There can of course be no doubt that medieval preaching was closely and intimately linked to the Bible. By definition, preaching dealt with the ‘word of God’, as found in the books of holy scripture, both Hebrew and Christian, and proclaimed not just their teachings and ideas but their very words. From the beginning of the Christian church, whether in oral discourse or in written communications, preachers drew on scripture extensively. Jesus himself quoted the Jewish scriptures, and so did the apostles from the earliest days of the church onwards. Later theologians would define, with scholastic crispness, that ‘preaching is the announcement of the word of God to inform faith and morals’; hence scripture is the foundation of all sermon making, for the word of God is food for the life of our souls, a sound to ward off error, and a sword to cut back our vices. The question, then, is not whether the Bible was used in medieval preaching, but in what ways, to what extent and with what attitudes.

Such questions can be most fully answered with regard to Christian preaching in western Europe, which has been studied extensively and for which there is a wealth of documentation. For the use of the Bible in Jewish preaching in the medieval period, Marc Saperstein's studies reveal strong parallels between medieval Jewish and Christian preaching, such as: the connection between sermon and the biblical reading as part of the liturgy (here primarily the Torah or Pentateuch); the difficult and varying relationship between what was said in the sermon and surviving written documents; and the rise of the ‘thematic’ sermon (in Jewish preaching, only in the late fifteenth century). For preaching in the Byzantine East, however, comprehensive studies are lacking. It can be said, though, that there the ‘homily’ form (see below) continued in use through to the fourteenth century, together with other conventional types of sermons, such as encomia of saints or secular rulers, funeral speeches and others.

In Christian society, preaching is a formal response to the injunction the risen Christ had given to his apostles to ‘go out to the whole world and proclaim [praedicate] the Good News to all creation’ (Mark 16:15; cf. Matthew 10:16–17). Whatever form it has taken through history, its content or subject (the Good News, i.e. the word of God as revealed and deposited in Scripture) and its purpose (instruction and emotional appeal aiming at conversion and moral perfection) have remained constant elements. Preaching thus is an essential ministry that has been carried out since the beginnings of Christian history. From early times on, it was naturally accompanied by reflections and instructions on its nature and form. Thus, in his treatise on how to understand and explain Scripture, De doctrina christiana, Augustine devoted the last of four books to such questions as the relation between wisdom and eloquence, the various functions the latter might have, and the use of rhetorical art in preaching. In a more practical vein, Gregory the Great in his Cura pastoralis provided specific advice on what the spiritual shepherd (called praedicator in 3.19ff.) should say to various social and moral groups and types in his attempt to foster virtue and eradicate vice. And for many centuries church authorities collected homilies preached by the Fathers and made them available for official use in the liturgy. Yet in spite of such longstanding practice and concomitant instructions on how to carry it out, it was not until the late twelfth century that the conception of preaching as a rhetorical art gained its full realisation in the proclamation of the sermon as an art form which obeyed rules that could be taught to, and followed by, individual preachers.

As indicated, four sermons of the first set in MS Bodley 649 (O/1) also appear in MS Laud misc. 706. Patrick Horner, who has studied the latter manuscript in detail, describes it as “a composite manuscript assembled from sermons made and collected by Benedictine monks at Oxford in the fifteenth century.” According to an ex libris on its last folio, the book belonged to John Paunteley, Benedictine monk of St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, who had been ordained a priest in 1392 and incepted as “professor sacre pagine” at Oxford. On 3 May 1412 he preached the funeral sermon of his abbot, Walter Froucetur, which is preserved as R-3. Some of the sermons, however, may go back to earlier times. The first sermon here, on “How shall the realm stand?” and for the third Sunday of Lent, applies a story from Augustine's De urbis excidio to contemporary England and declares:

Against this danger, the preacher urges going to confession and prayer. Fear of an imminent French invasion disturbed England particularly in the late 1380s, and the sermon could well belong to that time.

The manuscript, consisting of several booklets, is written by several hands, all of the early fifteenth century.

Another unified sermon collection made in the second quarter of the fifteenth century may be the work of a collector who is known to us by name and whose interests, as they are reflected in a number of manuscripts that he owned or wrote himself, included the collecting of sermons. John Dygon studied at Oxford, where he is attested as having earned bachelor degrees in both laws. He must also have incepted as a master, probably of Arts, because in several subscriptions he calls himself “M[agister].” From 1406 to 1435 he held appointments in several parishes in southern dioceses, the last one being St. Andrew's, Holborn, London. Then he was admitted as the fifth recluse to a cell at the recently founded Carthusian priory at Sheen in Surrey, where he lived from 1435 until at least 1449.

Dygon has left various owner's notes and subscriptions in a number of manuscripts, many of which he gave to Magdalen College, Oxford. The notes are all written in the same hand, and this has been identified as Dygon's. They can be separated into two types: in one, besides calling himself Magister, he titles himself only presbiter; in the other he also mentions that he is a reclusus at Sheen. If this distinction is meaningful, it indicates that books with the first form were owned and written before he entered the charterhouse. In this case, Dygon's activity of collecting books and writing them reaches back into his period as a parish priest.

In the medieval university, giving sermons represented one of the basic academic actitivies, together with lectures and disputations. As Peter the Chanter put it famously near the end of the twelfth century, the graduate in theology had to be proficient in the acts of legere, disputare, praedicare. This highlights the fact that in the medieval university, preaching was the end to which all higher study of theology led. But not all university students worked to become full-blown theologians by incepting as masters. We have seen that, from the early fourteenth century on, monks were sent to the university primarily to learn how to preach; and recent studies of the educational organization of the mendicant orders point out that many friars similarly spent some time at the university, not to gain a higher degree but to receive the necessary theological training for their use as future lectors in convents and study houses. To the secular clergy, too, the possibility of some university study had opened up with the constitution Cum ex eo of Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, which made it possible for beneficed clergy to take a leave of absence in order to study at the university for a shorter or longer period; and episcopal records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are full of such dispensations. But whether a degree candidate or a priest who simply meant to deepen his theological knowledge, all students were exposed to a good deal of preaching.

Judging by the number of extant manuscripts as well as his own words, John Waldeby was one of the most popular preachers surveyed in this book, and he has deservedly drawn some scholarly attention. He entered the convent of the Austin friars in Lincoln in the early 1330s and then studied at Oxford, where he had became a doctor of theology by 1354. In 1354 he was at the convent in York and licensed to hear confessions. Except for a brief journey to the General Chapter of the Austin friars at Perugia in 1354, he stayed in York until his death shortly after 1372. Perhaps he served as prior provincial of the English Austin Friars in 1366. As he tells us himself, his preaching in York drew such large crowds that, in order to get some writing done, he had to withdraw to the quieter convent of Tickhill. He was highly esteemed by Thomas de la Mare, the powerful and well-known abbot of St Albans. The latter, during his nine-year tenure as prior of Tynemouth, in the 1340s, spent three years “studying how to preach the word of God, in both English and Latin,” for which he surrounded himself with “clerics and masters, both secular and mendicants” who were to teach him.

This fifteenth-century paper manuscript furnishes a unique and important insight into university preaching in the early decades of the century, specifically at Cambridge. Hard to read, and presenting its text in a highly abbreviated form, the volume contains a repertory of 156 sermons that I believe were preached in the academic years of 1417 and 1424–1425. With but few exceptions the sermons follow strictly the order of the Church year as well as the university calendar, with rubrics indicating the beginnings of terms. As a result, pieces de tempore and de sanctis and others for special occasions appear mixed together. All items are nothing but very short sermon notes, recording leading ideas, distinctions, authorities, and images “on the fly,” apparently as they caught the note-taker's attention and interest. The manuscript, however, is not a set of the preacher's original notes but clearly a copy of what the note-taker had heard from the pulpit. The notes for individual sermons vary in length from less than a line to over 114 lines. All bear an indication of the occasion on which they were preached, and nearly all record the sermon thema. Exceptions to the latter practice occur in five instances where the scribe records that a sermon is or was missing (“vacat sermo”), presumably indicating that the sermon either was not given (as in one case “propter pluuiam,” no. 65) or was not available to the scribe.

Alkerton (or Alkrynton) studied at Oxford in the 1370s and 1380s and had incepted in theology at Oxford by 1393. Serving as rector of various parishes in Essex, Gloucestershire, and Sussex, he also held a canonry at Chichester until his death (after 1415). In 1406 he preached at St. Paul's Cross, London, and became involved in a public controversy against the Lollard William Taylor. The text of this sermon has not yet come to light. The same is true of another sermon that he was asked to preach at St. Mary Spital, London, on 27 February 1415. In contrast to these, an earlier sermon preached at St. Mary Spital on Easter Monday, April 12, 1406, has been preserved, in both English (incomplete) and Latin. The latter, as was mentioned in the previous section, is V-34, where his name appears in the rubric. Though this sermon contains some lament at the evil times, it is essentially a devotional piece, developing the theme of pilgrimage on earth and giving a long speech of Christ at the Last Judgment.

In addition, Alkerton's name appears elsewhere and thus points to a fourth sermon of his homiletic work. A sermon on Ecce nunc dies salutis, which has been preserved as A-47 and W-163, develops the word “day” by dividing it into good (i.e., life in heaven), evil (the Last Judgment), and mixed (this present life).

This paper manuscript of the later fifteenth century contains a number of different materials, which are all theological in nature and potentially related to preaching. They have been collected in what is basically a notebook, whose quires vary in size and are marked consecutively by a medieval hand. Of interest here is the third main section of ten quires that range in length from eight to sixteen folios (ff. 209–323). This contains a random collection of sermons together with some theological extracts and quaestiones that are provided with subject headings (from f. 269 on; see below). It is the work of several fifteenth-century scribes. They tend to begin a sermon, and usually an extract, on a new page. Even where the material occupies only a few lines, the remainder of the folio is left blank. There are twenty-six sermons. The first eight, written by the same hand (ff. 209–224), are addressed to an academic audience and use such hyperbolic addresses as “Prehonorandi domini” or “Studiosissimi magistri.” The first, for 2 Advent, bears the rubric “Samelyn Oxon’”; others are said to have been preached in Latin at Oxford (3) or Cambridge (4, 6), and the last of this group presents itself as a sermo examinatorius (f. 222). They all have a strong theological flavor and draw heavily on the fathers in long quotations. The group of eight is further characterized by invoking the Blessed Trinity at the head of several pieces (2, 3, 7, 8).

With only one exception, the Latin sermon collections made during the decades in which Wyclif and the Lollards greatly affected Church life in England including preaching were, as their descriptions earlier in this book have shown, orthodox. We can now inquire what image of the Lollards they present, what controversial topics they raise, and at what level they do so.

The most outspoken texts in this respect are the macaronic sermons in O, which deal with the Lollards with regularity and condemn their teaching with fervor. All twenty-five pieces mention them by name and warn against their doctrines. The most outstanding sermon in this collection, both for commenting on the Lollards in detail and for its historical perspective, is O-6. Evidently destined for the third Sunday in Lent, it uses as its thema “A strong man armed guards his court” (Fortis armatus custodit atrium suum, Luke 11:21). It begins by retelling a story from 2 Maccabees: When King Antiochus had oppressed the Jews for a long time, God sent them a knight from heaven, seated on a horse, clothed in a white garment, armed in gold, and shaking a spear in his hand (cf. 2 Maccabees 11:8). This account is then moralized twice. First, Antiochus stands for the devil, and the heavenly knight for the Son of God, riding on the Cross, clothed in human flesh, armed with divinity, and shaking the spear of his passion and death to overcome the devil.

A native of Norfolk, Thomas Brinton became a Benedictine monk at the priory of Norwich, where he found not only a decent library but a learned environment, which he shared with one of the best Benedictine theologians of the later fourteenth century, the future cardinal Adam Easton. Apparently Brinton was sent to study, first at Cambridge – sermon 32 relates a story “tempore quo studui Cantabrigie” – and later to Oxford, where he incepted as doctor of canon law in 1364. By then he evidently enjoyed a reputation as preacher, for he was called home, with Adam Easton, “in order to preach the customary sermons in the cathedral.” Before and after his doctorate he spent several years at the papal curia at Avignon and in Rome, where he served as proctor of the general chapter of the English Benedictines and preached before the pope. In Rome he was also involved in the founding of what became the English College. In January of 1373 Pope Gregory XI appointed him bishop of Rochester, against the election of the priory monks, and for the next decade Brinton took part in a number of major political events of Church and state: the parliaments of 1376 and 1377, the peace negotiations with France (1380), the commission that tried the rebels of the Peasants’ Revolt (1381), and the Blackfriars Council, which condemned Wyclif's teaching (1382).

This paper manuscript was written later in the fifteenth century than Pembroke College 199. It contains seventy-one de tempore sermons written in two columns in one hand of mixed Anglicana and Secretary features. These are followed by copies of three more sermons by the French Dominican Guilelmus de Malliaco (died c. 1300), written in single columns in a late fifteenth-century Secretary hand, and a treatise on the Eucharist in the layout and script of the first hand. On the front flyleaf appears a list of the sermons, in scripts that correspond to those of the main text.

Of the seventy-one sermons, the first sixty-eight form a regular de tempore cycle from 1 Advent to Corpus Christi, while three added sermons (69–71) deal with the Passion (including Chambron's Good Friday sermon Quare rubrum found elsewhere). Many Sundays and major feasts have two or even three sermons, and their themata are taken from either the day's gospel or the epistle. Twenty sermons are addressed to Reuerendi, including one to Reuerendi magistri, while five contain the address form Karissimi (one of them has both). In the sermons shared with P1, the scribe of P2 frequently omits the address form Reuerendi mei, though conversely, in one case (P2–35) he has added it.

As already mentioned, P2 shares fourteen pieces with sermon cycle (2) of P1. In addition to sharing a number of sermons, both collections have two identical major features.

As one turns from such unified sermon collections as Waldeby's or Brinton's or Dygon's to the miscellaneous one of MS Balliol College 149, one enters a different world. This impression begins at the visual level. The volume is made up of two booklets, both of the fourteenth century. The first, with which alone we are concerned here (S, ff. 1–92v), contains twenty-three sermons. These are written in two different hands that change in the middle of a gathering: a fourteenth-century Anglicana text hand, used by someone who apparently tried to imitate a gothic textura and who begins his sermons with rather homespun enlarged and flourished capitals, yields on f. 75v to a more regular Secretary hand (possibly even two) of the same period, which wrote two sermons running to f. 84 (with a renvoi back to f. 77). Evidently the second scribe was also responsible for many annotations throughout the booklet and for the corrections made in the sermons written by the first hand, which at times are quite heavy. Other codicological features draw similar attention. At the time of binding, two bifolia got exchanged (the fourth bifolium in gatherings 4 and 5), and the error was noticed by a fifteenth-century annotator. Some text is missing and is said to be found “in papiro,” which is now lost. One sermon exists in two different versions.

Though writing at least a generation later than Repingdon, Felton produced a sermon collection that can profitably be compared with Repingdon's: it, too, is a temporal cycle and relies heavily on earlier works of the kind, but in contrast to Repingdon's its individual pieces are built very much like actual sermons.

John Felton was vicar of the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Oxford from 1397 to 1434. He evidently did not finish his university education, yet among his contemporaries and later he enjoyed the reputation of a great preacher and even of sanctity. In the short and conventional prologue to his sermon collection, which was finished in 1431, he tells us that he made a compilation of sermons based on the Sunday gospels through the year, and that he did so “from the morsels I have gathered that fell from the tables of my lords, namely, Januensis, Parisiensis, Lugdunensis, Odo, and others.” The result is a cycle of fifty-eight sermons following the regular sequence of the Church year and covering all Sundays as well as the feast of the Holy Innocents. For three Sundays, 4 Advent, Easter, and 5 Trinity, Felton furnished two sermons each. The second sermon for 4 Advent and that for Holy Innocents take their themata from the epistle reading of the day, but the other sermons are all based on the respective gospel lections.