BiblioVault - Books about Sermons, Medieval

Between God and Man

Pope Innocent III

Catholic University of America Press, 2004

The sermons presented in this rich collection cast a clearer light on Innocent's concept of what his duties were as priest and bishop.

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Macaronic Sermons

Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England

Siegfried Wenzel

University of Michigan Press, 2010

Siegfried Wenzel's groundbreaking study seeks to describe and analyze the linguistically mixed, or macaronic, sermons in late fourteenth-century England. Not only are these works of considerable religious interest, they provide extensive information on their literary, linguistic, and cultural milieux.

Macaronic Sermons begins by offering a typology of such works: those in which English words offer glosses, or offer structural functions, or offer neither of the two but yet are syntactically integrated. This last group is then examined in detail: reasons are given for this usage and for its origins, based on the realities of fourteenth-century England.

Siefriend Wenzel draws valuable conclusions about the linguistic status quo of the era, together with the extent of education, the audiences' expectations, and the ways in which the authors' minds worked.

Obviously of interest to scholars and students of early English literature, Macaronic Sermons also contains much valuable information for specialists in language development or oral theory, and for those interested in multicultural societies.

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The Old English Catholic Homilies

The First Series

Aelfric

Harvard University Press, 2024

A contemporary edition and translation of one of the great monuments of Old English literary and religious culture.

The homilies of the monk Ælfric, written in the last decade of the tenth century, offer some of the most important prose writing in Old English. They convey mainstream Christian thought at the turn of the millennium, a distillation of the spiritual inheritance of the English Church before the Norman Conquest and during a time of monastic reform. The homilies cover a broad range of topics, from biblical exegesis to saints’ lives to general Christian history, with a strong focus on the Gospel reading at Mass, explained in language that laypeople could understand. Ælfric is famous for his lucid prose, which he later developed into a rhythmical and alliterative style that has often been likened to verse.

In his first series of Catholic Homilies, Ælfric drew on the works of Church Fathers such as Augustine, Gregory, and Bede to create forty sermons for use throughout the church year. This is the first complete translation of the Catholic Homilies since 1844, presented alongside the newly edited Old English text.

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Preaching in the Age of Chaucer

Selected Sermons in Translation (Medieval Texts in Translation Series)

Siegfried Wenzel

Catholic University of America Press, 2008

Introducing modern readers to the riches of preaching in later medieval England, distinguished scholar Siegfried Wenzel offers translations of twenty-five Latin sermons written between 1350 and 1450. T

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Tradition And Belief

Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Clara A. Lees

University of Minnesota Press, 1999

Looks at early religious texts and their influence on medieval literature and culture.

Looks at early religious texts and their influence on medieval literature and culture.

In this major study of Anglo-Saxon religious texts-sermons, homilies, and saints’ lives written in Old English-Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England. By placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of culture.To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church-its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England.The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such-and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics-the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.ISBN 0-8166-3002-X Cloth £34.50 $49.95xxISBN 0-8166-3003-8 Paper £14.00 $19.95x232 Pages 5 7/8 x 9 NovemberMedieval Cultures Series, volume 19Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press

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