Note 247 — Chapter III · THE MINSTREL LIFE
Reading edition
Another version of this story is given by Petrus Cantor (ob. 1197), Verbum Abbreviatum, c. 84 (P. L. ccv. 254) ‘Ioculatori cuidam papa Alexander (Alex. III) nec concessit vivere de officio suo, nec ei penitus interdixit.’ In c. 49 of the same work Petrus Cantor inveighs learnedly Contra dantes histrionibus. Doubtless the Alexander in question is Alexander III (1159-81), though the (Alex. III) above may be due to the seventeenth-century editor, Galopinus. A hasty glance at the voluminous and practically unindexed decrees and letters of Alexander III in P. L. cc. and Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum (ed. 2, 1885-8), ii. 145-418, has not revealed the source of the story; and I doubt whether the Pope’s decision, if it was ever given, is to be found in black and white. The two reports of it by Thomas de Cabham and Petrus Cantor are barely consistent. In any case, it never got into the Gregorian Decretals.