Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England

Chapter 4: Macaronic Sermons

CHAPTER 4 Macaronic Sermons As we turn to fully macaronic sermons in particular and examine features already discussed in chapter 3-such as the makeup of individual manuscripts and the authorship, audience, and occasions of the sermons they preserve-the following pages may at first appear somewhat repetitive , but they will soon yield a more finely-tuned characterization of these sermons and lead us closer to such larger questions as how macaronic sermons came into being and whether they were actually preached in this form. Regarding their authorship, type C sermons share the uncertainties we have observed previously. The collection in manuscript Q in general is linked to the Franciscan friar Nicholas Philip, but whether he was their author is not clear. None of the pieces in Q connected with the names of Melton and Holbeche is fully macaronic. Similarly, the macaronic sermons in R and in set 1 of manuscript 0 have been tentatively connected with the Benedictine Paunteley; but whether he was their author is far from certain. All the other pieces are nameless. One reason for advancing Paunteley as the author of the 0 sermons was that three macaronic pieces in that manuscript also occur in R. There are two other cases in which a particular sermon has been preserved in multiple copies, both involving four different manuscripts each. Both are sermons on the passion of Christ, ostensibly made for Good Friday; Amore tongueo (B-088, D-2, S-07, and T-07) and Christus passus est pro nobis (H-25, S-OI, W-()()6, and Z-19). This sharing of evidently popular sermons is, again, in line with what we observed about sermon collections in general. The occasions for which individual type C sermons were intended also follow the pattern established more generally by the manuscripts 65 66 Macaronic Sermons themselves. Of the forty-three separate sermons, all but four can be confidently assigned to a specific occasion on the grounds of either a rubric or strong internal evidence.! Most of them are for Sundays ranging through the entire church year, from Advent to the post-Pentecostal season; two sermons are for saints' feasts, the Assumption and the feast of St. Mark; two sermons are for funerals; and one piece is directed to the clergy. Within this broad range is a very strong concentration on the Lenten season: thirty sermons, which is nearly three-fourths of the total of macaronic pieces, are for occasions from the first Sunday in Lent to Easter; they include at least five sermons for Good Friday and two for Easter Sunday.2 Both spread and concentration thus correspond exactly to the pattern we observed in the collections as a whole. In discussing the occasions and other aspects of macaronic sermons, it must be remembered that the manuscripts under consideration are not systematic collections that contain one or more sermons in due order for each and every occasion throughout the church year, whether it is Sundays , saints' feasts, or special occasions. Rather, the manuscripts that have preserved macaronic sermons show a decided predilection for certain occasions and concerns, which may be summed up as calls for repentance , meditation on the passion of Christ, and, to a lesser extent, praise of the Blessed Virgin. Though these matters are difficult to quantify, I believe macaronic sermons show a slight difference in this respect: they seem to place an even greater emphasis on calls to repentance and meditation on the passion than do the entire group of sermons that are collected, in whatever linguistic form, in these manuscripts. This observation actually applies to any sermons that contain a significant amount of English material, including those of types B and minimal and marginal C. It is thus fair to say that the Sundays of Lent, Good Friday, and Easter were favorite occasions for the production of linguistically mixed and, especially, fully macaronic sermons. Such an emphasis accounts for the experience I have had again and again: in reading through manuscripts with basically Latin sermons written in England during the four1 . Such as references to Christ's suffering "hodie" or calling to penitence "in hoc sacro tempore," though the latter could also refer to the Advent season. 2. The number of Good Friday sermons may actually be higher, because occasionally a sermon will be rubricked "in passione Domini," which can apply to both Passion Sunday or Good Friday. Macaronic Sermons 67 teenth and early fifteenth...