Reading by Example: the Communication of Religious Knowledge in the Collationes of the Brothers of the Common Life

Abstract

function in pastoral care, though an exception can be found in the work of Jelle Bosma, who considered preaching to be intricately linked to medieval society: "the role of the sermon in this period can only be explained within [the] historical and political framework [of the Low Countries]." 8 Internationally, however, sermon studies have increasingly recognised the importance of the societal context in which a sermon was prepared and subsequently preached: preachers would take into account the current situation in which their audience found themselves, in order to emotionally connect to them and be able to preach more effectively.Preaching was not an isolated affair without context: it was an event, and it constituted an important node in a network of interactions between preacher, audience, and (religious) knowledge.9 While the sermon was aimed at influencing its audience, the preacher was in turn influenced by the prospective audience, so that sermon and society can be considered a tightly woven unit with both elements influencing one another.10 This interaction between sermon and social context has, for instance, been studied by Peter Howard with regard to the situation in Florence.11 Howard stressed the existence of a 'community of learning' around the Florentine studia of the mendicant orders, a term "impossible to define with precision" yet characterised as a community in which "ideas were shared, developed, and transmitted to the next generation".12 As the studia were open to the general population, they acted as sites of fermentation for religious thought applicable to daily monastic context, the codification of preaching into sermon collections has been studied by Patricia Stoop: see in particular P. Stoop, Schrijven in commissie: de zusters uit het Brusselse klooster Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca.1465-1510) (Hilversum:

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