Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Catholic Preaching and Preachers Across Manuscript and Print C. 1450 to C. 1550 (Sermo, 17)

This volume concentrates on how the sermon, a pivotal element in mass communication, aimed to shape the people of Europe. Rather than setting up the usual binary divides, it highlights the linguistic complications, the textual inter-relationships, the confessional cross-currents, and the variations between public and private sermon dissemination operating at different rates and with variable results throughout Europe. Effectively the emphasis here is on how Catholic preachers and Catholic preaching carried on in the period between the handwritten and the printed sermon, a time when not only the mode of production was changing but when the very purpose and meaning of preaching itself would soon alter in a western Christian world that was becoming no longer completely Catholic. By examining case-studies chosen from countries with contrasting manuscript and printing traditions (Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, Romania, Spain, and Sweden), we aim to examine some of the main historical, literary, and theological factors in the development of the sermon in Latin and the vernaculars, which is itself in the process of changing formats, and sometimes languages, at a time of religious ferment from the advent of print to the death of Martin Luther. These essays, which are effectively in dialogue with each other, are divided into geographical/linguistic sections organized along broadly chronological lines. They circulate from the peripheries of Europe to the centre, moving from areas where evidence is now scarce to situations of thriving production. Front Matter 1 Veronica O’Mara and Patricia Stoop. Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550) 17 Anne T. Thayer. Books for Preaching and Preaching with Books. Late Medieval Latin Printed Sermons and the Witness of Thomas Swalwell of Durham Priory 49 Veronica O’Mara. The Early Printed Sermon in England between 1483 and 1532. A Peculiar Phenomenon 71 Jussi Hanska. Preaching in Finland on the Eve of the Reformation and Beyond. The Evidence from Manuscript and Print 105 Jonathan Adams. Christiern Pedersen’s Alle Epistler oc Euangelia (1515). Reading a Catholic Text in the Danish Reformation 133 Christer Pahlmblad. The Word of God Purely Preached. Continuity and Change in the Postils of the Swedish Reformation 161 Adinel C. Dincă and Paula Cotoi. Latin Manuscript and Printed Sermons in Late Medieval Transylvania (1470–1530) 187 Oriol Catalán. Controversial Topics in the Sermons of Vicent Ferrer. From Manuscripts to the Printing Press 223 Sophie Delmas. From Nicolas de Biard’s Summa de abstinentia to the Printed Dictionarius pauperum. A Pastoral Compendium for Preachers 257 Pietro Delcorno. A Forgotten Italian Bestseller. Ludovico Pittorio’s Omiliario quadragisimale 279 Ralf Lützelschwab. The Neglected Carmelites. Evidence for their Preaching Activities in Late Medieval Germany 313 Natalija Ganina. Johannes Kreutzer. A Preacher in Strasbourg and Basel and his Work in Manuscript and Early Print 339 Rita Voltmer. Instructio, correctio, and reformatio. Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg and the Transmission of his Sermons 365 Thom Mertens. The Gouda Gospel Sermons. The Glosses of a Successful Middle Dutch Pericope Collection (1477–1553) 411 Kees Schepers. Diverging Perceptions. Johannes Tauler in Sixteenth-Century Printed Editions 445 Patricia Stoop. Strategies of Publishing. The Case of Franciscus Costerus 473 Indices 497