Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Catholic Preaching and Preachers Across Manuscript and Print C. 1450 to C. 1550 (Sermo, 17)

Description

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. Front Matter Veronica O’Mara and Patricia Stoop. Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Catholic Preaching and Preachers across
Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550) Anne T. Thayer. Books for Preaching and Preaching with Books. Late Medieval
Latin Printed Sermons and the
Witness of Thomas Swalwell of Durham Priory Veronica O’Mara. The Early Printed Sermon in England between 1483 and 1532. A Peculiar Phenomenon Jussi Hanska. Preaching in Finland on the Eve of the Reformation and Beyond. The Evidence from Manuscript
and Print Jonathan Adams. Christiern Pedersen’s Alle Epistler oc Euangelia (1515). Reading a Catholic Text in the Danish Reformation Christer Pahlmblad. The Word of God Purely Preached. Continuity and Change in the Postils
of the Swedish Reformation Adinel C. Dincă and Paula Cotoi. Latin Manuscript
and Printed Sermons in
Late Medieval
Transylvania (1470–1530) Oriol Catalán. Controversial Topics in the Sermons of Vicent Ferrer. From Manuscripts
to the Printing Press Sophie Delmas. From Nicolas de Biard’s Summa de abstinentia
to the Printed Dictionarius pauperum.
A Pastoral Compendium for Preachers Pietro Delcorno. A Forgotten Italian Bestseller.
Ludovico Pittorio’s Omiliario quadragisimale Ralf Lützelschwab. The Neglected Carmelites. Evidence for their Preaching Activities
in Late Medieval
Germany Natalija Ganina. Johannes Kreutzer. A Preacher in Strasbourg and Basel and
his Work in Manuscript
and Early Print Rita Voltmer. Instructio, correctio, and reformatio. Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg
and the Transmission of his Sermons Thom Mertens. The Gouda Gospel Sermons. The Glosses of a Successful Middle Dutch
Pericope Collection (1477–1553) Kees Schepers. Diverging Perceptions. Johannes Tauler in Sixteenth-Century
Printed Editions Patricia Stoop. Strategies of Publishing. The Case of Franciscus Costerus Indices