Preaching in thirteenth-century hospitals

This article uses thirteenth-century hospital sermons as a window into the moral and religious environment of these charitable institutions, large numbers of which were founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What emerges from the reportationes of sermons preached in the hôtel-dieu of Paris and ad status sermons directed at hospitals' personnel and inmates by Jacques de Vitry, Humbert of Romans and Guibert de Tournai is a spirituality that stressed the penitential (and potentially salvific) power of doing works of mercy (in the case of hospital workers) and bodily suffering (in the case of hospital inmates). The particular social context of hospital preaching is also evident in preachers' anxieties about the quality of hospital administration. The sermons that were preached in thirteenth-century hospitals reflect the heightened value placed on caring for the sick and poor, a historical development more often associated with the later middle ages.     

敦煌刺绣《灵鹫山说法图》的年代及相关问题

本文对敦煌刺绣作品《灵鹫山说法图》的制作年代根据相关的资料作出判断,指出当在7世纪末的武周圣历年间;同时结合中国刺绣的历史,就敦煌古代刺绣作品研究的价值意义提出自己的看法。     

Preaching in thirteenth-century hospitals

This article uses thirteenth-century hospital sermons as a window into the moral and religious environment of these charitable institutions, large numbers of which were founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What emerges from the reportationes of sermons preached in the hôtel-dieu of Paris and ad status sermons directed at hospitals' personnel and inmates by Jacques de Vitry, Humbert of Romans and Guibert de Tournai is a spirituality that stressed the penitential (and potentially salvific) power of doing works of mercy (in the case of hospital workers) and bodily suffering (in the case of hospital inmates). The particular social context of hospital preaching is also evident in preachers' anxieties about the quality of hospital administration. The sermons that were preached in thirteenth-century hospitals reflect the heightened value placed on caring for the sick and poor, a historical development more often associated with the later middle ages.     

Exegetical Traditions and the Artes Praedicandi in the Collationes de tempore of Frater Petrus (Fourteenth Century)

Oklahoma City, Museum of the Bible Foundation, MS 465 is a fourteenth-century codex containing the Collationes de tempore of one Frater Petrus. The codex was designed and assembled for easy reference to individual texts and sections. The 145 Latin texts address themes derived from the liturgical readings for the Sundays and moveable feasts of a complete year. They are collations in a strict sense, treating concise themes through a rigid pattern of division and subdivision of topics that are illuminated by equally systematic forms of amplification. Their pattern closely resembles the layout for collations described in the Ars faciendi sermones of Geraldus de Piscario (fl. 1330s).     

A minority looks at the mendicants: Isaac Nathan the Jew and Thomas Connecte the Carmelite

This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietistic movement led by an anonymous friar, which appears as an Exemplum in Nathan’s book, Me’ametz Koach, is identified here as being an account of Connecte, thus shedding new light on the Connecte affair in addition to providing a perspective on the broader question of the cultural relations between Jews and Christians in the 15th century. The analysis contained in the Hebrew Exemplum points to a complicated image of the ‘other’, that is, of Christianity, an image composed of negative aspects—Connecte and his movement—and positive aspects, as represented by the Pope’s response to Connecte. Isaac Nathan’s antagonism towards Thomas Connecte is situated here within the context of his general attitude towards the mendicants, and his simultaneous position within the Jewish community and as a member of the western European high bourgeoisie.     

Dominican Dignitaries and Private Preaching at Papal Avignon Part I: The Sermon by Pierre de Palme (12 March 1340)

ABSTRACT

Private preaching at papal Avignon (or in general, for that matter) has yet to receive much scholarly attention, in part because the texts of private sermons are not always easy to come by. The survival of two private sermons, both by Dominican dignitaries and both delivered to the same audience (a cardinal and his familia) in the same venue during the same Lenten preaching cycle, provide an opportunity to explore the phenomenon of private preaching at the Avignonese curia. In the first article of a three-part series, I present the edited text of the sermon by Pierre de Palme, Prior of the Dominican Province of France; the second text will appear in part II, with analysis and observations in the third and final part.