Three Sermons for Nova Festa, together with the Hamus Caritatis (review)

At some time towards the end of the fourteenth century, probably within the last two decades of that century, a certain John Mirk, canon then prior of the Augustinian house at Lilleshall in Shropshire, composed a series of sixty-four sermons in English, which he called the Festial, destined to be preached throughout the year. Mirk's principal source was the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1265), a work that exerted very considerable influence on late medieval religious thought and composition, a popularity reflected by the influence which Mirk's own composition enjoyed throughout the fifteenth century and beyond.

The Festial underwent a number of revisions (one in Mirk's own lifetime), was subsequently quarried by numerous sermon writers who both copied and adapted his texts, and was accorded the unusual distinction (for sermon collections) of being printed on three separate occasions: twice by Caxton, in 1483 and 1491 (designated F1 and F3 by Powell), and once by Theodoric Rood (and Thomas Hunte, a stationer) in 1486 (F2). The arrangement of Mirk's original text (version A) follows the course of the liturgical year, mixing saints' days with the major non-hagiographical feasts (Nativity, Circumcision, Lent, etc). The major revision, known as version B, exhibits a different principle of organization in that the Temporale and Sanctorale are clearly separated, the texts being presented in that order. It was to the B version that the printers looked in the constitution of their editions.

Of the printers under discussion Caxton is the more important. In the preparation of his second edition (F3), he would appear to have drawn heavily on the re-worked text established by Rood and Hunte (F2), rather than on his own first edition. The major difference, however, between F3 and the earlier editions is the addition in the former of four new sermons, providing preaching materials for three new feasts instituted in the second half of the fifteenth century: the Visitation of the Virgin (V), the Transfiguration of the Lord (T), and the Holy Name of Jesus (HN). The fourth item, a sermon entitled Hamus Caritatis (HC), the Hook of Love, was included to "[complement] the lay emphasis of the Visitation and Transfiguration sermons" (p. xxvii). It is these four sermons, published here for the first time, that are the object of Professor Powell's new MET edition.

As with previous volumes in this series, the present edition comprises five main parts: a substantial Introduction, which ranges widely over a number of important considerations; the Text; a full Commentary on the latter; a Glossary; and a Bibliography. It is a measure of the editor's thoroughness and painstaking attention to detail that the Text, which occupies twenty-one pages (running to a shade under 750 lines of prose), is accompanied by seventy-seven pages of critical apparatus.

After giving historical contexts for the new feasts, the editor, in the Introduction, provides a comprehensive discussion of the relationships between the three printed editions. In so doing, she draws attention to the text known as Quattuor Sermones (also published in the MET series), issued on two occasions at the same time as the Festial. This circumstance allows her to mount an effective argument for the likely provenance of both this text and that of the sermons: Syon Abbey, an early fifteenth-century royal foundation closely associated with the Bridgettine order. Thereafter, there are discussions of sermon structure, where it emerges that HN is more "academic" (p. xxiii) than either V or T, though all three draw on staple preaching authorities—Sts. Augustine, Bernard, and Thomas Aquinas.

In terms of style, too, HN is to be distinguished from both V and T. The former makes considerable use of a Latinate vocabulary and displays macaronic features. It is also noteworthy that it is made up of no fewer than nine exempla, three of which have resisted attempts at identification. V and T, on the other...