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Medieval marriage sermons

Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually taught about marriage. David D'Avray teases out the close connection between marriage symbolism and social, cultural, and legal realities in the thirteenth century. The relation between genre, content, and gender is analysed, with particular attention to the likely impact of preaching, viewed as a means of intellectual power in competition with vernacular genres and other social forces. Its mass diffusion anticipa.Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually taught about marriage. David D'Avray teases out the close connection between marriage symbolism and social, cultural, and legal realities in the thirteenth century. The relation between genre, content, and gender is analysed, with particular attention to the likely impact of preaching, viewed as a means of intellectual power in competition with vernacular genres and other social forces. Its mass diffusion anticipated printing, but the means of production were those of the monastic scriptorium. Professor D'Avray's textual criticism and palaeographical analsyis of these sermons undermines central assumptions of both medieval and early modern historians of the book. He establishes a technique of textual criticism appropriate for texts of this kind: a pragmatic compromise between simple transcriptions which ignore stemmatic relation and full-scale editions attempting to fit all manuscripts into a genealogical table, Medieval Marriage Sermons makes an important contribution both to the sermon literature of the period, and to our understanding of marriage and its religious and cultural significance in the middle ages.

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Medieval religious rationalities : a Weberian analysis

"Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks how far medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book is unique in showing how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrating the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new historical insights"--"Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David D'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book is unique in showing how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new insights"--Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book shows how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new interpretative insights.

Preaching of the Friars, The.

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