The sermons here published for the first time are attributed to an otherwise unknown friar referred to simply as Frater Petrus. The collection provides evidence of actual preaching in a normal setting from fourteenth-century Germany, between the beginnings of the Franciscan order and the Observant reform movement, not by a major light of the order, but a regular member who may have held status as an intermediate-level teacher, to judge by the care with which the manuscripts were prepared. Theologically competent and gracefully presented in the conventional sermon style of the period, the collection, edited and translated by Daniel Nodes, offers scholars and students a reliable new resource in an area of sermon studies that is still in short supply.
Daniel Nodes, PhD in Medieval Studies, (1982, University of Toronto) is Professor of Classics at Baylor University. His research centers on the intersection of Christian theology and literary culture from late antiquity to the early modern period.
"This volume of sixty-three sermons will shed valuable light on preaching method and style of a Franciscan friar in a normal setting of the pre-Observant fourteenth century. Daniel Nodes’s careful Latin edition with clear English translation enables readers to penetrate more deeply into biblical interpretation and instruction during the High Middle Ages."
Nigel F. Palmer, Emeritus Professor of Medieval German, St Edmund Hall, Oxford
"In the later Middle Ages, the friars created a system of mass communication based on collections of Latin model sermons which could be turned into the vernacular for lay congregations anywhere. Examples of these model sermons in critical editions are rare and critical editions accompanied by translations to which a good student can be directed are almost non-existent. Dan Nodes earns the gratitude of scholars and teachers of medieval religious history by filling this glaring gap."
D. L. d’Avray, Emeritus Professor of History, UCL
Acknowledgments List of Figures Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Text and Its Significance
2 Collationes de tempore
3 The Manuscript Witnesses
4 The Relationship between Witnesses
5 The Content and Nature of Petrus’s Collations
6 The Author and His Audience: Who Was Frater Petrus? For Whom Were the Collations Composed?
7 Notes on the Present Edition and Translation
Text and Translation
Appendix 1: Endpaper Prayer Appendix 2: Conspectus of Collations, Feast Days, and Lections Select Bibliography Index
Scholars and students interested in preaching and its history, biblical exegesis, manuscript studies, and in general the relationship between religion and literature. Keywords: history of preaching; sermons; Franciscan Order; exegetical traditions; Scholasticism; Medieval Latin; artes praedicandi; fourteenth century; collations; medieval liturgy; Mendicants; Bible in the Middle Ages; Latin paleography and codicology.