The Reception of St Jerome in a Late- Medieval Sermon Collection by Johannes Herolt

Abstract

Church fathers were among the most cited authorities in the medieval sermons, right after the Bible. Their quotations were used in different ways – as an exegesis of the reading, as a commentary of a moral les­son, or as a strong argument for a particular statement. Jerome was considered one of the key authorities, and his passages can be found in numerous books of sermons. The paper examines the reception of St. Jerome in the 15th-century sermon collection known as Sermones Discipuli de tempore et de sanctis cum Promptuario exemplorum et de miraculis Beatae Mariae Virginis, written by a German Dominican, Johannes Herolt (†1468). The collection includes quotations from dif­ferent works of Jerome, mostly from his letters. Despite the emphasis on sentences from the texts written by Jerome, the analysis also includes extracts from the so-called Pseudo-Jerome.