The Settings for Medieval Preaching

Most medieval sermons had a liturgical context. In late antiquity, bishops used sermons to teach orthodoxy to their often unruly audiences. In medieval monasteries, sermons were delivered by the abbot (or a monk designated by the abbot), either in the monastic chapter house or in the abbey church on Sundays. Chapter talks followed the biblical exegesis of patristic and monastic authors, many volumes of which rested alongside sermon collections in monastic libraries. Houghton MS Richardson 2 contains a twelfth-century glossed copy of the Gospel according to John from the Cistercian monastery of Morimondo (near Milan). Chapter talks were given daily, as were informal sermons (often called collationes) in the houses of mendicant orders. Outside religious houses, sermons were generally delivered during the Mass, after a reading from the Gospel. Sermons also found a myriad of other settings, accompanying religious rituals such as processions or serving to recruit crusaders, as in the sermons of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who preached the Second Crusade at Vézelay in 1147.

The faithful sometimes heard sermons outside of liturgical contexts. Thirteenth-century hermit monks such as John Buoni and Peter of the Morrone (1215–1296), better known as Pope Celestine V (1294), attracted crowds who came in search of healing and miracles, as well as to hear the preaching of a living saint. With the founding of the Franciscan and Dominican orders in the early thirteenth century, friars traveled to preach in burgeoning urban centers, frequently delivering sermons in open spaces and public squares, which could accommodate crowds too large for most churches.

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