Between God and Man

Foreword

FOREWORD James M. Powell The study of the role of preaching is central to an understanding of the nature of the church.1 The New Testament makes clear that preaching occupied an important place in the creation of the church.While there are numerous mentions and even summaries of preaching in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles , the liturgical and sacramental aspect of the church received much less attention in these sources. Yet it was precisely this sacramental and liturgical church that emerged most clearly in the fourth century, after the grant of toleration by the Emperor Constantine . For a long time, there was a tendency to criticize the Middle Ages for this emphasis and its seeming neglect of preaching , particularly during the intense debates over religion in the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. Protestants sought precedents for their preaching in the primitive church and identified with heretical groups like the Waldensians or the Lollards, who were known for their preaching.The opposition of the church to their preaching was seen as confirmation of Protestant criticism. Yet, this view ignored the vital preaching tradition in the medieval church especially after the mid-eleventh century.2 From the earliest Christian centuries, clergy and laity had found it necessary to adapt to changing situations thrust on them by the instability of the late antique and early medieval Roman world.We know too little about the changes that occurred as the church moved from Roman audiences to those composed of Germanic vii barbarians. What we do know suggests efforts to reach out more effectively to an uneducated audience. The numerous initiatives of missionaries from Ireland to continental Europe pointed the way for new approaches to evangelization. Conversion was at first directed at the leaders of the Germanic tribes rather than at the masses. The conversion of the latter was the work of a gradually formed local clergy, both monastic and secular, who sought to communicate the fundamentals of Christianity in images and metaphors , often in poetic and alliterative terms that could be retained in memory and thus entered into the cultural savings accounts that were slowly being amassed in the period from the seventh through the tenth centuries. Of the preaching of this period, we have only those survivals that were the most valued exemplars.3 By the early eleventh century, the process of evangelization had begun to reach even into the backwaters and to produce unique individuals committed to the kind of monastic spirituality that sprang from an intense individual experience.They found their inspiration in early monastic and eremetical experience, but they were addressing concerns that were part of their own age. Expanding population and increased prosperity, based largely on income from agriculture, made it possible and even imperative to focus on solutions to societal problems. Monasticism inspired many of those seeking a better way.4 John Gualbert, Dominic of Sora, Robert of Arbrissel, to name a few, were important to a revival of preaching that reached beyond the boundaries between the monastery and the world.5 One important characteristic of this period was the formation of new kinds of religious communities. The range of such activity, from the foundation of the Cistercians and the Premonstratensians to cathedral canonries and lay confraternities , reached a large segment of society. The greatest preacher of the age was a Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux. During this same period, the crusade provided another stimulus to preaching . Pope Urban II himself had begun by preaching the crusade at the Council of Clermont in .6 Increasingly, this new religiosity viii  was directed toward remaking the world into a kind of ideal monastic community. The potential of this transformation for solving the problems of a world beset by violence and poverty was grasped by such popular figures as Peter Valdes and Arnold of Brescia. Their extremism ought not blind us to the strong ties between their message and that of the reformers. They were not unique in their emphasis on preaching.Their voices are often difficult to distinguish from others whose orthodoxy was never challenged . From the mid-eleventh century and even earlier in some cases, cathedral and monastic schools had been important centers for the education of preachers. These schools were repositories of studies in grammar and rhetoric, based upon both classical and Carolingian sources. In the second half of the twelfth century, the first universities were developing in...