2.3 Definición conceptual de términos
2.3.9 Los programas de alfabetización emoc en las esc
We shall find several striking differences between the sort of preaching hypothesized of our notional parish priest and that of the mendicant friars. While the historian is always several steps removed from the sermon as a living event, it is clear that different influences bore upon mendicant homiletics.
The first and most noteworthy resulted from the mendicant educational systems discussed above, which stand in stark contrast to the trickle-down or patchwork methods by which an average parish priest apparently received his training and the uncertain level of influence from diocesan statutes and other pastoralia. This diffusion within the orders operated in two ways: education and oversight. Not only did the friars have direct channels of access to the products of the schools: they were also examined much more strenuously than the parish clergy in their preaching, education, and conformity to accepted interpretations before they could preach to the laity.1
Moreover, as part of the imitation of the Apostles in Mark 6:7, both Franciscans and Dominicans travelled in pairs, and in the Franciscan Constitutions of Narbonne (1260), it is decreed that ‘Friars who go out, upon their return, are bound under obedience to intimate separately to the Guardian [of the convent] each other’s noteworthy excesses.’2 Suspect material in preaching would certainly be worthy of
mention, so this could have functioned as a policing of preaching.3 We
have seen above the mechanisms whereby the more recent pastoral theologies were developed and disseminated within the orders;
examples will be given below of how that affected the preaching offered by friars.
1B. Roest,A History of Franciscan Education(Leiden, 2000), 272-79, 283-85; M. Mulchahey,First the Bow is Bent in Study(Toronto, 1998), 184-93.
2
Bonaventure,OperaVIII, 454: ‘Teneantur autem Fratres exeuntes in reditu suo secreto Guardiano excessus suos notabiles per obedientiam invicem intimare.’
The second is the internal tendencies of each order, drawing ultimately upon the traditions established by their founders: the successive revisions of the hagiographical literature of Francis, for instance, were the results of an argument within the order regarding the Franciscan ethos, some aspects of which could have been drawn into sermons.1
The third, related to both of the above, is the circumstances of mendicant preachers, differing significantly from those of parish clergy. Mendicant preachers were perhaps less concerned with parish communities, as they were not tied to them in the way the parish priests were; instead, it would appear that friars were more concerned with reconciliation to God through their pastoral activities.2 While this
would have the strongest effects in confession, confessions often followed sermons designed to bring the laity to repentance, and so ‘In an ideal world the doctrines of books for [mendicant] confessors ... and of sermon handbooks would be studied together, for they were complementary parts of the friars’ programme of religious education.’3
Like a medieval preacher, however, I have chosen a structure and am constrained to follow it, even when artificial divisions are thereby introduced. The preaching of penance will be given its own section within this chapter, which may be read either in situ or in combination with chapter six below, where the friars’ hearing of confessions is discussed.
A. Preaching the Crusade
Although secular clergy had preached the crusade, it was not parish priests but bishops and other officials who were commissioned to do so. Once the friars became an international and papally-oriented
1
Little,Franciscan Papers, 25-41, esp. 25-26. There are, for instance, six excerpts fromvitaeof Francis in theSpeculum Laicorum(discussed below).
2Discussed further in W.H. Campbell, ‘Theologies of Reconciliation in Thirteenth-Century England’, SCH40 (2004), 84-94, and inidem, ‘“Moral Arithmetic” Recalculated: A Theological Consideration of Archbishop Pecham’s Preaching Syllabus “Ignorantia Sacerdotum”’, delivered at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 12 July 2004.
organisation of preachers, they were the obvious choice for crusade preachers, partly displacing seculars and almost wholly replacing monks. The nature and extent of mendicant crusade preaching in the thirteenth century have been surveyed by Maier.1 In searching
chronicles, royal sources, papal letters and episcopal registers, Maier has assembled much of the material relevant to England,2 but his
broader interest did not lead him to analyse it as such, and so a few comments are needed here to consider England specifically.3
Based on model crusade sermons, Maier notes two possible approaches the preacher could take: either inciting penitential tears or invoking rage and aggression.4 However, the examples of the latter
that he gives are based upon local situations from parts of Europe close to the aim of the crusade being preached. Devotion is also the tone taken by a model crusade sermon ascribed to the Franciscan John Russel, the only extant sermon by a thirteenth-century
Franciscan for preaching to the English laity.5 While, as Maier notes,
model sermons for crusade preachers are not a certain guide to what the preachers said6 – a problem shared with most other sermon
literature of the period – when the English chronicler Thomas Wykes suggested the motives of positive respondents to mendicant crusade preaching, he emphasised devotion.7 It is likely, therefore, that much
crusade preaching in England was of a devotional and penitential nature. The devotion would be a public rally, not a private moment with God: large throngs would gather, for even attending crusade
1C.T. Maier,Preaching the Crusades(Cambridge, 1994).
2One very small piece of evidence he apparently missed is the Franciscan preachingvademecumedited
by S. [Gieben] of Sint Anthonis, ‘Preaching in the Thirteenth Century: A Note on Gonville and Caius 439’,Collectanea Franciscana32 (1962), 310-24, which suggests to the preacher (p. 324) three Biblical texts on which to base a sermonAd cruce signandos. However, this slight omission illuminates how thorough Maier seems to have been overall.
3The English situation is discussed inEEFP, 426-36, but naturally with more reference to the
Dominicans than the Franciscans. Hinnebusch also concerned himself with institutional more than pastoral matters.
4Maier,Preaching the Crusades, 116-17.
5Bodleian Library, Ms. Lat.th.e.24, f. 2r-v; seeBodleian Library Record2 (1941-49), 169. The corpus
of thirteenth-century British Franciscan sermon manuscripts is dealt with below.
6Maier,Preaching the Crusades, 116, 165.
sermons carried an indulgence,1 and Wykes’ account of people
rushing to take the cross certainly has a strong element of crowd behaviour to it.2
One piece of evidence from England cited but not analysed by Maier is a collection of exempla, illustrative stories told in sermons.3
This collection, the Speculum Laicorum, includes stories intended for the crusade preacher’s use.4 In one exemplum, a man confessed on his
deathbed to the bishop of Ely, who encouraged him to take the cross, going on crusade in person should he recover but bequeathing a share of his goods to pay another’s passage if he should die. The man died soon after, but at his burial he appeared to his brother, assuring him that he had been freed from all pains of purgatory and had gone directly to heaven.5 Since the friars were involved not only in
encouraging people to take the cross but also in persuading many to ‘redeem’ their vow – to fund someone else travelling in their stead – an
exemplumunderlining the efficacy of the crusader’s plenary
indulgence, undiminished by the vow being redeemed, would have been quite useful. Similarly, John Russel’s crusade sermon begins with a note to the preacher that many will not wish to take the cross and go to the Holy Land; they should be encouraged ‘to take the cross and give the cross, that is, cross-signed money [a reference to the cross on the English penny] according to their ability, that you may obtain the merit of the cross.’6
B. The Preaching of Penance
1
On the indulgences, see Maier,Preaching the Crusades, 35, 50, 54, 73, 102, 106. Matthew Paris reported that in 1235 the archdeacons and rural deans were ordered to cause everyone in the parish to come together, under pain of excommunication, when crusade preachers came through:Chron. Maj.
III, 312.
2
‘...quasi concertantes ad crucem accipiendam alacriter cucurrent’:Chron. Maj.III, 312.For a similar incident, Gerald,OperaI, 74-76.
3Maier,Preaching the Crusades, 270.
4TheSpeculum Laicorumis discussed further below in this chapter under Franciscan preaching. 5
Speculum Laicorum, 34, no. 149; see also nos. 148, 151, 152, 324, 325. 324 is a retelling of 149.
6‘accipe crucem et da crucem id est pecuniam cruce signatam secundum tuam facultatem ut meritum
In practical terms, the redemption of crusade vows was the sale of an indulgence, though the friars do not seem to have been
indulgence-peddlers on a regular basis.1 However, they did take over
an important pastoral role from previous sellers of indulgences: the preaching of penance.2
Penitential preaching can best be defined as preaching designed to induce contrition, in the fullest sense of that word: sorrow over sin and the intention to amend one’s life, including confessing to a priest and undertaking the penance he would enjoin.3 Both Franciscans and
Dominicans preached in this manner.4 Humbert of Romans OP wrote,
‘Fruit is sowed in preaching and harvested in confession.’5 Anthony of
Padua OFM counselled that ‘The preacher’s wise words should ... produce sorrow for past sins and for meriting the pains of hell.’6 The
textual relics of the mendicants’ preaching in England show the same tendency.7 The contents of the Dominican sermon collection in Ms.
Laud Misc. 511 confirm that penitential preaching was considered particularly appropriate in Lent but took place at other times as well.8
As a result of penitential preaching, confessions to mendicants often followed their sermons. Closely related to the mendicants’ theologies of penance was the doctrine of purgatory.9 This theme will be explored in
more detail in chapter six below, but here we might note that there is
1However, an example of a Franciscan preaching and selling indulgences in Ireland is clearly indicated
in theLiber Exemplorum, 98-99.
2
N. Vincent, ‘Some Pardoners’ Tales: The Earliest English Indulgences’,TRHS6ths. 12 (2002), 23-58, makes many important points on the subject.
3Bonaventure,OperaV, 505-32, esp. 531-32; Thomas Aquinas,Summa Theologiae, 3a 90 art. 3. 4K.L. Jansen, ‘Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants’,Journal of Medieval History21 (1995), 1-25;
Rivi,Francis and the Laity55-99; B. Roest,A History of Franciscan Education(Leiden, 2000), 316; D.L. Despres, ‘Exemplary Penance: The Franciscan “Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord”’,
Franciscan Studies47 (1987), 123-37.
5‘Per praedicationem enim seminatur, per confessionem vero colligitum fructus.’ Humbert,OperaII,
479; cf. p. 31.
6Anthony of Padua,Sermones for the Easter Cycle, ed. and trans. G. Marcil and H. Eller (St.
Bonaventure, NY, 1994), 106.
7For sources on the preaching of penance in England, seeinter alia: ‘Sermons of Jordan of Saxony’; Fasciculus Morum,passim;Speculum Laicorum,passim; O’Carroll,Studies, esp. 180, 183, 189.
8O’Carroll,Studies, 149-56. 9See II.6.
sermon evidence suggesting preaching about purgatory at least by the Franciscans in thirteenth-century England.1
C. Style and Structure
The style and structure of educated preaching changed
appreciably during the thirteenth century, developing from a homily or flowing argument scarcely changed from Patristic times into such a rigidly-controlled genre that the medium threatened to swallow the message. These changes took place primarily at the University of Paris,2 and d’Avray has shown that the friars were the primary agents
through whom Parisian sermons and ideas about preaching were disseminated to preachers throughout Latin Christendom.3 This
mendicant and educated style, called either thesermo modernus or the ‘school sermon’,4 is generally characterised by a system of
divisions and subdivisions. Through most of the century, according to the Rouses, ‘the type of sermon evolved at the University of Paris ... was an admirable instrument for routine preaching to laymen.’5 A
variety of works coevolved with preaching, designed to help the preacher find the information he needed to expand upon his text or theme.6 The inescapable utility of these new technologies of
communication meant that even an otherwise conservative and unadventurous preacher would be glad to turn to them for help in preparing his sermons, as a case study from Portugal has shown.7
Both orders appear to have accepted the new tools and methodologies coequally at the university level, though the Dominicans seem to have
1Fasciculus Morum, 411-15, 421, 595;Speculum Laicorum, 71, 96-98. Although I have not located
corresponding Dominican examples, Richard Fishacre referred to ‘the fire of purgatory’ and wondered about ‘the place of purgatory’ in another context: R.J. Long, ed., ‘The Moral and Spiritual Theology of Richard Fishacre’,AFP60 (1990), 5-141, at 139-40.
2R.H. Rouse and M.A. Rouse,Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons(Toronto, 1979); N. Bériou, L’Avènement des Maîtres de la Parole(2vv, Paris, 1998). For the longer term, J. Longère,La Prédication Médiévale(Paris, 1983).
3D. d’Avray,The Preaching of the Friars(Oxford, 1985).
4d’Avray,Preaching, 168-73, explains why these sermons should not be called ‘scholastic.’ 5
Rouse and Rouse,Preachers, 82.
6Rouse and Rouse,Preachers, 3-42.
produced more textual tools, such as the great concordance of the Bible produced at the Paris Dominican convent.1
However, there was always the risk that the ‘preacher could be tempted to devote too much energy to rhetoric and not enough to the content.’2 This risk was perceived by contemporaries, who cautioned
preachers not to indulge in vain subtleties that would make them look more educated while communicating less to their audience. Roger Bacon in the late 1260s complained of the vacuous use of various devices in preaching;3 and Archbishop Pecham in his 1281 preaching
syllabus Ignorantia sacerdotumforbade using ‘fantastic webs of whatsoever kind of subtlety’.4 By the end of the century, at least at
Paris, ‘the evolution of the school sermon as a model for preachingad populumhas reached its limits.’5
Since new methods of constructing sermons were useful, it is likely that the parish clergy adopted them to some extent. Yet, as Bacon and others warned, there could be a certain amount of showing off involved in clever structures: this implies that some listeners would respect a preacher more highly if he used such devices than they would if he did not, which could lessen the prestige of the parish priest and his old-fashioned homily in the eyes of his flock. Moorman optimistically suggested that hearing the preaching of friars ‘must have stirred many a priest to reconsider the whole question of his relationship to his flock’,6 but it is equally probable that it stirred
many a parishioner to reconsider the whole question of his relationship to his parish priest.
D. Distinctive Elements of Dominican and Franciscan Preaching 1
B. Roest,A History of Franciscan Education(Leiden, 2000), 279-91; M. Mulchahey,First the Bow is Bent in Study(Toronto, 1998), 400-79.
2O’Carroll,Studies, 28. 3
R. Bacon,Opera hactenus Inedita, ed. J.S. Brewer (RS, 1859), 304-06.
4‘cuiuslibet subtilitatis textura fantastica’.C&SII, 901. Though this canon was addressed mainly to
parish clergy, it also suggested that parish clergy who were not up to the task should invite in guest preachers; and in a later letter to his diocesan clergy, he described such guest preachers in terms that apparently referred to friars:C&SII, 1078-79.
5Rouse and Rouse,Preachers, 85. 6Moorman,Church Life, 80.
Many of the differences between Franciscan and Dominican theology were too esoteric to be meaningful to the laity. However, there were a few general trends that may well have made their way into sermons and other communication and catechesis. One topic of theological debate in the thirteenth century was how the atonement worked. The patristic theory was that Satan had tricked man into becoming his slave, and God had to purchase mankind with the price of His blood: this is often called the ‘devil’s rights’ theory, and was still widely held in the thirteenth century.1 In the late eleventh century,
Anselm of Canterbury had put forward a competing explanation: the Son suffered in the place of mankind to placate divine justice: His blood paid the penalty to God, not a ransom to the devil.2
Anselm’s explanation seems to have been adopted by Franciscans more quickly than by Dominicans. Neither Thomas Aquinas3 nor Richard Fishacre4 accepted it, but there is a clear
reference to it in one of John Pecham’s Eucharistic hymns.5 Further
study is needed to determine how far this difference might have been reflected in preaching, for there are echoes of Anselm’s theory in some of the Dominican sermons of Ms. Laud Misc. 511, which was compiled by 1275 and possibly as early as 1259.6
A second difference is that some Franciscans were caught up in the eschatological prophecies of Joachim of Fiore.7 Adam Marsh not
only indulged in apocalyptic rhetoric in several of his letters:8 he sent
a copy of Joachim’s prophecies to Grosseteste, commending them and asking for his opinion.9 A very few Dominicans dabbled in this as
1Held, for instance, by Grosseteste. D.J. Unger, ‘Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-1253)
on the Reasons for the Incarnation’,Franciscan Studies16 (1956), 1-36.
2
Anselm of Canterbury, ‘Cur Deus Homo’, PL CLVIII, 360-432.
3Anselm of Canterbury,The Major Works, ed. B. Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford, 1998), xxii. 4O’Carroll,Studies, 238-39.
5
‘O Jesu vivens hostia, placa majestatem.’Epist. PechamIII, cxvii.
6O’Carroll,Studies, 113-16, 245-47.
7E.R. Daniel, ‘A Re-examination of the Origins of Franciscan Joachitism’,Speculum43 (1968), 671-
76; D. Burr, ‘Franciscan Exegesis and Francis as an Apocalyptic Figure’, in E.B. Kinget al., ed.,
Monks, Nuns and Friars in Medieval Society(Sewanee, TN, 1989), 51-62.
8Monumenta Franciscana, 89-90, 96-97, 153-57, 420-22. 9Monumenta Franciscana, 146-47.
well.1 John Russel OFM used Joachim’s writings guardedly in his
commentary on the Book of Revelation, omitting all controversial references.2 The Franciscan preaching manualFasciculus Morum
(discussed below) does not focus on apocalypticism: Revelation is only the tenth-most-cited book of the Bible.3 Further work will need to be
done before we can see how far Joachism affected English mendicant popular preaching.
Both Franciscans and Dominicans were intent on ‘preaching’ by example, which required no licence to preach; it required only public visibility and opportunities to meet and speak with the laity.4 Robert
Grosseteste, towards the beginning of his episcopate, wrote the following to Alexander Stavensby, former teacher of Dominic and his first friars, now bishop of Coventry and Lichfield:
For Your Prudence knows how useful the presence and co- inhabitation of Friars Minor are to the people with whom they live; since likewise by the word of preaching and by the example