Popular Preacher Research Articles

The Preacher’s Agenda: A Dominican versus the Italian Renaissance

This article reviews the cultural agenda of the celebrated Dominican preacher Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) in fifteenth-century Florence. Central issues discussed include Dominici’s educational programme, his cultural propaganda, his interest in the visual arts and his opposition to the study of the classics, as expressed in his public popular preaching. The close examination of his cultural agenda discloses Dominici as the most extreme opponent of humanist studies.

The Bildungsroman of an Anonymous Franciscan Preacher in Late Medieval Italy (Biblioteca Comunale di Foligno, MS C. 85)

Between 1484 and 1507, an anonymous Franciscan Observant friar recorded his own preaching in northern and central Italy in a diary now housed in Foligno City Library as manuscript C. 85. The diary is a unique historical document because it enables us to reconstruct the process of sermon preparation from the friar’s perspective. It also allows us to view his growth as a preacher, from novice to expert.In the early years of the diary, the preacher selected his models by topic from past popular preachers’ sermons. In the middle years, he composed his own sermon collections and began to use them in his preaching. In the final years, he added his new collection of sermons. He also recalled and reused sermons that he had delivered before, increasing the number of cross-references in the diary. Consequently, the diary reminded him vividly of his own experiences: the outlines of past sermons, their results, or other pieces of advice to himself. The preacher thus prepared his sermons while maintaining a dialogue with his past self. Examining the twenty Lenten sermon cycles that comprise a large part of manuscript C. 85 in chronological order, I describe the manuscript as a Bildungsroman ante litteram.

The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation in Italy. By Emily Michelson. I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. 262 pp. $39.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation in Italy . By Emily Michelson . I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press , 2013. 262 pp. $39.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesAn older historiography stressed the prominent role of the printing press and of the pulpit in the Protestant Reformation; by implication or by explicit assertion, sixteenth-century Catholicism was portrayed as at least relatively impoverished in its experience and appreciation of preaching and of print. Focusing on vernacular Italian preaching that was published between the mid- and late 1500s, this book argues that preaching was central to Italian communal and religious life (53), and that printing presses in sixteenth-century Italy were very busy indeed in publishing both volumes of sermons and books on how to preach, works that were often re-printed many times, thus demonstrating that a major market existed for such materials. With the help of some well-designed graphs (29-31), the author shows that after approximately 1540 there was a major increase in the number of sermons printed, an increase that did not abate until the end of the century.Emily Michelson alludes a number of times to two types of preaching that were well-developed in Italy before the Reformation: popular vernacular preaching by itinerant preachers, often friars, such as Bernardino of Siena, and learned pulpit oratory delivered in Latin to smaller, elite audiences. Popular preaching was not short on drama, as the preachers might hold their noses, feign playing a trumpet, assume a fetal position, wear dramatic costumes or remove parts of their clothes, sing, spit, groan or cry (24). Michelson shows how the sixteenth-century orators she has studied, such as Franciscan friar Francesco Panigarola (1548-1594), ridiculed such sensational antics in the pulpit, and emphasized instead a carefully measured tone and moderate gestures. With sermons that lasted an hour or two or longer, Panigarola's feats were verbal, as he cited a wide range of authorities, used alliteration and metaphor effectively, in order to exhort and inspire his audiences. He was perhaps the greatest Italian preacher of the Baroque period (144).From the 1540s, a concern with rooting out or preventing it by teaching Catholic doctrine animated many preachers. Denouncing heresy as an especially virulent form of pride, the worst of the seven deadly sins, indeed the root of sin, pulpit orators sought to promote the humility that accepted Catholic teaching as handed down over the centuries. The author identifies a Conventual Franciscan, Cornelio Musso (1511-1574), as the best known Italian preacher of the mid-century, a friar who was also a bishop and who emphasized doctrine, indeed a kind of catechism, in his own preaching. Musso was among the bishops at the Council of Trent. Michelson argues that the influence of Trent on preaching was multi-faceted and variable, and did not mean a uniform style or content of preaching was henceforth prescribed or followed. …

« Au nom de Dieu et du profit. » Le profit équitable selon Jan van Boendale

Historical research on what a just price should be has focused mainly on late medieval theological texts. However, in laic literature too, notions of the just price can be detected without the concept itself being mentioned. Instead of talking about “the just price”, Jan van Boendale asks questions about what a fair profit would be. Just like producing, the buying and selling of goods were a way of labouring that ought to be well rewarded, especially since it was in the common interest of the city. The pursuit of profit and the gathering of richness formed no ethical problem for this fourteenth-century Antwerp city clerk. Problems only arose when the greedy desire to gain more and more started to dominate consciousness and stimulated merchants or guild masters to start cheating. In response, Boendale stressed the stoic virtue of moderation as a remedy against greed. Still, this was not only a matter of achieving an honest profit. One also had to be moderate when giving alms, which was a reaction against popular preachers who overemphasised the state of sinfulness in which people lived.

Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations

Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations

Anger in Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum and in Five Texts for Preachers

Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum was the most famous dictionary of quotations in the late Middle Ages. Its main critical expositors, Richard and Mary Rouse, characterized it as one of the most successful reference works for providing medieval preachers with authoritative citations to support the arguments in their sermons. The Rouses highlighted the florilegium’s convenient, searchable format, which organized quotations under alphabetically arranged headings. Recently, Chris Nighman, in examining the manual’s material, has questioned the Rouses’ conclusions about Thomas’s original intention, his audience, and even the suitability of his florilegium for popular preaching. At stake is the use of the Manipulus florum for the study of what teachings were considered preachable and, probably, what was most often preached. In order to test the Rouses’ view and Nighman’s revision, this study compares the ways in which the same topic, namely, anger (ira), is discussed in the Manipulus florum and in a sample of widely-circulated Latin thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century reference works that provided elements for the composition of sermons: William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis, the Distinctiones Mauritii, the Liber Pharetrae, Bartholomew of Pisa’s De documenta antiquorum, and Peter of Limoges’s Tractatus moralis de oculo. Many widely copied model sermons and even a few transcripts of preached sermons survive, especially those of accomplished preachers. However, the more humble preaching manuals are likely to provide a better indication of commonly preached content than more polished sermons that may never actually have been preached.

Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200–1500 (review)

Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200-1500. Edited by Katherine L.Jansen and Miri Rubin. [Europa Sacra, Vol. 4.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2010. Pp. xii, 260. euro60,00. ISBN 978-2503-52859-5.) The product of a 2004 conference, this edition of twelve papers by Miri Rubin and Katherine Jansen seeks to understand the lived reality of religious preaching among the three monotheistic religions, a welcome broadening of our views of medieval preaching. In this undertaking the guiding light is Max Weber and his thoughts on and charismatic leadership. All in all, it proves to be a constructive collaboration. An instructive introduction lays out the recent scholarship on preaching, as well as clarifies the meaning and use of Weber's terms. The introduction usefully lays out the main issues and does not shy away from the fact that lived preaching is notoriously difficult to reconstruct from the extant sources. After that, the book is divided into five sections that deal with authority, polemics, lived performance, sacred space, and political change in the context of various aspects of preaching in the light of Weber's considerations. The only absence is charisma and miracle working, although several papers do touch on that important aspect of popular preaching. The focus on Weber remains mostly intact throughout the work, a singular achievement in such a disparate group of papers and a testament to editorial care. The book opens with one of its finest and most useful chapters, one by Linda Jones on medieval Islamic preaching. Jones takes the reader on a trip to an unfamiliar world and explains it thoroughly while offering insight into the natures of both silence and ritual as they relate to charisma. Geert Warnar's paper also is well done and offers a great current appraisal of Meister Eckhart studies; however, the connection to the previous paper is a bit unclear. As the volume moves on, the focus does seem to wander a bit. Beverly Kienzle's expertise in sermon studies is well known, and her essay is another fine example of her scholarship, this time on Hildegard 's antiheretical preaching. She suggests that Hildegard 's antiheretical message won approval from clerics, even in the midst of papal-imperial schism, and allowed the abbess to continue her work. Marc Saper stein' s look at Jewish preaching is very interesting, especially in regard to the problems of regulating preachers, but seems too broad for the current work in that it looks at issues far beyond 1500. …

Alan John Fletcher, Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations. (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 5.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Pp. xvii, 339; 3 black-and-white figures and tables. €75.

Alan John Fletcher, <i>Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations</i>. (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 5.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Pp. xvii, 339; 3 black-and-white figures and tables. €75.

C.H. SPURGEON AND BAPTISM

This study, following that which appeared in the Baptist Quarterly 43.4 October 2009, analyzes the baptismal theology and practice of C.H. Spurgeon, the foremost popular preacher of the Victorian age.

Fulk of Neuilly, Innocent III, and the Preaching of the Fourth Crusade

This article offers a reassessment of Fulk of Neuilly, the Fourth Crusade’s most prominent preacher. Traditionally, Fulk has been treated as a colorful, yet ultimately unimportant, participant in the formative period of the crusade. This article suggests, however, that Fulk’s activities were an important component in Innocent III’s crusade plans. By looking at Fulk’s activities within the context of Innocent III’s conceptions of reform and crusade, Fulk is revealed to be not the uncontrollable enthusiast so often depicted by historians, but rather a dependable proponent of the papal vision, a vision which viewed the need for moral reform and the need to succor the Holy Land as two aspects of the same imperative. Furthermore, Fulk’s incorporation into the legation of Peter Capuano was an early example of what would become a common papal strategy in the thirteenth century: the use of popular preachers under apostolic authorization to advance specific papal programs. In reconstructing the activities and importance of Fulk of Neuilly, this article sheds light on both the formative period of the Fourth Crusade and on the idea of crusade itself.

The Italian Homiliary: An example pro omnibus bonis operibus produced according to the ‘new’ Carolingian homiletic genre and reform measures

The Italian Homiliary was written in response to the Carolingian reformers’ demands for popular preaching. It represents what Henri Barr3 in 1962 wrote about the Auxerre sermon collections as marking a new stage in the evolution of homiletics, specifically a new Carolingian genre of original sermons (authors “re-editing and composing along [their] own lines”). This article examines two issues specific to the Italian Homiliary but also impacting Carolingian sermon studies more generally. The text will be examined as a Carolingian sermon collection, in the style Barré suggested, examining the shape, use, date, provenance, and transmission of the collection.

"Let Not a Remnant or a Residue Escape": Millenarian Enthusiasm in the First Crusade

The First Crusade, which continues to attract scholarly and popular attention, was dramatic, sprawling, and complex. It involved the rapidly evolving papacy and innovative papal initiatives, the newfound military prowess and religiosity of the warrior class of Western Christendom, the emergence of popular preaching and radical views of Christianity in general and the crusading expedition in par ticular, and wide-ranging spiritual exhilaration and militancy within the broad European populace. The remarkable successes of the crusading armies that con quered Jerusalem during the summer of 1099 created a natural focus for the his torical records that were composed at the time and have continued to provide such a focus ever since. Four contemporary narratives penned by participants in the successful expedition have set the parameters for much of the subsequent recounting and analysis of this fascinating and complicated juncture in the history of medieval Western Christendom.' As attention has turned increasingly to the ideas and ideals that set in motion the innovative venture, the thinking of the organized church leadership and the baronial participants in the successful enterprise has necessarily taken pride of place. There has been awareness, to be sure, that the papal announcement set in motion unexpected responses all across the European social spectrum, but the full range of those responses has been difficult to track, largely because of the nature of the data that have survived.2 Especially intriguing has been the issue of mille narian expectations associated with the call to the crusade. A number of historians

The American “Lives” of Jesus: The Malleable Figure of Christ as a Man of the People

The religious culture of late nineteenth-century America involves a curious combination of theological debate and popular social reform rhetoric. A battle for cultural authority emerges in print culture between church leaders and social reform writers, particularly domestic novelists. This discourse is exhibited in the proliferation of religious biographies, which were profoundly influenced in American popular culture by Congregationalist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, who published The Life of Jesus, the Christ in 1871. This genre was quickly appropriated by popular novelists, and read in tandem, these biographies allow us to view a discourse that represents a shifting of power in the mediation of social reform rhetoric that ultimately materializes in the social gospel movement, a reform platform that marries Christian ethics with modern cultural concerns that are largely related to the Industrial Age. While American Protestantism in the nineteenth century, particularly in the Northeast, seemed to be moving away from its Calvinist roots and arguably toward an ecumenical Christianity, or at a least nondenominational Protestantism, Calvinist clergy nevertheless played a key role in the negotiation of both religious and social liberal reform. Because of increased access to the written word, the impact of such reform efforts affected national audiences with farreaching results. Popular preachers coming out of various Calvinist creeds, such as Presbyterian Thomas De Witt Talmage and Congregationalists Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Sheldon, relied on the printed word to reach audiences of thousands although each was equally skilled in oratory, drawing in huge crowds to their affiliated churches. These three prominent figures, along with several other popular literary figures, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Mary Austin, experimented with a variety of literary forms including sermons, religious tracts, fiction, and even religious biography in their reconsideration of biblical authority in relation to contemporary moral ethics. It is in the religious biographies especially, which are known as the lives-of-Jesus biographies, that one finds an interesting rhetorical intersection of hermeneutics, theology, and sociology. Beecher's is central to an examination of this genre because he bridges the gap between church leaders and social reform writers as he strives to find a literary form that allows him to construct a highly personalized theology that seeks to reach a public well beyond the confines of the traditional church congregation. Beecher's preference for interpretive hermeneutics shows his awareness of earlier biblical criticism undercutting scriptural authority, and we must view his as an expression of his desire to show the ongoing relevance of the Bible to the modern age rather than a dismissal of scriptural authority. Richard Fox writes, In the late nineteenth century, liberal Protestantism was the established religion of a nation without an officially established religion. Beecher's force derived from his command of a religious tradition that was rapidly secularizing thanks in no small part to his own work (Trials of Intimacy 21). These lives-of-Jesus biographies reveal the struggle to contribute to a liberal Protestantism that in turn responds to the declining Calvinist ethos in American culture. A close examination of some of these texts will show that this particular form of religious tract was appropriated in an attempt to achieve something more comprehensive than merely religious reform or biblical criticism; indeed, these biographies extended the role of the church well beyond the level of individual spiritual salvation. They came to represent a key philosophical turning point in the integration of religious and social reform ideology, one that moves away from eschatological concerns to a stronger material consideration of how to establish God's Kingdom here on earth. …

Economic Immorality and Social Reformation in English Popular Preaching, 1585–1625

ABSTRACTPopular preachers frequently attempted to reform the relationship between rich and poor in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Rather than accepting economic malpractice as part of the divinely ordained social order, many tried to convince their audiences that the extortions of merchants, landlords and creditors were crimes which should be punished severely by England's earthly authorities. This paper demonstrates how the ‘discourse of exhortation’ opened up a space for plebeian action with concrete socioeconomic consequences. By analysing the connotative idiom of social complaint found in homilies and other widely heard sermons, the important but historiographically neglected role of ‘godliness' in the early modern ‘moral economy’ is revealed.

Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444) (review)

Reviewed by: Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444) Cynthia Polecritti Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444). By Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby. [Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Volume 4.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers. 2001. Pp. xii, 344. $82.00, €72,00.) Intensely engaged with the major issues of the day, as well as the salvation of the soul, preachers of the late medieval and early modern period have become key interpreters of their complex societies. In the last decade, the historiography of Italian preaching has especially grown and deepened as scholars have moved from theological issues to the importance of the sermon as a social and cultural text. A welcome addition to the literature is Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby's study of two master preachers of the early fifteenth century, the Dominican Giovanni Dominici and the Franciscan Bernardino da Siena. Focusing on sermons preached and recorded in Florence, Debby examines a variety of topics, including politics, economic life, the family, anti-Semitism, and public controversies. Meticulously researched in terms of the historiography of preaching, the author's approach can be relatively conservative (for example, the chapter on "Family, Women, and Social Fringe" could be enriched by a thorough consideration of the extensive scholarship on gender). And, perhaps because of the timing of publication, she covers aspects of Bernardino, such as women's roles, anti-Semitism, peacemaking, and public performance that have been handled recently by other scholars (Mormando, 1999; Polecritti, 2000). However, this careful overview still provides a sound analysis of Dominici's and Bernardino's fiery social preaching in Florence and provides a revealing glimpse of the many nuances between them as they worked, only a few [End Page 157] decades apart, within a particular setting. Each of the seven chapters moves back and forth between Dominici and Bernardino, permitting a finely honed comparison. Particularly relevant to the intellectual context of Florence is the discussion in Chapter Four, "The Preachers on Culture and Education." For instance, although both friars disapproved of pagan poetry, Debby convincingly argues that Bernardino's attitude toward secular education was more open and relaxed than Dominici's; the latter, keenly interested in the teaching of the young and in the curriculum of the grammar schools, was nonetheless suspicious about excessive learning on the part of the laity. The strongest element of the book is Debby's analysis of Dominici, who has been studied less intensively than Bernardino and whose sermons are far less familiar, even to other historians of Italian preaching. While many Renaissance scholars are acquainted with the Regola del governo di cura familiare and the Lucula Noctis, Debby instead works closely with Dominici's unpublished sermons to reveal his witty storytelling and sharp, insistent personality. Less circumspect than the more tactful and pragmatic Bernardino, he was sometimes bold enough to challenge directly the Florentines: "If someone wants to kill me for telling the truth, he is welcome!" (p. 41). In the politically charged atmosphere of his birthplace, he criticized the tightening of citizen participation under the Albizzi regime and didn't hesitate to attack the proud and ambitious rulers of the city, calling them "cursed hypocrites" and labeling the commune as "a fine example when instead of the good it is governed by the bad" (p.71). Yet he was surprisingly more reticent than Bernardino when he discussed sexual issues, especially the delicate topic of sodomy. A valuable supplement to the book is the generous appendix (pp. 219-312) with complete, edited texts of ten of Dominici's sermons preached between 1400 and 1406, from the MS. Riccardiana 1301, discovered in 1907 and unpublished until now. Along with Debby's book as a whole, these sermons will provide an important resource for scholars of both late medieval preaching and the social history of Florence. Cynthia Polecritti University of California, Santa Cruz Copyright © 2007 The Catholic University of America Press

Billy Sunday: A New Source for “Oxen of the Sun”

One strand of the frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken dogger l (Letters! 140) with which the Oxen of the Sun episode ends is a kind of overheated oratory associated by Joyce with American popu lar preaching. One such preacher is named several times in Ulysses, although only once in ungarbled form (LI 8.13): John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), a once-famous preacher, faith-healer, and temper ance campaigner. Joseph C. Voelker and Thomas Arner point out that Joyce would have been able to follow the antics (and prose style) of Dowie in the Irish press, which regularly reported on his sermons and covered a visit he made to London in 1904.1 Robert Janusko, in a further investigation of the Dowie connection, suggests that he may have had Dowie or his brand of invective in mind when composing what he calls Americanese parody2 The altar call in question is indeed a fine specimen of its type: on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! (IT 14.1580-84). But it is not a parody, so much as an almost verbatim transcription of the sermonizing of another American evangelist: Sunday. William Ashley Billy Sunday (1862-1935), now a little-known fig ure, was in his time a spectacularly successful evangelical preacher and a passionate advocate of temperance. A former professional baseball player, he underwent a religious conversion in 1886 and thereafter increasingly devoted his life to preaching. In his heyday, he addressed vast crowds, often in specially constructed wooden tabernacles; hundreds of thousands were said to have been con verted at his meetings, Newspaper reports often carried extensive extracts from his speeches and sermons, some of which were issued as pamphlets. Over the years of his preaching, Sunday evolved a number of distinctive strings of epithets that he would incorporate, with only slight variations, into almost every sermon and speech. These choice pieces of invective were quoted with relish in newspaper reports, and from these it is possible to track even relatively small changes in wording. Thus in an anti-liquor diatribe that Sunday gave on several occasions, reproduced in a 1908 pamphlet entitled Get On The Water Wagon, occurs the description peanut-brained,3 weasel-eyed, hog jowled, beetle-browed, bull-necked lobsters:4 this is close to Joyce's

Rev. Alessandro Gavazzi (1808–1889) and Scottish Identity: A Chapter in Nineteenth Century Anti-Catholicism

The Italian Alessandro Gavazzi was a remarkable character. Priest, patriotic propagandist and preacher, he exercised considerable influence in mid-nineteenth century Scotland. Born to a diplomatic and legal family, he was the son of a professor of law in the University of Bologna. After entering the Barnabite order at fifteen, he subsequently proved a remarkably popular preacher in Naples, Leghorn and Northern Italy before serving four years in Parma, 1841–44. He claimed to have preached 4,000 sermons in fifteen years. Later when a prison chaplain-general supervising some 5,000 inmates, his reading of Beccaria turned him to penal reform and the abolition of capital punishment. In Perugia, he was alienated by the reactionary clerical domination of the university. After further service in Spoleto, Assisi, Ancona and Pieve he was silenced for his fiery liberal views until after the election of Pius IX in June 1846.

Jonathan P. Berkey Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East University of Washington Press, Seattle &amp; London: 2001. xii+143p

Jonathan P. Berkey Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East University of Washington Press, Seattle &amp; London: 2001. xii+143p

Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England (review)

Short Notices 235 Parergon 21.1 (2004) Short Notices Coss, Peter and Maurice Keen, eds, Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2002; cloth; pp. x, 278; RRP £45/US$75; ISBN 0851158501. This interesting collection brings together a range of studies of visual representation in medieval England. Given its focus on secular culture, chivalric display, especially heraldry, naturally looms large. Crouch and Coss use the evidence of heraldry to make important points about family structures – ‘no decisive move towards agnatic lineage’ (36) – and class formation – the failure of knighthood ‘to become the basis of a caste nobility’ (67) – between the twelfth and early fourteenth centuries, while Ailes provides a very useful review of the political uses of heraldry ‘as symbolic statements of political intent’ (87) in the later middle ages. In more sharply focused studies Shenton details the lengths to which Edward III took his identification with the leopard in the royal arms, while Pilbrow documents the manner in which the ceremonies of the Order of the Bath provided opportunities for ‘chivalrous bonding’ among the governing class. The papers by Gittos and Gittos on effigies and by Saul on brasses are also largely concerned, though not exclusively, with the armigerous classes. Gittos and Gittos show that gentry families facing extinction in the male line were especially driven to create memorials to their lineage and name. Saul uses his vast expertise to provide a wide-ranging survey of brasses, issues of supply and demand, and the concern to elicit prayers as well as commemorate and mark social distinction. Several papers extend the social range. Lachaud considers evidence for dress regulation prior to the sumptuary law of 1337 and asks, somewhat inconclusively, whether the legislation reflected increasing status consciousness or greater access to luxury goods. Barron provides an interesting exposition of the way in which the merchants and artisans of London developed their own distinctive cultures of display in the shadow of the royal court. Campbell discusses the curious range of items – from fine silver plate to relics and memorabilia – left to Oxford and Cambridge colleges by their founders and early benefactors. How often have we heard that medieval culture was still a largely visual culture? This collection certainly demonstrates the importance of visual representation and display in late medieval England, and the value of visual 236 Short Notices Parergon 21.1 (2004) sources in informing rather than simply illustrating larger political, social and cultural developments. What is especially striking about the essays is their freshness and range. Lachaud and Saul, for example, raise interesting points with respect to the manner in which supply may have run ahead of demand. Keen’s introduction is a gem, rich in insight and illuminating perspective. He raises the important question of how far the growth of literacy in this period, far from ‘downgrading the importance of ceremony and of the visual in culture generally’, actually served ‘to extend the range, the potential and the capacity for elaboration of the visual in culture through interplay with the written word’ (4). John Watts’s concluding chapter likewise draws attention to the lack of visibility the English state – the public rather than the private face of the monarchy – in the later middle ages. The book includes a number of choice illustrations, but it prompts the reader to look again at the surviving images of the age, especially perhaps in the catalogues of the exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum, namely J. Alexander and P. Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (1987) and R. Marks and P. Williamson (eds), Gothic: Art for England 14001547 (2003). Michael Bennett University of Tasmania Debby, Nirit B.-A., Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and Bernadino da Siena (13801444 ) (Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies 4), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; hardback; pp. xiv, 344; RRP EUR65.00; ISBN 2503511635. A lot has been written on Renaissance Florence. Dominici and Bernardino have each given rise to a body of literature, both historic and recent, and sermon studies are a recognised area with its own conference groups and journals. Nirit Debby takes...

Le Père Lhande (1877-1957), pionnier de la prédication radiophonique

The personality of Father Lhande is essentially familiar to us on account of his apostolate in the working class ; books such as Le Christ dans la banlieue or La croix sur les fortifs are clear evidence for that. But, between 1927 and 1934, our Jesuit father was also the most popular preacher on the radio and a real forerunner in the field of radiophonie preaching, devising a spoken style of his own, even sermons in the form of a dialogue with his listeners. The many letters he received allow the author to outline the moral features of the listeners, to understand their expectations and to realise what they liked best in the new medium when used for the service of the faith. From his exceptional pulpit, Father Lhande also successfully appealed to the generosity of his listeners during the colder periods of winter or when floods occurred.