The Sermons of William Peraldus: An Appraisal by Siegfried Wenzel (review)

The French Dominican William Peraldus or Guillaume Peyraut (apparently known also in sermon-reading circles as Parisiensis or Parisius) belonged to that large section of highly-educated clergy whose members devoted their scholarly attention to scriptural exegesis and homiletics. The 'Sermo' series, of which this title is the thirteenth to appear, has boldly shouldered the task of unlocking, for an often sceptical modern readership, an intellectual environment in which the devoted study of Sacred Scripture and Tradition was considered not merely important, but supremely necessary for the fulfillment of the human person. Even for believers the chasm between that world of the High Middle Ages, with its sublime spiritual aspirations, and our own pragmatic and realistic (our words, not theirs!) comfort zone, is a challenge to cross.

Siegfried Wenzel's contribution to this is, in almost every respect, a model of good scholarship. Peraldus was extraordinarily prolific. His best-known works were Summae of virtues and vices, but he also wrote several cycles of sermons. Wenzel concentrates on two such cycles, which cover the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays of the year. He then homes in on two: the Epistle sermons for the first Sunday in Advent (Advent I) and the Gospel sermons for Advent III. The full texts are provided as appendices, together with his own close and accurate, if somewhat pedestrian, translations. There is extensive introductory material, as well as a selection of sermon material from other writers who appear to have been influenced by, and who sometimes quote, Peraldus's work. Two indexes—'General' and 'Manuscripts Cited'—and a full bibliography complete the picture. Oddly the bibliography also includes a list of manuscripts 'cited' (perhaps 'consulted' would be a better word, for the lists do not tally) as well as primary and secondary sources.

Peraldus of course wrote very much in the scholastic tradition: he dissects every verse of Scripture, analyses it, sorts its components into categories, extracts every possible interpretation, practical and mystical. I found myself thinking that he had found the perfect commentator in Siegfried Wenzel, who appears to have the same precise cast of mind. What a partnership! Perhaps the match is inevitable, for the close examination of hundreds, no doubt even thousands, of sermons is not an area of scholarship that would appeal to many. One can only admire his painstaking and careful devotedness.

There are a few areas in which the book might have been improved. Certain technical terms are to my mind overused: no doubt Wenzel would defend his use of thema throughout rather than theme, but surely it is unnecessary. Calling one of the most prolific writers of the age Januensis rather than by his more familiar name Jacobus a Voragine does seem a little affected. He is also very fond of 'pericope' for an extract from Scripture, but sometimes appears to extend its use as a collective term to cover the whole selection of daily liturgical readings, which somewhat blunts its force. But the greatest deficiency is in the area of clerical professional practice: one longs to know what precisely these 'sermons' were used for and by whom. They are not sermons in the sense that a modern reader would understand. Even to the medieval reader, we can be certain, they would lack that crisp didactic and rhetorical character that one expects in the authentic public preaching of Augustine or Ambrose. So they are not homilies either, a point that Wenzel concedes, nor mere postillationes. It appears, then, that they belong to a category, long since obsolete, of advisory notes and fodder for the construction of homilies and sermons (in the usual modern sense), the compilation and circulation of which must have been a major clerical 'industry' in the high Middle Ages. And they were written in Latin, the lingua franca of the time, a rather drab but reliably unambiguous register of the language whose practical functionality served the Church until long after the...