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Mass Communication 39
actly, and almost certainly mixed and matched their contents with
material from other preaching aids like exemplum collections and
collections of saints’ lives. Yet even if one cannot assume a precise
correlation between any one model sermon and any one live
preaching event, there was probably a fair correspondence between
the aggregate content of widely di·used model sermon collections
and the aggregate content of live preaching. It is the same with
newspapers today. It would be hard to know the e·ect of any one
tabloid topos on any one reader, but one can be fairly sure that the
aggregate of newspaper articles on, say, immigration has an e·ect
on the aggregate of attitudes in large sectors of the population, so
that newspapers may be regarded as a social force. So too with
model sermons in the Middle Ages.
The ultimate audience would usually be lay. Not invariably. Some
friars or other priests might simply read a book of sermons for pleasure
or edification. When the sermons were by a famous man like
Bonaventure, that might even be the normal usage. But with the
general run of workaday sermon collections one can hardly see usage
stopping with reading. On that hypothesis the instructions for
preachers in sermons are hard to explain. When we do have prefaces,
they make it clear that the sermon collections could indeed
be designed to serve as models and tools for preaching: and this
really settles the issue. Furthermore, however, many model sermons
were not much more than divisions and scriptural authorities.
These were definitely not just for reading. But if they were tools
for preachers, there is no reason to doubt that the fuller sermons
were too. Again, there are other genres of preaching aid: exempla,
distinction collections, etc. Why should actual sermons not serve
as a preaching aid? They provide structures to hold materials from
other preaching aids together.
Another proviso: model sermons might be used from time to time
to preach not to lay but to clerical audiences in circumstances where
As Robert Lerner wisely pointed out to me in a personal communication.
D’Avray, Preaching of the Friars, 106–8.
Ibid. 108–10; see now N. B‹eriou, ‘Les prologues de recueils de sermons latins
du xiiE au xvE si›ecle’, in J. Hamesse (ed.), Les Prologues m‹edi‹evaux: actes du colloque
international organis‹e par l’Academia Belgica et l’ ‹Ecole Franc«aisedeRomeavecle
concours de la F.I.D.E.M. (Rome, 26–28 mars 1998) (Textes et ‹etudes du Moyen
^Age, 15; Turnhout, 2000) 395–426 at 414–16.
B‹eriou, ‘Les prologues’, sect. II.i; R. H. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, Preachers,
Florilegia and Sermons: Studies on the Manipulus florum of Thomas of Ireland
(Studies and Texts, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 47; Toronto, 1979).