Short pious narratives present interesting performance issues as they occupy a middle ground in vernacular medieval literature. These stories have a message to communicate—and indeed often include short sermons—but they also aim to entertain. Their message may have written sources (e.g., commentaries, patristic texts), but their delivery is oral. We can surmise that many of them were intended to be read to mixed audiences (male and female, young and old, lay and clerical) which implies divergent styles of performance. Part fabliau, part exemplum, part sermon, part Saints’ Life, these texts do not at face value represent a cohesive genre; they therefore reflect many kinds of possible performance practice. Nonetheless, the many similarities in composition and function make this a fascinating corpus for the study of preaching, storytelling and performance. As we will see, the text—the first port of call for a study of this kind—provides many hints as to not only the performability of these texts but also of their need to be performed in some way. This essay will consider briefly a number of fabliaux, pious tales from the anonymous Vie des Pères [Lives of the Fathers] and from Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame [The Miracles of the Virgin] and three outstanding stand-alone moralising pieces: L’Ermite et le jongleur [The Hermit and the Minstrel], Le Tumbeor Nostre Dame [Our Lady's Tumbler] and Le Chevalier au barisel [The Knight with the Barrel]. It will conclude that, although the various modes of reading in the Middle Ages remain something of a mystery to us, it can confidently be posited that these texts were crying out to be performed.

Two authors, Jean Bodel (1165?–1210) and Rutebeuf (c.1285), broadly represent the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of this essay. Both are known to have composed a variety of texts—including fabliaux and theatrical pieces (Le Jeu de saint Nicolas [The Saint Nicolas Play] and Le Miracle de Théophile [The Miracle of Theéophilius])—many of which still survive. Despite the originality of Jean Bodel's Congés and the skill of Rutebeuf's Sainte Marie l’Egyptienne [Saint Mary the Egyptian], neither author is known principally as lyricist or hagiographer; that is to say, Jean Bodel and Rutebeuf are medieval authors whom even modern theorists, eager to categorise and classify, are unable to label as anything less general than “medieval authors.” This is important, given the multiple crossovers of tradition and genre.