Vauchez abstract

St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Saints in Italian Preaching, c. 1240-1340

André Vauchez

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris

Among the saints of the Middle Ages, St. Francis of Assisi ranks among  those about whom the greatest number of medieval sermons can be found, especially in Italy.  Most were written by Friars Minor, but some were the works of members of other Mendicants orders –especially Dominicans – or of bishops e.g. Federico Visconti, archbishop of Pisa. Moreover a certain number of sermons – most of them are still unpublished -  were written in Italy around the same period about other saints – Anthony of Padua, Clare of Assisi, Louis of Anjou – or about lay saints connected with the Friars like Elizabeth of Hungary or Pietro Pettinaio.

We shall rely on those de sanctis sermons which have been published in order to establish the kind of hagiographic sources  - Vitae, miracles, canonization processes, legendaries – medieval preachers resorted to. We shall also analyze how they used these sources in order to demonstrate the sainthood of the men and women whose merits they were extolling: did these texts serve as mere exempla, allowing the preachers to render their sermons more vivid and concrete? Or did they occasionally prove to be genuine sources of inspiration?

Bériou abstract

Preaching about the Sanctity of St. Dominic, Founder of the Order of Preachers

Nicole Bériou

University of Lyon 2; Director, Institut de recherches et d’histoire des textes; Director of Studies, École pratique des hautes études

The cult in honor of St. Dominic (d. 1221) arose out of preaching without words. His body was at first buried without any special precautions, but on the day of the translation of his remains to the church of the Dominican convent in Bologna (23 May 1233), the body emitted an odor that attested to his sanctity in the presence of all the stupefied witnesses to the miracle. A year later, 3 July 1234, Gregory IX proclaimed him a saint after a short canonization process; according to very recently established procedures, it was based on interrogations of the men and women who had known him. Two modes of representing his sanctity resulted in preaching that was distributed over two liturgical feasts. The motif of the miraculous odor is attested at the outset, and not only from sermons for the feast of the translation. The learned construction of a “modern” figure of sanctity predominates, such as it is abridged in the bull Fons sapientiae, but not without the risk of limiting the evocation of Dominic to a sketch without distinctive traits, an inevitable echo of his own discretion. The selection of characteristics chosen acquires meaning through its repetitive character: the man perfect in the three states of life that he experienced (the lay person, the canon, the apostolic man), but the man of the Gospel above all. As much a leading light on earth as a militant knight armed with the sword of the word, he is clearly the destroyer of heretics (his own book survived the trial by fire) and often also a living reproach to bad prelates. (Active by day, engaged, attentive to others, and compassionate, he reserves the night for fervent prayer, which dries out the damp clothing that he wears.) Before images and legends fixed these anecdotes and others in memory, sermons accorded them a privileged place. If the preachers who consider the sanctity of Dominic from the outside (namely secular clergy) represent his preaching in their sermons as a reflection of their own (preaching that the saint illustrates but everyone attends), the Dominicans distinguished themselves by the place they accorded to their order. Established by St. Dominic, but especially in conformity with the Fons sapientiae and The Book of Jordan of Saxony, and willed by God, the order becomes in many cases the principal subject of their discourse.

Carruthers abstract

‘I preach not, Sir, I come in no pulpit’: Margery Kempe as Saint and Preacher

Leo Carruthers

University of Paris IV, Sorbonne

The paper will examine Margery Kempe’s image as a mystic and a preacher in a social and religious context which made her words and actions highly contentious. However much she may have rejected such claims, the autobiography of 1436-38 does indeed represent her as both a saint and a preacher. She describes her complex religious experiences in detail, leaving no doubt that she saw herself as God’s chosen instrument, though she was fully aware that her detractors did not accept this view. Her devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and her frequent communication with them in prayer, demonstrate the influence of hagiography on the popular imagination, though the automatic control she exercised over this otherworldly contact raises issues of self-delusion and wish-fulfillment.

For an unlettered laywoman Margery displays unusual familiarity with earlier mystical writings in English, which had been read out to her by a priest. She adopted St Bridget of Sweden as a model with whom she liked to identify. She was a noted traveler in foreign parts, making pilgrimages to Rome, Compostella and Jerusalem, at a time when such journeys were difficult and dangerous, all the more so for a woman on her own. It was in Jerusalem that her emotional outbursts first began, which most witnesses found very distressing if not absolutely diabolical, casting much doubt on the authenticity of her mystical experience.

Margery was a fervent devotee of good sermons which she liked to hear and repeat, so much so that she left herself open to accusations of unlawfully preaching. Yet she strongly upheld her personal orthodoxy and denied that she ever preached, saying that she “came in no pulpit” and limited herself to “communication and good words”. She sometimes involved priests and preachers in controversy. Subject more than once to ecclesiastical enquiry, she was obliged to refute her accusers publicly, but nevertheless went on proclaiming the word of God whenever she thought it right to do so. She therefore provides us with unusual insight into some of the possible effects of preaching in medieval religious culture and social life.

Debby abstract

The Cult of St. Clare of Assisi in Early Modern Italy

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

St. Clare of Assisi (1193-1253) has been experiencing a certain renaissance in recent years, with extensive monographs and editions of her works having been published. Notwithstanding the wealth of visual and literary material attesting to St. Clare's dominant position during the Catholic Reformation, almost nothing has been written on the cult of St. Clare in the Early Modern period. The paper will chart the story of St. Clare beyond the Middle Ages into the modern world as it appears in artistic imagery, hagiographic sources, preached sermons, theatrical performances and religious processions. I shall begin with a discussion of the medieval tradition as an essential background against which to highlight points of innovation and continuity with the Early Modern tradition. The representation of St. Clare appeared in few medieval artistic examples, but thereafter the saint almost "disappeared" for several centuries. The cult of the saint reappeared in the Italian visual tradition at the end of the fifteenth century in isolated examples, and it became especially popular from the late sixteenth century. Thereafter, it was diffused through various media, such as panels, frescoes, drawings and prints. The cult of St. Clare reappeared in Early Modern Italian art due to the activity of Franciscan Observant preachers and, later, Capuchin and Jesuit preachers; they presented St. Clare as a new protector against the Turks, who were threatening Europe at that time. In this context, St. Clare became a Christian crusader heroine defending Christianity against the infidels as a symbol of post-Tridentine Catholic theology and its adoration of the Host. St. Clare was thus no longer depicted as an ascetic mystical saint but rather as an active heroine of Christianity.

Ferzoco abstract

Late Medieval and Early Modern Preaching for Unpopular Cults: The Case of Pope Celestine V

George Ferzoco

University of Bristol

Canonization bulls provided material for bishops and priests throughout Christendom to preach on relevant feast days for new saints, and material from these bulls can be found in sermons. However, not all saints were canonized equally: some had cults that exploded onto the devotional scene, whereas others faltered or failed to attract devotees. One signifier of a ‘failed’ saint’s cult is the comparative paucity of sermons related to him or her. We have well over a thousand different sermons, from the late medieval and early modern periods, dedicated to Francis of Assisi, whereas it is difficult to find any at all dedicated to the feasts of saints such as Peter of the Morrone, more commonly as Pope Celestine the Fifth. Commonly held by modern readers of Dante to be the person identified as ‘he who through cowardice made the great refusal’, we find a majority – but far from a unanimity -- of medieval commentators to have been sympathetic to the figure of an austere holy man who, after sixty years as a hermit, was elected pope only to become the sole person ever to resign that position voluntarily. Strikingly, almost no sermons dedicated to him have survived. This paper will endeavor to explain and illustrate this homiletic curiosity.

Howard abstract

‘Adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum’: Preaching and the Actualization of the Holy in Renaissance Florence

Peter Howard

Monash University

Sometime in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, Fra Antonino Pierozzi OP - prominent reformer and eventually archbishop of Florence – preached on a theme drawn from the 5^th psalm, and explored the meaning of activity proper for churches.  A church, we are told, was not a place for business or chatter, but for a devotion that was both interior and external.  With a veiled reference to two separate, well-known stories - the expulsion of tax collectors and moneylenders from the temple, and of the adolescent Jesus discoursing to the elders in the temple - Fra Antonino instructs his hearers on the context of appropriate behaviour in church. Ecclesiastical space was for teaching and preaching - both verbally and visually – and for devotion.   It was for preachers, artists and devotees.

This prominent and influential preacher draws striking parallels between the methods employed by preacher and artist alike to develop their themes, and goes on to examine the stance of the viewer before an image: “One should adore with the soul through devotion…. with the body by genuflecting, prostrating and suchlike…”.

The proposed paper will examine Fra Antonino’s sermon in detail as a unique entree into the perceptual world of Renaissance Florentines, at least as envisaged by the city’s archbishop.  The study will examine the roots and developments proffered by the preacher’s psychology of representation and its implications for our understanding of developments in devotional art in the fifteenth century.

The study will add further to our understanding of the way in which Florentines understood the actualization of the sacred through visualization at a time when painting in Florence was undergoing rapid change.

Kelly abstract

The Cult of St. Donatus at Benevento

Thomas Forrest Kelly

Harvard University

Donatus, the fourth-century bishop of Arezzo and that city’s patron saint, is venerated widely, but most original liturgical materials are found in the two Tuscan offices known mostly in manuscripts of Arezzo, Florence, and Siena. Owing to the thorough work of Pierluigi Licciardello and Giovanni Alpigiano, the life, the versions of the vita, and the Tuscan offices, are well understood. Recently, another office has been found in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Benevento; this paper will present this office, its relation to the various vitae and other offices, and attempt to understand how the cult of the Tuscan bishop should come to occupy an important place so far from home.

Matter abstract

Lucia Brocadelli: Autobiographical Preacher of the Early Modern Lombard Courts

E. Ann Matter

University of Pennsylvania

Among "Le Sante Vive," the live women saints of early modern Italy, Lucia Brocadelli (d. 1545) is an especially revealing example of women's literacy. This Dominican Penitent was a follower of Savonarola, the Court Prophet of Ferrara, and a favorite of Duke Ercole I d'Este, "Ercole il Magnifico."  She was famous from Italy to Bohemia, and greatly revered in her own time.  Suor Lucia was the author of two autobiographical works: "Seven Revelations," and a "Vita."  The "Revelations" is found in an autograph manuscript in Pavia, and has been published in Italian and translated into English; while the "Vita," extant in a later copy (said to be copied from an autograph) in Bologna, is only now being critically edited.  Both are lively texts, written in an Italian that uses dialect forms, but also quotes Savonarola in Italian and the Bible in Latin, showing the wide range of Lucia's literary habits.  My paper will describe these texts, with particular attention to the format of the manuscripts and the peculiarities of the Italian language used and the Latin Bible quoted.  My goal is to help illuminate what "literacy" meant in Lucia's intellectual and religious context, including her use of sources, and her mastery of different linguistic forms.

McGinn abstract

Mary as Model of Mystical Perfection in the Arnhem Mystical Sermons
Bernard McGinn

University of Chicago (emeritus)

The "Arnhem Mystical Sermons" are a collection of 162 Dutch sermons surviving in a single manuscript now in the Royal Library at the Hague. They were produced in the convent of St. Agnes, a house of Augustinian Canonesses at Arnhem, about the middle of the sixteenth century (ca. 1540-50). Long neglected (though an edition is imminent), these sermons form one of the most interesting collections of late medieval mystical sermons. A prominent feature of the sermons is a form of imitatio Christi based on interiorization of the meaning of the feasts of the liturgical year. Also prominent is a distinctive form of imitatio Mariae, that is, modeling one's interior life on the Virgin as the ideal mystic. This paper will look at the role of Mary in selected sermons in this corpus (several Advent sermons, the Christmas sermons, the one Easter sermon, and especially the sermon for the feast of the Assumption).

Mooney abstract

Reinventing Clare of Assisi in Late Medieval Sermons, Art, and Hagiography

Catherine Mooney

Boston College

Clare of Assisi (c. 1193-1253) has traditionally been known as the female and lesser counterpart of the towering medieval saint, Francis of Assisi.  Recent historical investigations, drawing on Clare’s writings, papal letters, and other historical documents, have challenged her status as the “founder” of the Order of San Damiano, and thrown new light on her struggle to defend her community of San Damiano’s radical poverty and its place alongside Francis’s Lesser Brothers.

Drawing on hagiographic vitae, a vita-panel-painting, and sermons, I will show how this historical Clare was quickly transformed after her death into a fictionalized, ecclesial Clare more amenable to the agendas of the papacy, preachers, and others.

Muessig abstract

Sermons on the Cross: Ideals of Sanctity and Personal Devotion in Late Medieval Italy

Carolyn Muessig

University of Bristol

In her article “Preaching the Cross: Liturgy and Crusade Propaganda,” Medieval Sermon Studies 53 (2009): 11-32, Beverly Kienzle demonstrated the importance of preaching the Cross in the devotional world of medieval men and women. Building on Professor Kienzle’s article, this paper will focus on sermons by Italian preachers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who preached expressive homilies on how the individual could aspire to Christ-like perfection. Many of these sermons encapsulate the interiority pursued by late medieval Italian men and women in their endeavor to achieve the ideal of imitatio Christi. Particular focus will be given to sermons on the Invention of the True Cross as it was this liturgical feast that encouraged individuals to follow as closely as possible in the divine footsteps of Christ. Although an array of sermons and preachers will be analyzed, stress will be placed on Dominican preaching which provides abundant examples of how the Cross was to be the starting and ending reference point for all Christian behavior.

Rusconi abstract

The Last Sermon: Antichrist Preaching in Late Medieval and Renaissance Representations

Roberto Rusconi

Università Roma Tre

Around the middle of the fourteenth century, some manuscripts containing religious works with didactic purposes made their appearance in Southern Germany. Their main feature consisted in the tight relationship between text and illustration, and the use of the vernacular. In Bavaria a Life of the Antichrist had a very favorable reception among its potential readers. In a few decades this illustrated text was reproduced through all stages of the introduction of printing. The unknown author, probably a clergyman, delineated a true "antichristology” - or a “Gegenheiligengeschichte”, outlining essentially a kind of anti-hagiographical legend. The theme of the preaching runs along the structure and the articulation of this legend of a false Messiah. His mission is to convert the people through the preaching of his false doctrine. According to a common iconography of the late Middle Ages, he was represented as a sort of official preacher, who spoke from a pulpit erected outdoors in front of different audiences.

In the last decades of the fifteenth century some editions appeared in France with a very different inspiration. They were copied in Italy in the same period and also in England before the Reformation. In the iconographic tradition of these texts the Antichrist is referred as a royal figure. It is interesting to note that, at least in one case, its role as one who leads his followers to deviate from the true faith is reconnected to an instruction given by a pulpit. He was represented like a preacher who "reverses" the true faith, wearing a crown and ermine, giving money to his audience, while the statues of St. Peter and of St. Paul lie shattered on the ground.

Between 1494 and 1504 the Florentine Luca Signorelli painted the walls of the Cappella Nova dedicated to St. Brizio in the cathedral of Orvieto, on the border between Umbria and Tuscany. The eschatological program executed by the painter appeared unique for its breadth in representing the latest events in the history, between the end of the world and the last judgment. On the wall Signorelli painted the Deeds of the Antichrist: a subject that until then had been entrusted only to the miniatures in the manuscripts and, more recently, to the engravings in printed books. The image of the Antichrist who preaches, for his ostentatious Christic iconography, referred to the large iconographic parallels between the deeds of the Christ and of the deeds of Antichrist.

Lucas Cranach illustrated with its engravings the Passional Christi und Antichristi by Martin Luther, printed in German and Latin. Following the heritage of the religious reformation in Bohemia inspired to Jan Hus, the role of the Antichrist and of his preaching were deeply changed, with its anti-papal orientation.

Thayer abstract

Mary in the Margins: Thomas Swalwell’s Annotations on the Virgin

Anne Thayer

Lancaster Theological Seminary

Thomas Swalwell, an English Benedictine monk (d. 1539), was an avid reader and annotator of books of sermons, theology and biblical studies. His marginalia reveal him to be very diligent, reading carefully and selecting material for detailed study and subsequent use in his various pastoral tasks, especially preaching. This paper will examine Swalwell’s selections of materials pertaining to Mary. Swalwell highlights a variety of traditional tropes pertaining to Mary, such as the various ways she is “blessed among women” and the ways she is “a ue,” without woe. At the same time, Swalwell skips over whole treatises and selected chapters pertaining to Mary in his volumes, focusing on biblical material over devotional enthusiasm. Although he recognizes Mary’s usefulness in theological argument (e.g. the real presence in the eucharist is like the two natures of Christ in her womb), he ultimately stresses her exemplary life for Christians (e.g. going to visit Elizabeth teaches the importance of keeping good company). While Alan Piper has argued that Swalwell’s “temperament remains stubbornly hidden” despite his diligent annotations, his treatment of Mary suggests a tempered and Christocentric piety, guided by the feasts of the Church, fitting for one who practiced his devotions, according to the Rites of Durham, in a chapel “hauing in it an altar and the roode or picture of our sauiour ... the said Rood hauing marueilous sumptuous furniture for festiuall dayes belonginge to it.”