Jests and Serious Matters

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Original title: Joco-Seria, id est Jocorum atque seriorum A large Neo-Latin anthology of several hundred short jests, sayings, witticisms and remembered episodes, also transmitted as Jocorum atque seriorum and in German as Schimpff und Ernst. The items are arranged as a numbered series of brief exempla, each introduced by a 'De …' heading and closed with an attribution to a named authority, and at intervals the series gathers into thematic collectanea functioning as sustained moral excursus (on clothing, on drunkenness as a species of madness, on love as a disease of the mind). Its subject matter ranges across confessional polemic and clerical satire, martyrology and Reformation memory, criminal procedure and the critique of litigation and torture, princely and courtly exempla, the constitution and customs of the Swiss cantons, polemic against judicial astrology, demonology and marvels (spectres, werewolves, the piper of Hameln), and natural history including talking magpies, parrots and the nightingales said to imitate human speech at the Diet of Regensburg in 1546. An alphabetical index of memorable things and words closes the Latin series, making the collection usable for consultation as well as continuous reading. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

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