In 1997, Steinmetz produced a parallel-text edition of the German version A text, alongside the Latin text which is assumed to be its source. Steinmetz refers to this version of the narrative as Libellus muliebri nequitia plenus, though it is also referred to as Allegatio septem saptientum, and he suggests the Latin version was composed in the 14th century, and translated into the Bavarian/Bavarian-Austrian dialect sometime early in the 15th century. The German Libellus survives in two manuscripts; Steinmetz uses St. Florian Stiftsbibliothek Cod. XI. 549 as the base text for his edition. Both manuscript witnesses of the Libellus are integrated into the frame of the German Gesta Romanorum, but unlike some of the other Seven Sages/Sieben Weise Meister versions found in the Gesta, this version closely follows the Version A narrative pattern. The exception to this is the inclusion of the story Mercator in place of Puteus, and a slight reordering of the stories (the order of Gaza and Senescalcus, which are usually stories 5 and 7, respectively, is here reversed).
The inclusion of Mercator instead of Puteus is a pattern also replicated in some of the
Italian Version A texts, in particular the
Italian Prose A and the
Storia favolosa di Stefano. The contemporary composition timeframes, and the fact that the Latin
Allegatio/Libellus text - the source for the German version - was composed in Northern Italy, we may perhaps hypothesize about the Mercator/Puteus change across all of these text as a signal of shared narrative inheritance.
| Recorded branch of this secondary version
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| Connected prints
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No connected prints
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| Notes
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| Notes on motifs |
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| Notes on the frame |
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| Pattern of embedded stories in this version
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