Classical and Christian Conflicts in Keekennann's De rhetoricae ecclesiasticae utilitate

Abstract

Abstract Little attention has been paid to the often profound differences between artes praedicandi written in the Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While the sermon theorists loyal to Rome often employed classical rhetoric without any sense of disjunction, the Reformers' dedication to Scripture as a model of discourse impelled them to ratify any use of classical rhetoric in terms of Scripture and Christian commentary. In Bartholomew Keckermann's De rhetoricae ecclesiasticae utilitate, for instance, the author makes use of Aristotle's Rhetoric, but not without heavy reference to similar concerns in Augustine's De docfrina christiana and the epistles of St. Paul. Keckermann's procedures parallel those of other reformers such as Philip Melanchthon and Gerhard Andreas Hyperius, and stand in sharp contrast to the works of Erasmus and the Milanese cardinal Saint Charles Borromeo.