Theologians and preachers of Western Europe from the early thirteenth to the late fifteenth century developed and used a peculiar sermon form variously referred to as the modern, university, thematic, or scholastic sermon.¹ Typically, it begins with a short biblical text, divides it into several parts, and then develops the latter at greater or shorter length. These basic elements of thema, division, and development form a religious discourse that differs structurally from what is commonly called the homily, in which a biblical text, usually a longer lection, is explained, often along the four senses that Scripture can have, and applied...

If used to describe a particular literary genre,⁷ the labelars praedicandirefers to a work that deals with preaching, not letter-writing or poetry or logical argumentation, and presents itself as a treatise that describes and gives guidance – in other words furnishes a technique (ars) – for that activity. To do this it may embrace a multitude of aspects including the preacher’s moral life and study, his articulation and gestures while preaching, and the actual form of his sermon. The extant medieval works that are thus labelled by modern scholars deal with such aspects, even if not all of...

Severalartes praedicandirecognize the existence and use of different types of sermon structure, whether they are distinguished by their purpose (Chobham: instructing the ignorant, stirring up the lazy, correcting sinners, etc., 18–24), by their following formal artifices (Ars copiosa), or by their use of very specific features, such as kinds of concordance (Wales).²⁴In fact, some say that there are as many different kinds as there are competent preachers (Basevorn.243; Waleys.329). More commonly, several treatises recognize that different ways of preaching were used at different times in history. As already mentioned in the introduction, they speak of a...

That the structural elements surveyed in the preceding chapters were in fact used by late-medieval preachers can be shown by analysing an extant sermon text. For this I have chosen a sermon preached at the visitation of a monastic community, which has been preserved in a unique copy in Worcester, Cathedral Library, MS F.10, fols 248vb–50va (sermon W-130 in Wenzel 2005a). The text is very rich in its rhetorical structure. It is also faulty, in that it contains a number of evident errors, most likely made by the scribe, and thereby will demonstrate how readers and editors of medieval...

Monastic and university preaching before the fourteenth century knew not onlysermonesbut alsocollationes. University regulations as well as extant collections show specifically that the thema of asermoon a given day was taken up again in the afternoon or evening and developed in acollatio.¹⁷¹To what extent this distinction and practice was observed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in different countries, remains an open question – the evidence from actual sermons made during this period in England seems to show that it was not.¹⁷²However, a number ofartes praedicandihere studied includecollationes...