Sermon in context: Function and functionality of vernacular sermon in the Late Middle Ages

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rudolf Kilian Weigand
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: from 2009 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 116203305

The research project "Predigt im Kontext" aims to unite widespread information on medieval manuscripts that has been collected for many decades and published in different ways and places. Its intention is to explore the functions of a comprehensive portfolio of medieval sermons, and to elucidate how these functions changed in the course of time. For this purpose the project focuses on analyzing the transmission of sermons (made accessible in catalogues and editions) attributed to the Dominican preachers Meister Eckhart and/or John Tauler in approximately 450 manuscripts. The statistical and empirical results of the analysis are made publicly available in a gradually developing online-database, which provides a wide range of different search options. The collected data makes it possible to bring together detailed information on manuscripts already available in existing text editions and from studies on the holdings of (monastic) libraries. This amount of data facilitates a detailed insight into the contexts and connections of medieval sermon transmission. The focus on concrete medieval media - manuscripts and their compilation - and the many different functions of the genre "sermon" offer a methodical alternative to traditional editions, which are focused on authors and the identification of the "opus" of an individual preacher. Spoken in general, medieval vernacular sermons are not transmitted as single author collections, as our modern editions suggest. Usually we find them ordered thematically or liturgically (according to the church calendar) in the manuscripts, and it is only late in the Middle Ages that new compilations of old material offer fictitious allocations of the portfolios to certain established authorities. In addition to focusing on this important area of conflict concerning the medieval understanding of authorship and authentication, the project offers systematical examinations on the genre "sermon". Because of its brevity, the literary product sermon is exposed to the most diverse patterns of combination of texts within the manuscripts as physical media of transmission. It is the intention of the project "Predigt im Kontext" to unite, specify and analyse these characteristics of the transmission in order to describe precisely the change of functions of sermons and their collections. Thus we will be able to obtain a more accurate picture of the recipients of the texts, of their intentions, and their literary culture.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants