Preaching in the Age of Chaucer: Selected Sermons in Translation (review)

This welcome anthology of late medieval sermons from England, in modern English translation, might well be considered as further fruits of the harvest: just three years ago, Siegfried Wenzel published his impressive study, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif (2005). From that work, and his career-long investigation of medieval preaching, Wenzel has now gleaned twenty-five texts, each of which he presents in clear, flexible English—no simple task in itself, as those who have dealt with such texts will attest. In light of the volume's stated purpose, namely, "to help modern students and general readers gain an impression of the riches as well as the nature of preaching in late medieval England in an easily accessible form," Wenzel has wisely chosen to limit the critical apparatus to a concise introduction to the forms and typical content of medieval sermons, brief, but pertinent headnotes and bibliographical references for each text, and appropriate footnotes.

The texts themselves offer a wide range of preachers, provenances, and occasions. There are, for example, sermons from prominent clergy such as Bishops Thomas Brinton and Richard Fitzralph, as well as from other well-known homilists: the Oxford parochial vicar John Felton, the itinerant Franciscan Nicholas Philip, the Augustinian canon John Mirk, even the controversial John Wyclif and his followers. The occasions extend from the regular preaching on Sundays throughout the Church's liturgical year and the commemoration of saints' feasts to other religious events such as a funeral, a visitation of a monastery and, much further afield, an academic speech.

But Wenzel has done much more than simply compile diverse examples of sermons. He has arranged his selections for instructive purposes. For instance, the first five texts trace the genesis of a sermon, beginning with a scriptural passage, followed by linear commentary on it (Glossa Ordinaria), then a formally organized sermon (which contains extensive excerpts from earlier homilists) provided for the use of preachers, and culminating with two examples of fully developed sermons based on a specific phrase or word from the original scriptural text. This delineation of the process of sermon-making enables the reader to see not only the centrality of scripture and the emergence of interpretive commonplaces, but also how preachers brought ingenuity and individuality to the tradition they worked in.

Wenzel has also selected sermons to demonstrate the dominant forms of medieval preaching—the ancient "homily," which basically offers a line-by-line explanation of a Biblical passage, both literal and figurative; and the modern university or scholastic "sermon," which concentrates on a brief Biblical phrase (or word) as a theme and from it develops a number of spiritual and moral reflections organized in a series of carefully arranged parts (divisions, etc.). The latter type, as Wenzel notes, can range from rather generic, even mechanical, formulations of doctrinal matters to the highly sophisticated rhetoric of special occasions such as the entrance of a nun into a religious order. Regardless of the skill of the individual presentation, readers will gain a genuine sense of the habits of mind that characterize these homilies, especially the figurative understanding of scripture and the scholastic penchant for categorizing and classifying knowledge. For those who admire the allegorical imagination of Langland and the numerological intricacy of Dante, these sermons will suggest the intellectual milieu from which they emerged.

Finally, the contents of these sermons offer readers a microcosm of many issues and concerns of late medieval England. As one would expect, religious matters dominate, whether it be basic pastoral instruction (enumerations of the articles of the Creed), or more extensive discussions of the sacraments (especially penance and the eucharist), or Wyclif's critique of mendicant claims of spiritual perfection through poverty and begging. But there is also social and political commentary ranging from the generic (the duty of clergy and nobility to contribute to the commonweal) to...