On Mar 21, 2007, at 10:33 AM, Revd Gordon Plumb wrote:
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Who might preach seems simple in theory - Regimen Animarum says that priests, deacons and subdeacons, if they have preferment and the care of souls, may preach by reason of their preferment, not by reason of their order. So it is those who have the cure of souls - along with bishops - who may preach. But that does not mean that they always did, or that a sermon was always preached in a parish church on every Sunday. There is the significant exception in a permission for a private chapel in a house by Bishop Grosseteste (Rotuli R Grosseteste, ed Davis, Cant & York Soc & Lincoln Record Society, 1913, p 12) that such a person should attend the parish church on certain festivals and "when there is a sermon".
At a rather later date Myrc's Instructions for Parish Priests suggests that the priest should preach on the Lord's Prayer and the Creed two or three times in the year (lines 404 ff) - and the seven sacraments also (lines 526ff) - but he does not imply a weekly sermon. His Festial was written to provide sermons to be read on Feast days. His Instructions imply that a good deal of the instruction of the parish priest would be done in the confessional.
Gordon Plumb
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