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Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages presents research by specialists of preaching history and literature. This volume fills some of the lacunae which exists in medieval sermon studies. The topics include: an analysis of how oral and written cultures meet in sermon literature, the function of vernacular sermons, an examination of the usefulness of non-sermon sources such as art in the study of preaching history, sermon genres, the significance of heretical preaching, audience composition and its influence on sermon content, and the use of rhetoric in sermon construction. The study looks at preaching history and literature from a wide geographical and chronological area which includes examples from Anglo-Saxon England to late medieval Italy. While doing so, it outlines the state of sermon studies research and points to new areas of investigation.
Islamic popular preachers and storytellers had enormous influence in defining common religious knowledge and faith in the medieval Near East. Jonathan Berkey’s book illuminates the popular culture of religious storytelling. It draws on chronicles, biographical dictionaries, sermons, and tales — but especially on a number of medieval treatises critical of popular preachers, and also a vigorous defense of them which emerged in fourteenth-century Egyptian Sufi circles. Popular preachers drew inspiration and legitimacy from the rise of Sufi mysticism, with its emphasis on internal spiritual activity and direct enlightenment, enabling them to challenge or reinforce social and political hierarchies as they entertained the masses with tales of moral edification. As these charismatic figures developed a popular following, they often aroused the wrath of scholars and elites, who resented innovative interpretations of Islam that undermined orthodox religious authority and blurred social and gender barriers. Critics of popular preachers and storytellers worried that they would corrupt their audiences’ understanding of Islam. Their defenders argued that preachers and storytellers could contribute to the consensus of the Islamic community as to what constituted acceptable religious knowledge. In the end, religious knowledge, and the definition of Islam as it was commonly understood, remained porous and flexible throughout the Middle Period, thanks in part to the activities of popular preachers and storytellers.
First published in 1926, G. R. Owst's Preaching in Medieval England has remained a seminal work on the topic of English sermons of the period 1350-1450. In studying a largely neglected but important aspect of the medieval religious experience, the author adds considerably to our understanding of the pre-Reformation church. The book is in three parts - the preachers, the circumstances of the preaching and reception, and the sermons themselves. In the first section Owst discusses the different classes of preacher, the secular clergy, monks and particularly the wandering friars, famous for their preaching. In the second part he studies the experience of sermons, how, where and when they were delivered, and to whom. The examination of the sermons covers not only their content and language, but also the surviving manuals on preaching and eloquence, and advice to preachers. This wide ranging and scholarly book remains a crucial work on medieval preaching.
This volume explores the richness of Middle English and Latin material in prose and verse, concerning the preaching of the word of God in late medieval England. The focus of this volume, on Middle English and Latin material in prose and verse, concerns the preaching of the word of God in an expansive sense in late medieval England. This collection of essays explores the multiple ways in which the sermon in England in the later Middle Ages both influenced and was influenced by other devotional and didactic material, both implicitly and explicitly. The essays pay special attention to examples of textual complexity in the sermon as manifested in the manuscript and early printed traditions. By examining sermon technique and methodology contributors present related material that either travels alongside sermons or shares the same preaching or teaching milieu.
This collection offers fresh perspectives on British and American preaching in the nineteenth century. Drawing on many religious traditions and addressing a host of cultural and political topics, it will appeal to scholars specializing in any number of academic fields.
In the Middle Ages, the sermon was a powerful and versatile means of bringing the Word of God to the people. In fact, in the oral culture of that period, it was the primary medium for Christian clergy to convey religious education to lay audiences. Moreover, the sermon played an important role in the liturgy and life of the religious orders. With the growth of lay literacy the sermon collection also developed into a vernacular literary genre of its own. Two aspects of Christian piety, hopeful expectation on the one hand, and fearful anticipation on the other, were decisive factors for the shaping of religious life and practical pastoral care. Both these aspects were often brought to the fore in sermons on the Last Judgement as part of a recurrent argument against a life too much oriented towards the world. The preachers dwell on both the Particular Judgement occurring immediately after death and the General Judgement over the whole of creation at the end of times. This volume brings together scholars from several European countries with the purpose to present their research on the theme of the Last Judgement in medieval sermons. The scope of scholars is broadened to incorporate not only specialists in sermon studies, but also historians, theologians, and literary historians to encourage research along new, multi-perspectival lines.
This study presents research by specialists of monastic history, literature, and spirituality. Covering the period from 1150 to 1500, this volume demonstrates that monastic preaching was not only carried out in the cloister by monks, but also in public arenas by monks and nuns. The topics range from questioning if the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux were ever preached, to an analysis of Hildegard of Bingen's preaching against the Cathars. Sermons addressed to monastic communities by secular preachers are also analysed. The diversity of monastic preaching - e.g., cloistered preaching, preaching against heretics, preaching by heretical monks, preaching by nuns - and a geographical range of monastic pastoral history is studied. Medieval Monastic Preaching offers a preliminary step in understanding how sermons and preaching shaped monastic identity in the Middle Ages.
She reconstructs popular attitudes about such issues as original sin, free will, purgatory, the devil, the sacraments, and the magical arts.
This volume explores the integral role of memory and mnemonic techniques in medieval preaching from the thirteenth to the early fifteenth century. It argues that the mendicant orders inherited from the early Middle Ages both the simple mnemonic techniques of rhetorical practice and a tradition of monastic meditation founded on memory images. In the thirteenth century Dominican and Franciscan writers drew on these basic techniques even as they re-evaluated the ancient mnemonic system of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (first century BC). The increasing emphasis that intellectuals placed upon cognitive science, ethics, and on distinctions between rhetoric and logic created a climate that welcomed an image-based memory system designed for orators. The book also explores the Franciscan contribution to mnemonics, which has been almost entirely neglected by scholars. As the Franciscans came to value imaginative meditation as part of their own spiritual lives, their habit of meditating on mental images of the virtues and vices eventually spilled out into their sermons. As the new orators of the period, Franciscans and Dominicans each inserted mnemonic images into their sermons as a way to aid the recall of both preachers and listeners. The products of such mnemonic practices in medieval sermons, which included elaborate descriptions of buildings, schematic renderings of the number seven, and verbal images of the virtues and vices, were then allegorised in moral terms and circulated on the continent in exempla collections. This book argues that verbal images and complicated schema functioned as 'ordering devices' for those preaching and listening to sermons, whilst also provoking an affective response that enhanced listeners' devotional and penitential experiences.