:

[153]

Villon sut le premier, dans ces siecles grossiers,
Debrouiller l'art confus de nos vieux romanciers.

_Art Poet._ Ch. 1.

[154] Ed. P. L. Jacob. Paris, 1854. Villon's life has been the subject
of numerous elaborate investigations, the latest and best of which is
that of A. Longnon. Paris, 1877. Dr. Bijvanck, a Dutch scholar, has
dealt since with the MSS.

[155] One of these anecdotes makes him patronised by Edward the _Fifth_
of England. But the very terms of it are unsuitable to that king.

[156] The reader may be reminded that the _Testament_ was a recognised
mediaeval style. It was satirical and allegorical, the legacies which it
gave being mostly indicative of the legatee's weaknesses or personal
peculiarities.

[157] Ed. Chantelauze. Paris, 1881. Also usefully in Michaud et
Poujoulat.

[158] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove. 2 vols. Brussels, 1867-8.

[159] Ed. Hericault. 2 vols. Paris, 1857.

[160] Edited in part by J. Quicherat. Paris, 1856.

[161] Martial d'Auvergne had the exceptional go