Story-telling might actually be the “oldest profession.” While the stories all have a supposed moral, quite frankly they offer great entertainment value. Most of them are short and give you a good feeling for the culture of the Middle Ages.
Many of Alphonsus’ stories were later used in the Gesta Romanorum, and he also gathered stories from all over: India, the Near East (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) and Europe. They are a combination of folktales and wisdom literature, all of which is carefully explained in the notes to both the text and the book itself.
Like much of Medieval Latin, the prose is straight-forward and the word order easy to understand. Once you have gotten accustomed to the spelling (e.g., c instead of t, cepit instead of coepit), which is explained in the notes, and think of the English derivatives, the translating is easy, and the text can even be read without conscious translation. The discussion questions can lead to further conversation and study.
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