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

This latest book from Siegfried Wenzel is a remarkably engaging and useful collection of selected sermons from the "Age of Chaucer," that is, from roughly the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries. More than simply a florilegium, Preaching in the Age of Chaucerprovides a clear and comprehensible overview of how sermons were constructed and the range of their expressive registers in an era that is rightly called "the golden age of preaching in (later) medieval England" (p. xiv).

The book is divided into four parts. Part I,"From Scripture to Sermon,"provides the vulgate Gospel lection for the third Sunday in Lent along with its gloss in the Glossa Ordinariaand three sermons on the lection, showing how a medieval sermon developed from reading to homily. Parts II and III provide sample sermons from the liturgical year (from Advent to Trinity Sunday) and for various saints' feasts (the Blessed Virgin, St. Katherine, and St. John the Baptist). Part IV collects sermons for various extraordinary occasions such as a funeral, a clerical convocation, a monastic visitation, and the enclosure of a nun. Each selection is prefaced by a brief headnote and bibliography, and there is also a brief but useful general preface laying out the importance of preaching in late-medieval England. The first section of the book is extremely helpful for understanding the construction of a sermon, while the main parts provide a generous sample of the major extant preachers ranging from the orthodox to the heterodox. These include John Felton, Thomas Brinton, Richard Fitzralph, John Mirk, John Wyclif, and others, as well as several anonymous sermons. Indeed, most of Wenzel's selections are still to be found only in manuscript, so the text has the further advantage of making available many previously unedited and untranslated works. Unobtrusive footnotes help with points of difficulty and alert the reader to particularities or difficulties in the Latin. Scriptural references and citations of the church fathers are made clear throughout, and the sermons themselves are everywhere translated with clarity and fluency.

The collection is thus a kind of introductory vade mecumfor the truly great wealth of preaching literature extant from the period, one that can find ready use in a range of settings. Its title notwithstanding, it can be an excellent resource not only for classes in literature but also for history, rhetoric, homiletics, and medieval church doctrine. While all of the selections are of a set and recognizable form, the real pleasure of the sermons lies in their diversity and eloquence. They include macaronic sermons combining Latin with vernacular English and song lyrics (as in selections 7, 8, and especially 10—an anonymous Good Friday sermon); sermons with polemical force and political commentary (selection 14 from Wyclif and 21 from Brinton; also the latter parts of selection 15, Dygon's sermon on the Annunciation of the Virgin); sermons ranging from bare outlines to full disquisitions (selections 17 and 18, both by Fitzralph); and sermons extending from the theologically astute to the academically playful (like selection 25, a particularly witty speech by the Dominican Ralph Frisby). In short, Preaching in the Age of Chaucermakes available a delightfully wide range of preachers' work in an attractive format that is both scholarly and accessible. As with Wenzel's previous work, it is a substantial contribution to our better understanding of this important medieval genre.