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I The Golden Chains of Citation / Quomodo vero praedicabunt nisi mittantur? [And how shall they preach unless they are sent?] Rom. ro:15 IN HIS DIALOGUES, GREGORY THE GREAT recounts at one point the story of a holy abbot, Equitius, and his preaching career. Like some later preachers, Equitius ran into difficulties over his right to proclaim the Word of God. Gregory tells Peter, A certain man called Felix ... since he observed that this venerable man Equitius was not in holy orders, and that he went around to various places preaching zealously , addressed him one day with the daring of familiarity, saying, "How do you, who are not in holy orders, and have not received license to preach from the bishop ofRoine under whom you live, presume to preach?" Compelled by this inquiry of his, the holy man revealed how he received the license to preach, saying, "I have myself considered these same things that you say to me. But one night a beautiful youth appeared to me in a vision, and placed on my tongue a physician's tool, a lancet, saying, 'Behold, I have put my words in your mouth; go forth and preach.' And from that day, even ifl wished to, I have not been able to keep silent about God."1 The holy man was fortunate to live in a time when, although his license to preach might be questioned, his unsupported assertion of immediate authorization from God was still likely to be accepted. Writing some eight centuries later, around 1320, Robert of Basevorn expressed what was by then a well-established distrust ofsuch visionary justifications. His Forma praedicandi holds, "It is not sufficient for someone to say that he is sent by God, unless he manifestly demonstrates it, for heretics often make this claim."2 By Robert's time it was not just the occasional holy freelancer who was in question, but whole crowds of new claimants to a preaching mission, and an individual's assertion ofhis or her right to preach had be- 14- Chapter I come not just the subject ofoccasional (and, Gregory implies, impudent) inquiry but the catalyst for intensive scrutiny of preaching itself. As the example of Equitius suggests, one difficulty for late medieval theorists was the acknowledged existence ofsacred precedents for inspired preaching. The need to manage the conflicting authorities that gave rise to such precedents instigated a large-scale effort to codifY and clarifY church law in the twelfth century and "free the church from its chains to the undifferentiated holy past."3 The desire to "differentiate," to create human jurisdictions that would check the proliferation of unlicensed speakers, is part ofwhat motivates the discussions of the nature and ownership of preaching in the later Middle Ages.4 In freeing the church from its chains, the theorists in effect created a new, singular chain of authorities that excluded certain older models in order to solidifY the contemporary assignment of ecclesiastical power.5 This chapter explores how changes in the conception of preachers' authority clustered around the problem of citation, of both authoritative words and authoritative individuals, as theorists wrestled with a central question: "How shall they preach unless they are sent?" The variety ofanswers over time points to important developments in the understanding of the office of preacher in the later Middle Ages. The preacher established his claims by re-presenting earlier models and above all the absent exemplar, Christ. This representation was simultaneously the heart of his office and its point ofgreatest vulnerability because the same absence that required the preacher's activity meant that it was exceptionally difficult to guarantee that activity or to exclude unlicensed practitioners from it. The potential for women and laymen to claim immediate authorization or sacred precedent increased the need for a scaffolding of theory and citation to support the claims of licensed, male preachers, a need that fueled the work of definition and distinction described above. If we look at the claims made for preachers who were "sent" in juxtaposition with the claims of those who were not, particularly women, the fragility of the licensed preachers' exclusive ownership of public religious speech becomes increasingly apparent. Medieval theorists' troubled attempts to regulate preachers' representations can be illuminated not only by what they say about unlicensed speakers, but also by recourse to theories of performative speech and in particular by the modern chain ofcitation that links Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and J. L. Austin. The points of contact between these modern auctoritates-the...

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