medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Dear list members, 

I would like to let you know that the latest issue of the Medieval Sermon studies journal Volume 58, Issue 1 (October 2014) is out. 
Please find the table of contents with abstracts below.
Best regards, 
Marjorie Burghart



Medieval Sermon Studies since The Sermon: A Deepening and Broadening Field
Anne T. Thayer, pp. 10–27
Abstract
Since the publication of The Sermon in 2000, the field of medieval sermon studies has matured into a well-established and growing interdisciplinary area of medieval studies. This article seeks to illustrate how we are doing our work and where our interests are taking us. Growing numbers of print and electronic resources facilitate locating, accessing, and interpreting texts and other historical sources pertinent to preaching. Via the preparation of carefully edited texts, the exploration of specific themes, and the illumination of particular preaching traditions, increased depth of understanding is being achieved. Sermonists use an expanding range of scholarly methodologies and pursue a broadening range of topics, here exemplified by memory and visual arts. Overarching much of our work is the desire to recover medieval experiences of what was fundamentally an oral and performative genre through its largely textual remains.


A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text
Joshua C. Benson, pp. 28–46
Abstract
This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.


The Bildungsroman of an Anonymous Franciscan Preacher in Late Medieval Italy (Biblioteca Comunale di Foligno, MS C. 85)
Yoko Kimura, pp. 47–64
Abstract
Between 1484 and 1507, an anonymous Franciscan Observant friar recorded his own preaching in northern and central Italy in a diary now housed in Foligno City Library as manuscript C. 85. The diary is a unique historical document because it enables us to reconstruct the process of sermon preparation from the friar’s perspective. It also allows us to view his growth as a preacher, from novice to expert.
In the early years of the diary, the preacher selected his models by topic from past popular preachers’ sermons. In the middle years, he composed his own sermon collections and began to use them in his preaching. In the final years, he added his new collection of sermons. He also recalled and reused sermons that he had delivered before, increasing the number of cross-references in the diary. Consequently, the diary reminded him vividly of his own experiences: the outlines of past sermons, their results, or other pieces of advice to himself. The preacher thus prepared his sermons while maintaining a dialogue with his past self. Examining the twenty Lenten sermon cycles that comprise a large part of manuscript C. 85 in chronological order, I describe the manuscript as a Bildungsroman ante litteram.


Legal Frameworks in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles
Igor Filippov, pp. 65–83
Abstract
The texts of Caesarius of Arles are rightly counted among the most important historical sources for the Early Middle Ages. Despite this well-known fact they are insufficiently studied from the point of view of social history. The domain of law is especially neglected. Information on this subject is contained mainly in the numerous comparisons which Caesarius drew between the religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices he strove to impose on his flock, and the social realities of Arles of his day. The juridical terminology which he occasionally used is also quite revealing. Most of the data is of course on canon law. It is less informative than one could have hoped but it does shed light on some important areas, such as the social make-up of the parishioners; attendance at church by women, youngsters, and slaves; baptismal practices; the tithe, and almsgiving. Caesarius’ sermons also contain valuable facts pertaining to the persistence of many Roman legal notions and practices belonging to what can be qualified as ‘civil law’. Of special interest are the different data concerning ownership rights. On the one hand, the sermons prove that Arlesians of the sixth century were for the most part content with quasi-legal notions sufficient to describe their rights in this domain. On the other hand, the bishop’s use of words leaves no doubt that the predominant legal notion regarding ownership, to the detriment of all others, was possession.


Reviews, pp. 84–96

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