Sermons & preaching
More general subjects:
Communicating the Passion
The Socio-Religious Function of an Emotional Narrative (1250–1530)
This volume investigates the vivid and emotionally intense commemoration of the Passion of Christ as a key element in late medieval religious culture. Its goal is to shed light on how the Passion was communicated and on its socio-religious function in late medieval Europe. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach the volume analyses the different media involved in this cultural process (sermons devotional texts lively performances statues images) the multiple forms and languages in which the Passion was presented to the faithful and how they were expected to respond to it. Key questions concern the strategies used to present the Passion; the interaction between texts images and sounds in different media; the dissemination of theological ideas in the public space; the fashioning of an affective response in the audience; and the presence or absence of anti-Jewish commonplaces.
By exploring the interplay among a wide range of sources this volume highlights the pervasive role of the Passion in late medieval society and in the life of the people of the time.
Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Teaching the Emotions in the Early Modern English Sermon, 1600–1642
The early seventeenth-century English sermon was the bestselling print genre of its time and church preaching was more widely attended than any play. Jennifer Clement argues here that a major aim of these sermons was to teach people how to feel the right emotions — or as preachers would have said at the time the passions or affections — to lead a good Christian life. In the process preachers took a primarily rhetorical approach to the emotions; that is they used their sermons to define emotions and to encourage their listeners and readers actively to cultivate and shape their emotions in line with Scripture.
This study offers an overview of five key emotions — love fear anger grief and joy – in the sermons of key preachers such as John Donne Richard Sibbes Joseph Hall Launcelot Andrewes and others. It shows how these preachers engaged with contemporary treatises on the emotions as well as treatises on preaching to highlight the importance of the rhetorical as opposed to the humoral approach to understanding the emotions in a religious context. In addition Clement reads sermons next to early seventeenth-century religious poetry by writers such as Donne George Herbert Amelia Lanyer and Henry Vaughan to show how the emotional concerns of the sermons also appear in the poetry reverberating beyond the pulpit.
Bringing together rhetorical theory sermon studies and the history of the emotions Clement shows how the early seventeenth-century English sermon needs to inform our thinking about literature and its engagement with emotion in this period.
A Latin-Polish Sermon Collection and the Emergence of Vernacularisation
This monograph offers an analysis of the so-called Kazania augustiańskie (‘The Augustinian sermons’) a unique manuscript which represents a very early phase in the vernacularisation of medieval Polish textual culture when vernacular or bilingual texts started to manifest their independent development. The relationships between Latin and the Polish vernacular in this text surviving in a contemporary manuscript sheds light on the ways in which Latin determined the development of written Polish in the textual genre of the sermon. The detailed and multifaceted analysis of the linguistic features of the Kazania augustiańskie contributes to the continuing discussion in medieval studies on the emergence of the earliest texts in the vernacular languages and on the preconditions and dynamics of vernacularisation.
At a first glance this book may appear to be the tale of a single manuscript told solely from the point of view of a historian of language. However it also explores both the birth of a particular medieval text and more generally the growing ability to compose vernacular texts. This capacity which developed over the medieval period was based on Latin models; over the centuries it contributed to vernacular texts becoming a fundamental component of European culture.
The Destruction of Jerusalem and Anti-Jewish Commonplaces in Model Sermon Collections (1100–1350)
This book analyses the diffusion of anti-Judaic stereotypes and topoi in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century model sermon collections. It concentrates on the sermons on Luke 19.41-48 where Jesus foretells the Destruction of Jerusalem. The preachers took the view that the Destruction of Jerusalem was divine vengeance for the Jews because they killed Jesus. Thus these sermons were a good venue for those preachers who wanted to preach against the Jews.
Model sermon collections were the closest thing to modern mass media. Consequently their role in the diffusion of anti-Judaic attitudes was significant. The anti-Judaic writings of the early Church Fathers were only read by few literate church men whereas model sermons reached the illiterate masses all over Christianity. Therefore they played a major role in diffusing anti-Judaic attitudes amongst the population at large and thus contributed to the marginalization of the Jews to various libels expulsions violence and eventually to large-scale pogroms.
Les sermons du manuscrit de Vienne (ÖNB MS LAT. 4147)
Interrogations sur leur unité, leur datation et leur origine
En 1994 François-Joseph Leroy publiait vingt-deux sermons inédits qu’il attribua à un contemporain d’Augustin et dans lesquels il vit une collection non apologétique et non polémique de textes donatistes. C’était là une découverte exceptionnelle. Pourtant depuis l’édition provisoire de Leroy la recherche ne s’est guère penchée sur ce corpus. C’est la raison pour laquelle le Groupe de Recherches sur l’Afrique Antique (GRAA) a entrepris une nouvelle édition critique de ces 22 sermons accompagnée de la première traduction annotée et rassemblé autour de ce corpus les contributions de différents spécialistes historiens et littéraires pour en analyser tant la langue le style et les procédés homilétiques que la portée supposée donatiste la spiritualité et la théologie.
Sermons, Saints, and Sources
Studies in the Homiletic and Hagiographic Literature of Early Medieval England
The corpus of sermons and saints’ lives from early medieval England in English and Latin is the largest and most varied of its kind from a contemporary European perspective. In recent years this extraordinary body of literature has attracted increasing attention as witnessed by an efflorescence of new editions translations commentaries essay collections dissertations and amply funded research projects such as the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Old English Homilies (ECHOE) project based at the University of Göttingen.
The present collection of thirteen essays grew out of a 2022 conference sponsored by the ECHOE project on Old English anonymous homilies and saints’ lives and their sources and reflects the best of current scholarship on early medieval homiletic and hagiographic literature from England. This literature is central to an understanding of the spiritual imagination and social practices of non-élite audiences. Together they introduce new discoveries identify new sources edit new texts make new claims about authors revisers and textual relationships revise previous arguments about aspects of literary history and provide new interpretations of Old English and Latin sermons and saints’ lives. These studies show vividly how European learning influenced the liturgical practices and peripheral education of early medieval England.
Contributors include Helen Appleton Aidan Conti Claudia Di Sciacca R. D. Fulk Thomas N. Hall Christopher A. Jones Leslie Lockett Rosalind Love Hugh Magennis Stephen Pelle Jane Roberts Winfried Rudolf and Charles D. Wright.
Predigen im Karolingerreich
Die homiletischen Sammlungenvon Paulus Diaconus, Lanthpertus von Mondsee, Rabanus Maurus und Haymo von Auxerre
By supporting the Christianization process within their realm Carolingian rulers not only served matters of faith obedience and healing of the soul; they also intended to unify the conquered tribes remove their pagan traditions and strengthen royal power. Carolingian sermon collections provide significant insights into the cultural political and social background to the process of Christianization in the Carolingian world. Five sample collections compiled by leading intellectuals are now explored extensively and comparatively for the first time.
Traité sur la prédication de la croisade
Le traité De predicatione crucis composé vers 1266-1268 par Humbert de Romans le cinquième maître général de l’ordre dominicain est sans doute l’instruction la plus détaillée pour les prédicateurs de la croix dont nous disposons. L’auteur donne ses commentaires sur les questions qu’il croit d’être les plus essentielles pour prêcher la croisade sans pourtant donner des sermons prêts à être prononcés: le prédicateur est censé composer le sermon lui-même en utilisant le traité comme manuel. Il procure aussi des extraits de la Bible et des textes non-bibliques pour le même but.
Le texte latin dont on trouvera ici la traduction a été édité dans Humbertus de Romanis De predicatione crucis (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis 279). Des renvois aux pages correspondantes de l'édition sont fournis dans les marges de cette publication.
Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550)
This volume concentrates on how the sermon a pivotal element in mass communication aimed to shape the people of Europe. Rather than setting up the usual binary divides it highlights the linguistic complications the textual inter-relationships the confessional cross-currents and the variations between public and private sermon dissemination operating at different rates and with variable results throughout Europe. Effectively the emphasis here is on how Catholic preachers and Catholic preaching carried on in the period between the handwritten and the printed sermon a time when not only the mode of production was changing but when the very purpose and meaning of preaching itself would soon alter in a western Christian world that was becoming no longer completely Catholic. By examining case-studies chosen from countries with contrasting manuscript and printing traditions (Denmark England Finland France Germany Italy the Low Countries Romania Spain and Sweden) we aim to examine some of the main historical literary and theological factors in the development of the sermon in Latin and the vernaculars which is itself in the process of changing formats and sometimes languages at a time of religious ferment from the advent of print to the death of Martin Luther. These essays which are effectively in dialogue with each other are divided into geographical/linguistic sections organized along broadly chronological lines. They circulate from the peripheries of Europe to the centre moving from areas where evidence is now scarce to situations of thriving production.
Latin Anonymous Sermons from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ad 300-800)
Classification, Transmission, Dating
This volume contains the proceedings of the international conference on anonymous sermons funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS and held on 16 May 2019 at the Université de Namur (Belgium) within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the research centre Pratiques Médiévales de l’Écrit (PraME). It brings together scholars working on late antique and early medieval Latin preaching and follows on previous volumes on Augustine and African sermons published in the Ministerium Sermonis subseries. The focus here is on Christian Latin preached texts thought to date from the period c. 300-800 ad which are not currently attributed to a known author. Long neglected because of their uncertain attribution these sermons offer new material for the study of late antique and early medieval Christianity. The contributions assembled here provide an essential entry point to the study of these little-known sermons: after an introduction which sets the aims of the book discusses the state of the art and describes main avenues for research individual papers present future tools to classify sermons and explore their medieval transmission in manuscripts offer new critical editions of previously unknown sermons and develop methods and reliable criteria to shed new light on their historical context of composition. Both engaging with current issues and challenges and offering innovative case studies this book opens up new ground for future research on late antique and early medieval Latin Christian preaching in general.
Presbyter Kozma, Gegen die Bogomilen
Orthodoxie und Häresie auf dem mittelalterlichen Balkan
The Homily of the Unworthy Priest Cosmas Against the Newly-Appeared Heresy of Bogomil (10th century) is a key source for the religious history of the Balkan peninsula. It is one of the earliest and richest sources for the rise of the dualistic religious movement of Bogomilism in the early Middle Ages. Written in a period of war and crisis of the Bulgarian Empire Cosmas sermon is also an important work of Eastern Christian Theology calling for a thorough reform of clergy and monasticism.
During the subsequent centuries Cosmas' work was copied and excerpted by Bulgarian Serbian and Russian churchmen who were seeking inspiration in their struggle for ecclesial reform and against religious dissent of various heretical movements. In the processes of national identity construction on the Balkans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Cosmas' Homily again played a remarkable role.
The present study provides the first complete translation into a western language of Begunov's 1973 critical edition. The German translation is accompanied by an introduction and a commentary.
Marie-Madeleine, le retour… Une méditation inédite sur le désespoir et la pénitence attribuable à Baudri de Bourgueil
Le plus ancien manuscrit du De visitatione infirmorum de Baudri de Bourgueil (BNF nouv. acq. lat. 1875 saec. xi ex originaire des régions ligériennes) contient une série de petits textes qui semblent raisonnablement attribuables à l’abbé de Bourgueil - à savoir une espèce de méditation pénitentielle et cinq sermons ou fragments de sermons. Notre projet est d’éditer traduire et commenter le premier de ces textes. Une telle opération a un triple mérite. D’abord celui d’offrir au public un inédit ; ensuite celui d’aborder un problème méthodologique autour de la discussion de la question de l’attribution ; enfin celui d’offrir un éclairage - un peu inattendu de la part de son auteur ou de l’image que nous avons de lui - sur la spiritualité monastique à l’époque de la réforme grégorienne un terrain cher à Jacques Dalarun.
« Contamination » : philologie par temps de pandémie
Dans une tradition manuscrite la « contamination » survient lorsqu’un copiste cesse de dépendre d’un modèle unique mais emprunte des leçons à un second modèle produisant ainsi un texte métissé. Tout est problématique dans ce qui concerne la contamination : à commencer par son nom qui évoque la souillure religieuse ou la pathologie contagieuse alors que recourir à plusieurs témoins accessibles est au contraire la meilleure manière de remédier aux erreurs de copie. N’est-ce pas ce que font les éditions critiques ? Au-delà du nom la contamination présente deux difficultés : comment la reconnaître et comment la traiter. Pour l’éditeur en effet la tentation est grande de détecter des contaminations là ou il n’y en a pas car il est libre alors de disqualifier une partie de la tradition et de diminuer ainsi le nombre des manuscrits ou branches sur lesquels il s’appuiera pour établir le texte. Identifier correctement un cas de contamination est donc crucial mais difficile : nombreuses sont les situations qui lui ressemblent. Ensuite une fois admis comme réelle une contamination reste à interpréter la manière précise dont elle s’est produite. En effet la convergence imprévue de deux branches distinctes a pour effet de jeter un flou rétrospectif sur une zone plus large du stemma codicum rendant douteux la manière de la prendre en compte. Néanmoins comprendre et maîtriser la contamination est possible à condition de ne pas la tenir pour une maladie des textes mais au contraire comme un processus naturel et sain dans l’histoire de leur transmission.
Dalla carta al cielo « propter unum principium ». Il simbolismo onirico medievale tra agiografia e letteratura
Questo intervento si sofferma sulla genesi simbolica di alcuni sogni medievali usati in letteratura dai massimi scrittori dell’epoca - Dante Boccaccio Petrarca - e inseriti nelle agiografie di san Francesco santa Chiara d’Assisi e della beata Chiara da Rimini. Partendo dalle teorie onirocritiche classiche e medievali e ricostruendo la tradizione manoscritta occidentale dell’interpretazione dei sogni (lavoro svolto per la pubblicazione del Dizionario dei sogni nel Medioevo 2018) questo studio analizza lo specifico genere letterario della visione e le sue applicazioni nei testi poetici e religiosi. Il contributo affronta altresi le metodologie interpretative utilizzate nelle tradizioni oniromantiche e bibliche modelli stabili lungo tutto il Medioevo per le scritture rivelatrici del divino.
Gli Horribili tormenti del beato Simone da Trento fra manoscritto e stampa
Il recente rinvenimento di un testimone manoscritto degli Horribili tormenti del beato Simone da Trento consente di arricchire la tradizione a stampa unica finora conosciuta rappresentata da due incunaboli l’uno conservato a Trento biblioteca Comunale l’altro a Manchester John Rylands University Library. La collazione tra l’esemplare manoscritto e i manufatti tipografici permette di rilevare consonanze e scarti della tradizione.
I bambini nell’età dello Spirito. Una pagina della Cronica di Salimbene de Adam
La scansione della storia largamente prevalente nel Medioevo faceva coincidere le eta del mondo con le eta della vita dell’uomo: infanzia puerizia giovinezza eta adulta vecchiaia. Nel XIII secolo alcune fonti sembrano invertire l’ordine proponendo una scansione che partendo dalla vecchiaia giunge alla puerizia. E la proposta di una storia alla rovescia in cui il futuro atteso e un tempo in cui i protagonisti saranno i bambini. Questa idea espressa in alcune pagine della Cronica di Salimbene sembra aver avuto i suoi antecedenti nelle opere di Gioacchino da Fiore e nel Super Hieremiam. Il cambiamento sembra indizio di una diversa percezione dell’infanzia nella societa del XIII secolo.
I codici della Library della S. Bonaventure University. Un lavoro incompiuto
Il saggio dopo aver esposto consistenza e organizzazione dei codici attualmente conservati presso la Library della Saint Bonaventure University mira a ricostruire i tortuosi percorsi dalla dispersione delle biblioteche francescane al definitivo approdo negli Stati Uniti. A tale scopo vengono ripercorse le tappe che contrassegnarono il tragitto dei manoscritti piu indicativi. La notevole eterogeneita dei contenuti dei codici pone in evidenza il progetto della raccolta elaborato dall’iniziativa di Padre Matthias Faust che tra gli anni Venti e Cinquanta del secolo scorso riuni presso lo Holy Name College di Washington il piu consistente fra i tre fondi che oggi costituiscono la collezione codicologica della Library della Saint Bonaventure University.
Un sermon d’Augustin pour l’Ascension (s. 263 auct.) : reconstitution et édition critique
Jusqu’à maintenant les sermons d’Augustin pour l’Ascension Guelf. 21 et Mai 98 étaient considérés comme deux pièces indépendantes. L’histoire de leur transmission montre qu’ils représentent en fait les deux parties d’une même allocution séparées pour des raisons liturgiques. Ce phénomène provoqué par la réduction du temps de prédication durant le haut moyen âge est bien attesté dans les homéliaires. Le s. Guelf. 21 a circulé aussi isolément tandis que le s. Mai 98 est partout resté associé au précédent derrière une rubrique intercalaire. Le s. 263 auct. (ou Dolbeau 32) ainsi reconstitué est à l’origine d’une recension abrégée (s. 263 § 1-2) qui a retenu des éléments de ses deux sections. Son analyse suggère une datation vers 396-400 durant les premières années de l’épiscopat d’Augustin. La fin du texte retint spécialement l’attention de Bede le Vénérable qui la cita trois fois dans ses propres oeuvres.
Au nom du père et du fils. Un souvenir d’enfance de Pétrarque
À côté de figures comme François d’Assise ou saint Louis Pétrarque est l’un des individus les mieux documentés du Moyen Âge du point de vue biographique. Mais à la différence des deux premiers cette documentation est principalement autobiographique ce qui ne va pas sans poser d’importants problèmes de méthode. Sans ignorer la part de reconstruction la tradition historiographique des études humanistes a pourtant souvent eu tendance à lire les lettres de Pétrarque « dans le sens du fil » en les considérant comme un recueil de données positives nécessitant seulement parfois des corrections factuelles. À partir d’exemples tirés de lettres racontant des souvenirs de l’enfance de Pétrarque confrontés aux archives contemporaines disponibles on voudrait essayer de montrer l’intérêt de lire aussi ces textes « à contre-fil » pour mettre en évidence des écarts significatifs. Il s’agira non seulement de tenter de parvenir à une meilleure reconstruction de la trajectoire biographique du poète mais aussi de mieux comprendre le rôle social spirituel et intellectuel de la réinvention de soi par l’écriture dans l’Occident du xiv e siècle.
I bambini nel Dialogus miraculorum di Cesario di Heisterbach
Nel Medioevo l’infanzia sembra negata nelle agiografie il futuro santo non appare come bambino ma come un adulto in miniatura pieno di devozione e di saggezza; sul bambino pesa il giudizio negativo di sant’Agostino che vi vede la presenza del peccato. Ma questo quadro generale trova variazioni nelle fonti. Cesario di Heisterbach (m. 1240 c.) nel Dialogus miraculorum pur con una certa ambivalenza presenta un’immagine concreta e positiva dell’infanzia in cui vede un’incoscienza/innocenza non gravata dal peccato né dal timore della cattiva coscienza. Il cistercense ricorda che i pueri portati a esempio da Cristo sono umili semplici e puri anzi a volte se non compresi un intervento divino mostra le loro capacita spirituali. In alcuni racconti i bambini non appiattiti su schemi morali e agiografici hanno atteggiamenti e giochi caratteristici di un’infanzia quasi senza tempo. Cesario e dunque comprensivo verso i bambini e la sua valutazione positiva si rafforza con le visioni nelle quali l’anima purificata appare in forma di bambino e nell’ostia consacrata appare il Bambino Gesu.