Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Part I John Moorman and His Franciscan Studies
- Part II The Order of Friars Minor in England
- Part III The Friars and the Schools
- Appendix: The Moorman Letters in the Archive of the Collegio San Bonaventura (Quaracchi/Grottaferrata/Rome)
- Index
7 - Late Medieval Franciscan Preaching in England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Part I John Moorman and His Franciscan Studies
- Part II The Order of Friars Minor in England
- Part III The Friars and the Schools
- Appendix: The Moorman Letters in the Archive of the Collegio San Bonaventura (Quaracchi/Grottaferrata/Rome)
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter discusses Franciscan homiletics in England between 1400 and the 1530s, to fill a gap in our scholarly understanding. It exploits studies on English preaching and mendicancy. In addition, it evaluates the source evidence on Franciscan preaching in England after 1400. This includes: first, evidence from manuscripts and early imprints; secondly, evidence from episcopal registers and comparable administrative sources; thirdly, testamentary evidence; fourthly, evidence concerning activities of Franciscan bishops and suffragans; fifthly, information on Franciscan court preachers prior to Henry VIII at the time of the break with Rome. Finally, the chapter evaluates the Franciscan opposition to Tudor policies in and after 1534, and the variegated reactions of Franciscan friars during the Dissolution period.
Keywords: Cambridge, Henry VIII, preaching, Reformation
Much attention has been paid to the Franciscan contribution to late medieval homiletics in Italy, France and, to a lesser extent, the German lands. For Italy, the ‘preaching revolution’ by Bernardino of Siena and his disciples (Giovanni della Marca, Giovanni of Capistrano, Marco of Montegallo, Bernardino of Feltre, to name but a few) has been particularly well documented, all the way up to the preaching rallies of Bernardino Ochino in the 1520s and the 1530s. Thanks to Hervé Martin, Clarissa Taylor, and Ludovic Viallet, among others, we also have a good inkling of the activities and reputation of French Observant homiletic luminaries such as Olivier Maillard, Michel Menot, Étienne Pillet (Stephan Brulefer), and Nicolas Denisse. In comparison with these regions, the study of German Franciscan preachers during the long fifteenth century still needs to catch up, notwithstanding the early essays of Landmann, a range of more recent works on individual Franciscan preachers (such as Conrad Grütsch, Johannes Meder, Stephan Fridolin, etc.) and on the role of German Observant Franciscans in the late medieval urban religious landscape. Of old, the study of late medieval German preaching as a whole lay under the shadow of Lutheran claims to homiletic primacy, and it is only recently, in part thanks to Frymire's landmark study The Primacy of the Postils, that the importance and efficacy of Franciscan preaching and mendicant preaching in general before and after Luther is being acknowledged.
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- Information
- The Franciscan Order in the Medieval English , pp. 139 - 156Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018