Medieval Preachers and Their Sermons

elementary

enter learning outcome code/codes

According to Wikipedia in modern language sermon is "a lengthy or tedious speech delivered with great passion, by any person, to an uninterested audience". But sermons do not have to be boring. In fact they are one of the most fascinating sources giving us an insight into daily life and a way of thinking of ordinary people in the Middle Ages. It is so because they were the most widespread genre of medieva lLiterature and nearly the only link between educated latin culture and illiterate people. At the times without television, radio, Interenet and newspapers sermons became not only a source of religious knowledge and moral instruction but also of knowledge about natural world, history, geography, physics and economy. The collections of sermons became bestsellers copied and printed in houndreds of copies for many centuries.

According to Wikipedia in modern language sermon is "a lengthy or tedious speech delivered with great passion, by any person, to an uninterested audience". But sermons do not have to be boring. In fact they are one of the most fascinating sources giving us an insight into daily life and a way of thinking of ordinary people in the Middle Ages. It is so because they were the most widespread genre of medieva lLiterature and nearly the only link between educated latin culture and illiterate people. At the times without television, radio, Interenet and newspapers sermons became not only a source of religious knowledge and moral instruction but also of knowledge about natural world, history, geography, physics and economy. The collections of sermons became bestsellers copied and printed in houndreds of copies for many centuries. During the course we will look into different types of sermos preached to a different recipients and try to recostruct a practice of preaching during the late MIddle Ages.

David d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars. Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985

Katherine Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in the later Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 1997

Preaching, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Muessig, Leiden - Boston - Köln, 2001

Modern Questions about Medieval Sermons. Essays on Marriage, Death, History and Sanctity, ed. N. Bériou et D. d’Avray, Spolète, 1994.

Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England. Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

1. active participation in classes

2. a presentation of the selected sermons which shall contain:

- information about the author

- presentation of the structure

- presentation of the rethorical figures

- analyses of the content

- a bibliogragaphical information (at least three artciles or books)