Sermons

Medieval sermons which are preserved in manuscripts are often simply seen as written sermons which were delivered at a certain moment in the past. This project aims to investigate the relation between spoken sermons and written sermons, and the specific features of the sermons and sermon collections found in manuscripts from the Low Countries.

• Project: 1996 - in progress
• Thom Mertens
• Publications (selection): 
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Collatio und Codex im Bereich der Devotio moderna’, in: Christel Meier, Dagmar Hüpper, Hagen Keller (eds), Der Codex im Gebrauch. München, 1996 (Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften, 70), pp. 163-182
  • Thom Mertens & Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Deutsche Predigtsammlungen im Mittelniederländischen’, in: Angelika Lehmann-Benz, Ulrike Zellmann, Urban Küsters (eds), Schnittpunkte: Deutsch-Niederländische Literaturbeziehungen im späten Mittelalter. Münster: Waxmann, 2003 (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur Nordwesteuropas, 5), pp. 67-81
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters: The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth Century’, in: Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (ed.), Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200-1550. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004 (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 11), pp. 121-141
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Relic or Strategy: The Middle Dutch Sermon as a Literary Phenomenon’, in: Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman, Richard Utz (eds), Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004 (Disputatio, 1), pp. 293-314
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Die Sermones ad novicios regulares des Thomas a Kempis’, in: Ulrike Bodemann, Nikolaus Staubach (eds), Aus dem Winkel in die Welt: Die Bücher des Thomas von Kempen und ihre Schicksale. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2006 (Tradition – Reform – Innovation, 11), pp. 215-231
  • Thom Mertens, ‘The Sermons of Johannes Brugman OFM († 1473): Preservation and Form’, in: Roger Andersson (ed.), Constructing the Medieval Sermon. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007 (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 6), pp. 253-274
  • Thom Mertens, ‘De Middelnederlandse preek: Een voorbarige synthese’, in: Thom Mertens, Patricia Stoop, Christoph Burger (eds), De Middelnederlandse preek. Hilversum: Verloren, 2009 (Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 116), pp. 9-66
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Private revelation and public relevance in the Middle Dutch sermon cycle Jhesus collacien’, in: Medieval Sermon Studies, 53 (2009), pp. 31-40
  • Thom Mertens, ‘The Middle Dutch Mystical Whitsun Sermons from 1492 mediating Johannes Gerson’, in: Ulrike Hascher-Burger, August den Hollander, Wim Janse (eds), Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology. Leiden: Brill, 2010 (Brill’s Series in Church History, 46), pp. 79-98
  • Thom Mertens, Maria Sherwood-Smith, Michael Mecklenburg, Hans-Jochen Schiewer (eds), The Last Judgement in Medieval Preaching. Turnhout, Brepols, 2013 (Sermo: Studies on Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, 3)
  • Thom Mertens, ‘Ein Prediger in zweifacher Ausführung. Die Kollationen des Claus von Euskirchen’, in: Volker Mertens, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Regina D. Schiewer, Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (eds), Predigt im Kontext. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013, pp. 421-432
  • Thom Mertens, ‘De preek van Jan Lyoen tegen de achtergrond van de Middelnederlandse preekliteratuur’, in: Frank Willaert, Jos Koldeweij, Johan Oosterman (eds), Het Gruuthusehandschrift: Literatuur, muziek, devotie rond 1400. Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2015, pp. 177-188

The Middle Dutch sermon cycle Een nuttelijc boec den kerstenen menschen (A useful book for Christian people) was written in the northern Low Countries at the end of the fourteenth century, and is one of the most widespread sermon collections in the Low Countries. The text survives in twenty manuscripts, several fragments and three (post) incunabula. The cycle of sixty sermons - one for each Sunday or important Christian holiday - was intended for use by lay people, and gives instruction in the basics of Chrisitan religion. The critical edition of this text is based on the oldest extant manuscript: Copenhagen, Royal Library, Thott 70 fol.

• Project: 2005 - in progress
• Daniël Ermens
• Publication: Daniël Ermens, 'Een Nuttelijc boec den kerstenen menschen (ca. 1400): heilsgeschiedenis voor beginners', in: Frans Hendrickx & Kees Schepers (eds), De letter levend maken: opstellen aangeboden aan Guido de Baere bij zijn zeventigste verjaardag. Leuven: Peeters, 2010. pp 263-282.

The project Female Authorship and Authority in Late Medieval and Early Modern Vernacular Sermons from the Low Countries aims to investigate female authorship and authority within the complete genre of Dutch ‘father confessor sermons’ of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This typically clerical (and therefore male) genre has almost exclusively been handed down by sister scribes. Recent research has shown that these women made substantial creative contributions to the written sermons. Therefore they are exceptionally important for a better understanding of female authorship and female religious authority, often linked to it.
The main research questions are: what is the contribution of the sisters to the textualization of sermons? To what extent were they able to leave their own mark on these texts and derive religious authority from their writings? Is there any divergence between convents and is there continuity or change in the course of time as a result of religious and other evolutions?
The analytic tools employed include textual analysis with special attention for the gender aspects characterizing the interaction between male preachers and female sermon writers. This analysis will be sustained by codicological, palaeographical and socio-literary approaches. Thus, this study will improve understanding of the way women came to the fore and gained authority in the male dominated medieval monastic world.

• Project: 2010-2013
• Patricia Stoop
• Supervisor: Thom Mertens
• Funded by: FWO
• Publications:
  • Patricia Stoop, ‘Sermon Writing Women. Fifteenth Century Vernacular Sermons from the Brussels Augustinian Convent of Jericho’, in: Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 38 (2012), pp. 211–232.
  • Patricia Stoop, ‘The Brussels Convent of Jericho and its Literary Network / El convent do Jericó en Bruselas y su red literaria’, in: Anuario de estudios medievales 44/1 (2014), pp. 381–412.
  • Lisanne Vroomen & Patricia Stoop, ‘Vijf preken uit de kerstkring van 1574 van Henricus Cool, vicaris van het kartuizerinnenklooster Sint-Anna-ter-Woestijne bij Brugge (Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, II 2098)’, in: Ons Geestelijk Erf 86,1 (2015), pp. 43–79.
  • Patricia Stoop, ‘Nuns’ Literacy in 16th-Century Convent Sermons from the Cistercian Abbey of Ter Kameren’, in: Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara & Patricia Stoop (eds), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013 (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 26), pp. 293–312.
  • Patricia Stoop, ‘From Reading to Writing: The Multiple Levels of Literacy of the Sister Scribes in the Brussels Convent of Jericho’, in: Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara & Patricia Stoop (eds), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015 (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 27), pp. 47–66.
  • Patricia Stoop & Thom Mertens, ‘Memory and Reward: Middle Dutch Collections of Convent Sermons and Memoria Tradition’, in: The Medieval Low Countries 2 (2015), ed. by Jeroen Deploige and Renée Nip (forthcoming).
  • Patricia Stoop & Lisanne Vroomen, ‘A Carthusian Nun’s Reportationes of Henricus Cool’s Sermons in the Low Countries’, in: Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara & Patricia Stoop (eds), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue. Turnhout: Brepols, [2016] (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 28 (forthcoming).

In five chapters and four appendices, Schrijven in commissie studies the medieval convent sermons from the Brussels Augustinian convent Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Rosen gheplant in Jericho and the manuscripts in which they have been transmitted, and puts them in their historical and literary context. After a short introduction to the sermon collections and a positioning of the book in the (inter)national context of modern sermon research in the first chapter, the second chapter focuses on the historical context of the sermon collections. It provides an extensive description of the medieval history of the monastery, and of the tasks of the office holders. It also gives detailed biographies of the convent’s own preachers, and the canonesses who were involved in sermon writing. In most cases the scribes were the same people as the office holders, which is not surprising as both the administration of a convent and the editing of sermons required a relatively high level of literacy and education. The (intellectual) skills and training used for (sermon) writing are discussed in chapter three, as well as the products which result from this kind of manual labour, which in the course of the second half of the fifteenth century were executed by over forty women. Not only were these sisters responsible for the convent’s large collection of manuscripts (thirty medieval manuscripts have been preserved), they also wrote many books and documents for people and institutions outside the convent walls. The final chapters analyse the Middle Dutch convent sermons from Jericho and the manuscripts in which they have been preserved. They demonstrate how the Jericho sister scribes handled the sermons they heard their confessors preach in order to preserve them, and how they thereby designed a creative and collective ‘authorship’ for themselves that was unusual for the Middle Ages. They also show that previous scholars have misunderstood how the canonesses must have worked. The sisters were not simply recording but re-authoring these sermons, after interiorizing them to the point where they became part of their thinking and consciousness; in this way the boundaries between the words of the priest and their absorption of them became blurred, and therefore pose a stimulating challenge for the researcher to investigate.

• Project: 2003-2009
• Patricia Stoop
• Supervisor: Thom Mertens
• Publications: Patricia Stoop, Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse klooster Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456-1510). Hilversum: Verloren, 2013 (Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 127).

The Repertorium of Middle Dutch sermons was compiled between 1999 and 2008 by four researchers in two separate projects, both funded by VNC (FWO/NWO). The aims of these projects were to find, to describe and to identify all Middle Dutch sermons in manuscripts kept in institutional libraries and private collections, and to make in situ descriptions of the manuscripts. Nearly ten years of research resulted in a seven volume reference book containing descriptions of more than 500 Middle Dutch manuscripts and over 12,000 sermons.

1. Project I: 1999-2002
   • Patricia Stoop & Maria Sherwood-Smith (VU University Amsterdam)
   • Supervisors: Thom Mertens & Christoph Burger (VU University Amsterdam)
   • Funded by: VNC (FWO/NWO)
   • Publication: Repertorium of Middle Dutch sermons in manuscripts from before 1550, vols 1-3 - Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2003.
   
   
   •  
2.  Project II: 2005-2008
   • Daniël Ermens & Willemien van Dijk (VU University Amsterdam)
   • Supervisors: Thom Mertens & Christoph Burger (VU University Amsterdam)
   • Funded by: VNC (FWO/NWO)
   • Publication:
     • Repertorium of Middle Dutch sermons in manuscripts from before 1550, vols 4-7 - Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2008.
     • Thom Mertens, Patricia Stoop & Christoph Burger (eds), De Middelnederlandse preek - Hilversum: Verloren, 2009.