Biblical Preaching in the Middle Ages

The major shift in preaching from the Patristic to the Mediaeval period is to be found in the ruralization of Church during the missionary expansion beginning with Pope Gregory the Great's dispatching of St Augustine "the Lesser" (to distinguish him from the Church Father, St Augustine of Hippo) to "the Angles."  Whereas Patristic preaching was principally expository (think St Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on John, St John Chrysostom's Commentary on Matthew, St Gregory the Great's Morals in Job or the Forty Gospel Homilies), Mediaeval preaching tended to be occasional in several senses:  (1) itinerant preaching introducing the Gospel to a barbarian peoples gleaned the apostolic kerygma from the Bible; (2) homilies with the canonical innovation permitting parish priests to preach; (3) organised preaching missions to the heretics, first by the Cistercians but later taken over by the mendicant movement; (4) the academic sermon delivered at universities by their respective theological faculties.

This is not to say that expository preaching came to an end in the Middle Ages; rather, it tended to stay within monastic houses' chapter rooms and, often, later made available for publication, such as St Bernard of Clairvaux's Commentary on the Song of Songs.

Gregory the Great is taken to be the starting-point of the Mediaeval period, and his enormously influential manual of episcopal ministry, The Book of Pastoral Rule, lays great stress on the office of preaching, not only in terms of the Biblical substance of what is preached (the book is so full of Bible verses that it looks like the Psalms sneezed on it), but also of the preacher's conformity to the message he proclaims.

The "Gregorian Mission" of Augustine and his band of roughly forty monks preached the Gospel to the pagan Anglo-Saxons:

They had, by order of the blessed Pope Gregory, taken interpreters of the nation of the Franks, and sending to Ethelbert, signified that they were come from Rome, and brought a joyful message, which most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it everlasting joys in heaven and a kingdom that would never end with the living and true God (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 20).

In the future, I would very much like to explore what, exactly, was said point-by-point in early Mediaeval kerygmatic preaching.  It seems fair to say, however, that it tended to stress the supreme majesty and authority of Christ ("...a kingdom that would never end...") and the joys of Christian believing ("...a joyful message...everlasting joys...").

Just a few decades earlier on the Continent, we see a similar style of preaching.  St Remigus, who effectively instigated a "Christian Europe" by his baptism of Clovis, King of the Franks:

Then the queen asked saint Remi[gus], bishop of Rheims, to summon Clovis secretly, urging him to introduce the king to the word of salvation. And the bishop sent for him secretly and began to urge him to believe in the true God, maker of heaven and earth, and to cease worshipping idols, which could help neither themselves nor any one else.  ... And so the king confessed all-powerful God in the Trinity, and was baptized in the name of the Father, Son and holy Spirit, and was anointed with the holy ointment with the sign of the cross of Christ. And of his army more than 3000 were baptized (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, 31).

Like Augustine later would, Remigus spoke of God, the "maker of heaven and earth" who was "all-powerful"--in contrast to the idols made by hands and worshipped by the Franks.

By the way, one can visit the remains of St Remigus at the Basilique de St-Remi in Reims, about a twenty minute walk from Reims Cathedral, built over the very spot where Clovis was baptised.

A generation later, still in Gaul, the Church had to learn how to maintain the Christian commitments of the former barbarians, who were now called "rustics."  St Caesarius of Arles sought to remedy this by granting permission for parish priests to preach and by composing what is thought to be the first homilary, a collection of ready-made sermons that parish priests were free to use at the Eucharistic homily.  In these homilies, we begin to see a subtle shift, one that focuses more on virtuous living based upon orthodox doctrine rather than the preaching of orthodox doctrine straightforwardly.  Perhaps the most "doctrinal" element in Caesarius' homilary was it reiteration of the Nicene definition since the Catholic Franks had recently conquered the Arian Ostrogoths.  These homilies, too, are peppered with Biblical references, thus giving the "rustics" who were often illiterate some definite contact with the word of God.

Around the same time, the Gallican lectionary was beginning to take shape and one that tried to borrow set texts for feast days from other ecclesiastical territories.  We will not go into any detail about the lectionary, except to highlight the fact that homiletic preaching presupposed an intimate bond of what was preached with the Scriptures read at the sacred liturgy.

The most notable descendant of Clovis I of the Franks was none less than Charlemagne, who envisioned a kingdom, then empire, ruled by Christ.  For that reason, instituted what is now called the "Carolingian Reform" (Jacque LeGoff disputes "Carolingian Revival" or "Renaissance") in which he brought in Alcuin of York to carry out educational revitalization not only in the court but also in the realm.  Both he and Theodulf of Orleans engaged in a careful revision of the Latin Bible, thus showing the sensitivity that the Mediaeval Church had about the integrity of the text of the Vulgate.

We already touched upon de Litteris colendis in the previous post; in that piece of legislation issued in the late eighth century, a more forceful exhortation to careful and sound preaching was declared, with an "example" of model sermon in chapter 82.  Missi dominici were officials dispatched by the royal court to ensure obedience to the reforming legislation, such as the annual preaching on the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the maintenance of theological books, especially Gregory's Book of Pastoral Rule.  We can see here the faint beginnings of what would make up the content of catechisms.

In Admonitio generalis (789), Charlemagne--and this is significant--described himself as the "New Josiah."  In the Old Testament, Josiah was the King of Judah who sought to renovate the Temple at Jerusalem and to banish worship of the false deity Ba'al.  In the decree, Charlemagne mandated that every monastery and every cathedral open a school for the education of youngsters, especially in the Bible.

It is said that Charlemagne's favourite book was (the greater) Augustine's City of God, which may have furnished him with the vision of a Christendom, and he understood clearly that Christendom cannot be engendered without preaching.

The disintegration of the Carolingian Empire saw the rise of uneducated clergy which, in turn, bred heresies, especially the perennial Manicheans in the form of Cathars in France.  Pope Innocent III rose to the challenge, in part by convoking the IV Lateran Council which, among other things, decreed:

Among the various things that are conducive to the salvation of the Christian people, the nourishment of God’s word is recognized to be especially necessary, since just as the body is fed with material food so the soul is fed with spiritual food, according to the words, man lives not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  It often happens that bishops by themselves are not sufficient to minister the word of God to the people, especially in large and scattered dioceses, whether this is because of their many occupations or bodily infirmities or because of incursions of the enemy or for other reasons-let us not say for lack of knowledge, which in bishops is to be altogether condemned and is not to be tolerated in the future. We therefore decree by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint suitable men to carry out with profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are powerful in word and deed and who will visit with care the peoples entrusted to them in place of the bishops, since these by themselves are unable to do it, and will build them up by word and example. The bishops shall suitably furnish them with what is necessary, when they are in need of it, lest for want of necessities they are forced to abandon what they have begun. We therefore order that there be appointed in both cathedral and other conventual churches suitable men whom the bishops can have as coadjutors and cooperators not only in the office of preaching but also in hearing confessions and enjoining penances and in other matters which are conducive to the salvation of souls. If anyone neglects to do this, let him be subject to severe punishment.

It was under Innocent III, then his immediate successor Honorius III that the mendicant movement began, with the establishment of the Order of Friars Preachers in 1216 and the Order of Friars Minorin 1223 to preach after several unsuccessful attempts by the Cistercians (who like to fly in fashion, thereby undercutting the persuasiveness of their message given the extreme austerity of the Cathar perfetti).  Yet Dominican and Franciscan preaching were not redundant:  Wheres the Friars Preachers tended to engage in doctrinal preaching, the Friars Minor tended to engage in exhortative preaching, especially by their lives as imitators of Christ.

While on the topic of Innocent III, it is interesting to read his homilies; though he was only a subdeacon when elected to the papacy at the age of 34, he already had a massive knowledge of the Bible.  Between God and Man:  Six Sermons on the Priestly Office (Washington, D.C.:  Catholic University of America Press, 2004), is a short anthology of Innocent's sermons, and it is chock-full of Biblical citations, showing what was expected of prelates.

It was about a century earlier--the so-called "Twelfth Century Renaissance"--that saw the growth of Universities out of cathedral schools.  Universitas magistrorum et scholarium, "the whole of teachers and students" was a loosely-organised guild of professors and their proteges whose terminal studies consisted of either theology, medicine, or law.  It may come to a surprise to many to learn that universities--as well as schools as we know them--are entirely an invention of the Catholic Church, as are curricula and degrees.  Theology was considered the "queen of the sciences" and, in the early and high Mediaeval period, "theology" was synonymous with "Scripture."  St Bonaventure could say " Since Holy Scripture, which is to say theology, is a science that imparts as much knowledge of the first Principle as is needed by us wayfarers for attaining salvation" (Breviloquium, I.2).  Similarly, St Thomas Aquinas makes the very same point in the whole first question at the very start of his Summa theologiae.

But we're not talking about the Bible in the universities as much as the Bible in preaching, so we close with two final points.  First. the mendicant movement instigated a very rapid growth in the theological faculties, especially at Paris; at some of these universities, there were multiple chairs in theology--for the diocesan clergy, for the Franciscans, and for the Dominicans.  This, too, instigated a rapid rise in enrollment.  Second, the itinerancy of preachers and the need to possess one's own copy of the Bible gave rise to the personal Bible suitable for carrying, in contrast to the enormous pandects that needed to be carried by its own oxcart.  This was the logical conclusion to carrying several volumes of the Scriptures; St Dominic, for example, was known to carry the epistles of St Paul and the gospel of St Matthew on his person all the time.  Now, personal Bibles made it easy to consult the Scriptures on foot and to own copies for study and for preaching.

So, you can thank the Middle Ages for that compact Bible that you read (please, God!) every day.