M. G. Muzzarelli (ed.) From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages

From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching)

An exploration of the performance, pragmatics, and effects of medieval preaching.
Preaching is a method of exhorting the practice of virtues and the performance of one’s duties. If people are not moved to act, preachers become obsolete. Because of this, preachers in the Middle Ages understood the importance of ensuring that their words were heeded and disseminated.

The focus of this volume is the relationship, whether direct or indirect, between what was preached and what was achieved. The articles in this collection present a range of studies, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and, while focused on Italy, also give a broad European perspective.

The volume investigates both the tools employed by preachers and the pragmatic aims and outcomes of their sermons. It does this by exploring the various oratorical and gesticular techniques employed by preachers, as well as their methods of preparing themselves to deliver their message and preparing their audiences to receive it. Furthermore, the volume considers both hypothetical and concrete relationships between preachers’ words and civic policies and the behaviours of groups or individual citizens, as well as the question of how and when words were translated into actions.

目次

I. Efficacious Words

• Faire en disant. Aspects performatifs de la prédication à l’automne du Moyen Âge — LETIZIA PELLEGRINI

• From Ears to Hand, from Hand to Heart; Writing and Internalising Preaching in Fifteenth-Century Florence — SHUNJI OGURO

• ‘We Have Made It for Learning’. The Fifteenth-Century Florentine Religious Play Lazero ricco e Lazero povero as a Sermon in the Form of Theatre — PIETRO DELCORNO

• The Challenges of Chiara of Rimini: from Deeds to Words — ELISA TOSI BRANDI

II. Effects on Society

• Mendicant Preachers as Disseminators of Anti-Jewish Literary Topoi: the Case of Luca da Bitonto — JUSSI HANSKA

• Effects of Synodal Preaching at the Councils of Constance, Pavia-Siena and Basel — ALBERTO CADILI

• Preaching, Magic and Witchcraft: a Feedback Effect? — MARINA MONTESANO

• Preaching Peace in Fifteenth-Century Italian Cities: Bernardino da Feltre — YOKO KIMURA

III. Words and Deeds: Franciscan Exemplars

• Franciscan Preaching in Germany and the Low Countries c. 1450-1550 — BERT ROEST

• Biographies of the Franciscan Observance: Texts Narrating the Deeds — IPPOLITA CHECCOLI

• When Words Alone Are Not Enough: A Franciscan Preacher Facing a Reluctant Audience in Fifteenth-Century Italy — MARA IORIATTI

• Francesco Panigarola and “i frutti delle prediche” — FABIO GIUNTA