Abstract

The medieval sermon was a very flexible literary and dramatic form: a preacher composed his sermon to suit the needs and capacities of his audience, and he delivered it orally. A sermon could exhibit some characteristics of the university or formal sermon with its rigid divisional pattern, but it need not. Instead, it could be homiletic and discursive, possibly discussing such issues as evangelical poverty, politics, old age and death, free-will versus predestination, and antifeminism. Vernacular sermons were often delivered in verse, and occasionally they were even sung from the pulpit. The sermon might be designed for a festival day or be written in celebration of a saint's life. One kind of monastic sermon was a reading of Scripture by a child or a monk who would be interrupted by the superior in order to gloss or explain certain passages, or a local preacher might deliver his sermon to a lay audience with all the histrionic and rhetorical arts that he could muster