Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550) ed. by Veronica O'Mara and Patricia Stoop (review)

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• Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550) ed. by Veronica O’Mara and Patricia Stoop
• Mitchell Thompson

O’Mara, Veronica, and Patricia Stoop, eds, Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550) (Sermo, 17), Turnhout, Brepols, 2023; hardback; pp. 516; 14 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €125.00; ISBN 9782503585154.

It cannot be denied that the scholarship of recent decades has effectively dispelled the myth of a late medieval Catholicism that was entirely stagnant and moribund, and instead fostered a renewed interest in its cultural richness and vitality. However, scholars have largely refrained from engaging in extensive examinations of early modern Catholic preaching due predominantly to the sheer scarcity of sources; the iconoclastic and censorial character of ascendant Protestant movements simply means that, throughout much of Europe, swathes of such material are tragically lost. This volume, the seventeenth in Brepols’s long-running ‘Sermo’ series, serves as a valiant attempt to remedy this neglect, and the historical detective work displayed by many of its contributors is impressive precisely because the surviving documents in manuscript and print are in many cases so few.

Originating as a series of conference papers in 2017, the essays collected here are arranged conveniently by region—England, Scandinavia, Transylvania, Romance regions, Germanic lands, and the Low Countries—and along broadly chronological lines. It is important to note that the book’s goal is not to provide a definitive study of the late medieval and early modern Catholic sermon in any one geographical context, nor to offer a comprehensive history of European preaching. Rather, it provides a series of illuminating case studies designed to be, in the words of its editors, ‘merely a start to the process’ (p. 28), and to draw attention to the sermon as an important point of intersection between medieval and modern, Catholic and Protestant, manuscript and print, and public and private.

The complex relationship between manuscript, print, and personal marginalia is a prominent theme in many of the essays presented here, and it is the often-sensitive consideration of this interplay that is the collection’s greatest strength. Anne T. Thayer, for example, provides a brief but valuable survey of trends in the printing and purchasing of model sermon collections in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and then goes on to examine those printed collections owned by the preacher Thomas Swalwell (d. 1539) of Durham Priory. In the regrettable absence of any surviving sermons composed by Swalwell himself, Thayer [End Page 234] argues that his annotations to printed works such as the Rosarium sermonum predicabilium of Bernadino de Busti (c. 1450–1513) and biblical commentaries by Hugh of Saint-Cher (c. 1200–1263) attest to his reliance upon earlier authors in formulating his own sermons and demonstrate the prominent role of printed model sermons in reinforcing Catholic orthodoxy through preaching on the eve of the Reformation. In a similar vein, Jonathan Adams effectively illustrates the lingering presence of Catholicism’s ghost in Reformation Denmark through an analysis of marginalia in the printed edition of Christiern Pedersen’s Alle Epistler oc Euangelia (1515). He notes its enduring popularity during the Reformation while drawing attention to annotators’ censorship of Catholic content, convincingly demonstrating that printed Catholic texts could be appropriated and reframed for Protestant use. Additionally, Pedersen’s disavowal of his own work following his conversion to Lutheranism serves as an especially fascinating example of printed works providing an intimate glimpse into the theological evolution of their author. Meanwhile, Oriol Catalán offers important insight into the ways in which the transition from manuscript to print might obscure authorial intent. Catalán compares earlier handwritten editions of sermons composed by the popular Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419) with later printed versions that at times omitted reference to controversial theological or social topics. In doing so, he distinguishes with newfound nuance between what he terms ‘the original message of the saint from the layers superimposed or eliminated in later centuries’ (p. 224).

These are the essays...