Medieval Education

Chapter 6: Sermons and Preaching in/and the Medieval University

        Sermons and Preaching in/and the Medieval University  .  S ermons and preaching1 had long and well-established ties with medieval schools and universities. There were institutional ties wherein preaching within the university was governed by statute. Ties between town and gown were created by university masters who also preached in the surrounding community. Moreover, there were the essential ties between sermon-making and the study of Scripture. Although masters in the schools did not devote much time in their lectures to instruction on preaching per se, they were teachers by example and in the composition of a variety of preaching aids that came to be identified with the ars praedicandi. Sermons and preaching were, therefore, essential to the religious, intellectual, and institutional life of the medieval university. From their earliest days, medieval schools emphasized the intimate relationship between teaching and preaching. The twelfth-century master Peter the Chanter identified the threefold requirement of the master of theology: The practice of Bible study consists in three things: reading [lectione ], disputation, preaching. . . . Reading is, as it were, the foundation and basement for what follows, for through it the rest is achieved. Disputation is the wall in the building of study, for nothing is fully understood or faithfully preached, if it is not first chewed by the tooth of disputation. Preaching, which is supported by the former, is the roof, sheltering the faithful from the heat and wind of temptation. We should preach after, not before, the readPAGE 83 ................. 11150$ $CH6 02-02-05 07:58:01 PS Medieval Education  ing of Holy Scripture and the investigation of doubtful matters by disputation (Verbum abbreviatum, PL , , trans. Smalley , ). Practices in the schools came to be formalized later in university statutes which identified two kinds of preaching.2 First were those sermons that all members of the university were required to attend on Sundays and feast days. These were official sermons given coram universitate , which from the fourteenth century were called sermones magistrales at Paris and sermo publicus or sermo generalis in Oxford statutes. The second usage applied to the sermon as an academic exercise in the faculty of theology, the sermones examinatorii in Oxford and Cambridge statutes. Bulaeus, in his history of the University of Paris, mentions the early custom of preaching sermons to masters and scholars in the schools of twelfth-century Paris on all major feast days, during Advent and Lent, and on the feast days of the patrons of the saints of the nations (Bulaeus –, :). Newly admitted students in the faculty of theology, for example, were required to preach. Students in theology had to preach at least once a year, and preaching competence was required for the granting of the license (doctorate) in theology (Denifle and Chatelain –, vol. , nos. , ). Masters and students in the theology faculty were also expected to attend university sermons (Denifle and Chatelain –, vol. , ). After , morning sermons at Paris were followed in the evening by the collatio, a sermon in which the preacher often took the theme of the morning sermon and expanded on it. Paris statutes of  were even more precise in calling for sermons to be given in the presence of masters and students in the church of the Dominicans or Franciscans, the College of Navarre, or some other church, such as Saint-Germain-desPre ́s (Denifle and Chatelain –, vol. , ). Various college statutes at Paris specifically directed students of grammar and arts to hear sermons on Sundays and feast days. Paris university statutes became the model for theological studies throughout medieval Europe and included provisions that governed preaching within the university. In fact, much of what we know about instruction and practices in the theological faculty at Paris is supplemented by references in the later statutes of Italian, French, and GerPAGE 84 ................. 11150$ $CH6 02-02-05 07:58:01 PS Sermons and Preaching in/and the Medieval University  man universities. Statutes of Bologna (), Toulouse (), Heidelberg (), Vienna (), and Cologne () followed the Paris model and frequently provide a more systematic elaboration of practices only briefly mentioned in the Paris documents (Asztalos , ). Oxford also followed the Paris model for the most part, certainly insofar as preaching was concerned. An important difference was that at Oxford the students lectured on the Sentences before lecturing on the Bible. The statutes of Oxford University in  further called for preaching in public before the university as a requirement for incepting in theology. Later statutes elaborated on this public preaching: ‘‘Those...