It has become customary to speak of a “new emphasis on preaching” in early fifteenth-century England,Footnote ¹ an emphasis not only on greater frequency of preaching and greater seriousness by preacher and congregation, but also on paying closer attention to the words of scripture instead of pursuing the artifices of the scholastic sermon form. A key figure of this movement was Thomas Gascoigne (1403–1458), well known, among other things, for his impatience with “modern preachers who are more concerned about the form of their sermon, with divisions and verbal concordances, than about preaching what is useful.”Footnote ² Instead, Gascoigne proposed and presumably used a return to the ancient mode to “declare the subject chosen and to postillateFootnote ³ or expound the text of Holy Writ in its order,” which “was the mode of preaching among our holy fathers.”Footnote ⁴ Whether this “new emphasis” amounted to a genuine return Footnote ⁵ to the ancient homiletic form of preachingFootnote ⁶ is open to question, but Gascoigne's concerns were certainly shared by his contemporaries and indeed by works written a generation and more before him. One of those contemporary works is a large fifteenth-century collection of Latin sermons named Congesta, which calls for closer attention.

The work was written in five elegantly decorated tomes, of which only two are at present known to be extant, both in the Old Library of Magdalen College, Oxford: MS 96 (henceforth referred to as “A”), ending with: “Finitur tercia pars Congestorum a festo Pentecost’ usque ad festum Sancte Anne” (fol. 317r^b); and MS 212 (henceforth referred to as “B”), beginning with “Quinta pars Congestorum a Dominica 18a post Trinitatem vsque ad finem” (fol. 1r^b, top margin; the volume lacks at least one gathering at its end). The complete set would thus have formed a cycle of sermons for the year in their liturgical order. The work is of an enormous length, quotes a large number of “authorities,” and was probably written by a Carthusian.

A is written in two hands of the mid-fifteenth century: a “formal secretary” (fols. 1–80v) and a “loose bastard secretary” (fols. 81–317); B in a single “secretary with some anglicana forms.”Footnote ⁷ All three scribes have their peculiarities, such as writing i for e or the reverse (very frequent; for example, Senica for Seneca); pronunciation spellings, such as seruus for ceruus (A, 259v^b); occasionally, a qualifying adjective appearing with the wrong gender ending; eyeskips, some corrected, others not; and so on. As pointed out below, occasionally the scribes omitted to indicate the beginning of an excerpt or gave a wrong indication at either its beginning or end.

The sermons preserved in the two extant volumes are briefly these:Footnote ⁸

Marginal annotations indicate that the complete work would also have included sermons for the Innocents (S11) and the Invention of the Cross (S33).

It is clear that the collection forms a complex cycle for the entire year, mixing sermons de tempore (marked T) and selected sermons de festis et de sanctis (marked S) in their regular liturgical order and following these with a number of sermons de communibus and for special occasions (marked C). These categories are standard for medieval sermon collections, and there is nothing remarkable in that a writer or collector should have composed or gathered them in this fashion in one comprehensive work. But the individual pieces are extremely lengthy and thereby pose the questions of what exactly these sermons are and what their author may have had in mind in composing them.

Individual sermons vary in length, the shortest occupying just nineteen columns (sermon 45), the longest (7) nearly ninety-eight — in either case presenting far too much material a preacher could be expected to pronounce or an audience to listen to on the given occasion. In other words, these “sermons” are neither actual sermons collected by a preacher or listener, nor were they intended as model sermons composed for other preachers. When authors of model sermons in the thirteenth and fourteenth century had more material than would fit into a single sermon, they might split it into two or more sermons, so that the individual pieces were of manageable length. Thus, for the Third Sunday of Lent (T21), the regular cyclesFootnote ¹⁰ by Jacobus de Voragine (“Januensis”), Nicholas de Gorran, Simon Boraston, and Robert Rypon, for instance, have two or three sermons each, and Peraldus furnishes as many as five.Footnote ¹¹ In A, such splitting happens once, where for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul the author has produced two separate pieces, sermons 11 and 12, one for each of the two apostles. But each is very long, and it would appear that their author wanted to devote a separate piece to each of the two apostles celebrated on the same day.

Yet the pieces in A and B are certainly conceived of as sermons. Their connection to a specific liturgical occasion is marked, usually in the top margin and mostly also at the head of the piece. They deal with a scriptural lection, which is either the assigned Gospel or the Epistle from the Mass for the specified day. In addition, they consistently have two parts, a protheme or antethema Footnote ¹² and the main part. Both contain elements that are regularly found in sermons of the period. Thus, the protheme ends with an invitation to pray, and the main part does so similarly with a typical closing formula, such as “quod nobis concedat” or a similar phrase referring back to the immediately preceding matter, as in: “ad beatitudinem celestem, quam nobis annuat qui in celis habitat. Amen.” However, neither the prothemes nor the main parts throughout both A and B are handled in a consistent, uniform manner, and therefore call for more analysis. In order to do so, it may help to summarize one particular sermon. I have chosen sermon 30 (B, 118v^a–127r^b), which is typical of the majority of sermons and of average length.Footnote ¹³ Parts of the lection are here boldfaced.

The prothemes or antethemata of the 46 sermons are consistently set apart visually, and they normally begin with an enlarged and decorated initial.Footnote ⁵² They may start in a variety of ways: with words from the thema (as in the sample sermon 30), an authority (sermon 7), a common experience or observation from daily life (sermon 13), and so forth. But they always end with an invitation to pray. The relation between protheme and main part varies to some degree. In most cases the protheme deals with the Epistle and the main part with the Gospel, as is the case in sermon 30. But in sermon 25, on the Sermon on the Mount, the protheme already discusses and moralizes the “mountain” of the Gospel, while its main part then focuses on the beatitudes. Conversely, in sermons 9 and 28, for example, the protheme similarly deals with the Gospel, but the main part focuses on the Epistle reading. The invitation Oremus, in the prothemes, often appears midway in their text, and the remainder, to the end of the protheme, is given to a more or less extensive discussion of prayer and related aspects.Footnote ⁵³

The main part regularly deals with the assigned Gospel or Epistle of the day according to the Use of Sarum, except for some de communibus sermons (35–46), whose choice of a thema allowed for greater freedom. It also regularly begins with at least a part of the respective lection (again with a few exceptions, in sermons 6, 15, and 29), and it normally ends with a closing formula, as already stated. Some cases give the impression that the main part may have been intended to fall into two sections, which in the scholastic sermon structure would correspond to the introduction of the thema and its development,Footnote ⁵⁴ the latter indicated or marked as processus (sermonis). Good examples of this feature can be found in sermons 1, 5, 42, and 45.

What these sermons do not have is a division of the thema followed by confirmation of its parts and their development by means of distinctions and subdistinctions, or other ways — the essential characteristics of scholastic sermon structure. The author of Congesta therefore uses a “new” form of sermon-making that was strongly advocated by Thomas Gascoigne. In this pattern, he very often postillates the lection or pericope of the day, that is, he goes through the biblical text phrase by phrase and comments on it by explaining its moral or spiritual meaning (there is very little extended literal exegesis in these sermons). He frequently offers more than one comment on a given phrase, always introducing it with vel (“or”) or vel sic (“or thus”), for which examples can be found in the sample sermon analyzed above (sermon 30) at lines 292, 311, 449, 468, and so on. Another good example occurs in sermon 18, on the miracle of feeding the crowd (Mark 8:5), where at least five different moral meanings of the seven loaves are offered, filling twenty-one columns in the manuscript. Such progressive and alternate moral exegesis of the lection is not the only way in which the author structures his main part. He may also concentrate on just one word of the thema (sermon 3), or explain the phrases of a hymn (sermon 1), or speak of three biblical women called Mary (sermon 19), or launch into a sort of history of religious orders and their ideals (sermon 46).

This basic process of postillatio can also be found in late-medieval collections of genuine sermons, such as those perhaps composed by John Dygon and other collections.Footnote ⁵⁵ What really sets Congesta apart is the extraordinary length of its pieces. For example, sermon 30, summarized above, contains roughly 17600 words. In comparison, Dygon's sermons (there is none for this occasion) usually have only 3500 to 4500 words.Footnote ⁵⁶

A second mark of distinction is the wide range of sources quoted in Congesta, which is perhaps its most interesting feature. Its author not only quotes but again and again excerpts long sections verbatim from works he identifies. In ideal cases, the excerpts as well as shorter quotations take the form of “Unde N + work … Hec ille (+ work).” Unfortunately, for the investigating reader, either the author or the scribe frequently omitted the introductory formula, and sometimes the final marker as well, so that short of tracking down the quoted text, one is often unsure how far a quotation extends or, in fact, who is being quoted. Further, there are cases where the scribe or the author himself made an error.Footnote ⁵⁷ One will thus have to bear such scribal shortcomings in mind when looking for the voice of the author himself, as will be discussed further below.

In his commenting on words or phrases of the lection, the author constantly uses distinctions with numbered items, such as: five things for which to imitate Christ (sermon 30, line 22), three kinds of truth (line 697), four things found in a denarius (line 1281), and so on. But his overall compositional procedure is not that of building a logical grid for a sermon,Footnote ⁵⁸ as one can find in earlier works and even in Repingdon,Footnote ⁵⁹ but rather progressing by association. For example, after saying that “Pharisees” means “divided,” the author criticizes members of the clergy who are divided from their more courageous brethren in defending the church (sermon 30, line 326). Another example of this occurs in lines 1159–249 of the same sermon. In dealing with the lection's “Is it lawful to give tribute?” the author quotes Nicholas de Gorran saying that this is a trick question (versucia) and explaining the two horns of the dilemma the Pharisees pose. Gorran, as quoted, ends this with: “Therefore they are saying: ‘Tell us, your disciples who call you master, your friends who are in such doubt and ignorance, what do you think,’ etc.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Then the notion of “question” seemingly led the author to a long passage from a sermon by Robert Holcot that enumerates and explains “three questions among others that move the hearts of devout people to despise the world”Footnote ⁶¹ — a subject that has little if anything to do with the Gospel text under consideration.

This tendency to progress by association and thereby to digress runs through the entire work and can be quite frustrating for the reader, who together with the author may indeed occasionally lose his way, even if the author always manages to come back to the text he is explaining. Digressions in a sermon were tolerated by late medieval handbooks on preaching,Footnote ⁶² but here they reach a new height in their length and frequency.

Formal and structural features apart, one can say that the author of Congesta is very much concerned with the office of pastors and preachers. This is shown, for example, in sermon 30 when at line 50 he adds a sixth point to the announced five things in which “we” must follow Christ: namely, by avoiding negligence in listening to and in giving the sermon (to line 190). This concern with the clergy — their legitimate entrance and promotion or election, their exemplary way of life, their preaching—and with such abuses as absenteeism, the promotion of the unworthy, and the plurality of benefices, runs through the entire cycle as it has been preserved. Thus, specific features to be observed in preaching, such as those at line 140, recur in sermon 40, both in excerpts from Gregory the Great and in the topic of priests and preaching, and are hardly ever absent from any of the sermons.

Equally present, if perhaps not as ubiquitously, is the author's concern about the laity. Preaching the word of God is often paired with listening to it, as at lines 50 and 80 of the sample sermon. Similarly, in sermon 24 the protheme speaks of the conditions that a “prelate and preacher” must meet, as well as twelve things he must do to “preach well,” to which it then adds seven things that the preacher's audience must do in order to “learn well.” Occasionally the author will consider all parts of society, as he does at line 404 of the sample sermon. A very rich passage of this kind appears in sermon 29, where the preacher addresses a long series of social groups with “Tu, X, redde quod debes.” The addressees (“X”) range from curatus, parochianus, princeps, latro, and other sinners, to religiosus. In each case we hear about specific obligations, which would make this text a sermo or sermones ad status. The section includes an address to coniugatus, with twelve reasons why a man should love his wife, which then typically leads the author to digress on the marital debt, with excerpts from Augustine, canon law, and Peter Lombard.Footnote ⁶³

In developing his sermons, the author quotes and excerpts material from a staggering number of sources, most of them clearly identified. I have counted over 130 authors and anonymous works that are cited throughout the extant sermons. Many authors, of course, such as Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard of Clairvaux, appear with a number of different works. It may be the case that the author of Congesta copied material from works that collected many quotations, such as the Catena aurea of Aquinas or canon law. Of particular interest for the history of theological literature in fifteenth-century England as well as for the identification of the anonymous author are a number of names and titles that date from between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century and call for some further remarks.

Pride of place among them belongs to the French Benedictine Petrus Berchorius or Pierre Bersuire (c. 1290–1362). Congesta contains over 150 quotations or rather excerpts from Bersuire's Reductorium morale that run from just a few lines to as many as four columns.Footnote ⁶⁴ In this work Bersuire summarized chapters or stories from Scripture and then offered moral lessons contained in them, usually linking several alternate interpretations with vel dic or aliter. He also wrote another work called Dictionarius, in which he took up “preachable words” (vocabula predicabilia) — which range from biblical names to prepositions and exclamations — in alphabetical order and gathered what a preacher might want to know about them and use in his sermons, including distinctions of the respective term.Footnote ⁶⁵ Dictionarius is quoted in Congesta at least fifteen times, usually with an indication of the term referred to (“Dictionarius in termino X”).Footnote ⁶⁶ One may speculate that apart from furnishing such material, Bersuire also had a formal influence on the author of Congesta, in that the latter consistently links his own alternate moral explanations with vel sic.

In providing exegetical material for Congesta Berchorius is not alone. Of medieval commentators, Hugh of St. Cher (always referred to as “de Vienna”) appears over seventy times. Less frequently quoted are John of Abbéville (2 quotations), Nicholas of Gorran (43 quotations), Nicholas of Lyra (54 quotations), William of Nottingham (9 quotations), and Odo of Cheriton (40 quotations, mostly from his sermons). Closer to Congesta’s own time and place are John Lathbury (one quotation, in sermon 9), Repingdon (one quotation, in sermon 46), John Capgrave (one quotation, in sermon 40), and Henry Cossey (possibly two quotations, in sermons 7 and 32). Of special interest is that Congesta also quotes Petrarch at least three times, once referring to his work on the penitential psalms, the other two quotations unidentified. Another curiosity is the work's quotation from “Wallensis,” with three quotations commenting on the Psalms (sermon 13, twice, and 43, specifying Psalms 1, 16:7, and 17:14).

Next to biblical commentators are systematic theologians. Here Thomas Aquinas outranks all others, with about one hundred references and excerpts,Footnote ⁶⁷ some of them spanning several parts of an article from his Summa theologiae. Henry of Ghent also appears, some eight times, occasionally quoted as “doctor solemnis.” Of the English theologians who were active after GrossetesteFootnote ⁶⁸ and Fishacre,Footnote ⁶⁹ Duns Scotus (“doctor subtilis,” over a dozen quotations), Robert Cowton,Footnote ⁷⁰ Thomas Docking,Footnote ⁷¹ and Roger DymockFootnote ⁷² are quoted, which may be of special interest for the history of theology in later medieval England. Congesta also quotes and excerpts from works by Bonaventure (15 quotations),Footnote ⁷³ often in conjunction with Aquinas.

One of these occurs in sermon 20, in a longer section defending the worship of images. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this sermon does not explicitly argue against Wyclif's and the Lollards’ rejection of image worship. However, Wyclif and his teachings appear elsewhere in Congesta. In fact, Wyclif himself is quoted several times in sermon 6, which deals with the Eucharist, especially whether it may or should be celebrated daily, as well as in sermon 17, on the intercession of the saints. In both cases, Congesta strongly defends orthodox teaching, with frequent and long quotations from earlier theologians as well as “Walden,” that is, Thomas Netter (c. 1370–1430), particularly in sermon 6. Walden appears again in sermon 44, which argues against Wyclif's rejection of clerical celibacy.Footnote ⁷⁴ Other opponents of Wyclif on the Eucharist quoted here are Walden's teacher, William Woodford,Footnote ⁷⁵ and Jean Gerson.Footnote ⁷⁶

Two other “modern” figures whose appearance in Congesta is worth mentioning are William Wheatley, whose commentary on Boethius is quoted at least three times,Footnote ⁷⁷ and Petrus de Candia, elected as Pope Alexander at the Council of Pisa, who is here reported to have spoken to the bishop of Hereford at the Council of Pisa.Footnote ⁷⁸

Congesta also refers to some of the authors and works that occupied Beryl Smalley's attention in her study of fourteenth-century English friars.Footnote ⁷⁹ Thus, Alexander Nequam is at one point credited with a work here called “Methologia de fla'ibus gentilium,”Footnote ⁸⁰ and Lathbury's commentary on Lamentations appears once.Footnote ⁸¹ More interesting is the fact that Congesta contains nearly 60 quotations and excerpts from the writings of Robert Holcot. Three or four of them are from his lectures on the Wisdom of Solomon, the remainder, at least 55, from his sermons. Congesta is remarkably consistent in identifying the latter by number or thema and thereby reveals that its author knew of more Holcot sermons than have been preserved in the unique collection of Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 210.

A last group of quotations comes from authors and titles of spiritual or devotional works. These include the Formula novitiorum by the Franciscan David of Augsburg, who is not named here (sermon 18); the Stimulus amoris, here attributed to Bonaventure (sermon 6); the Speculum spiritualium, probably a Carthusian work written in England early in the fifteenth century (sermon 3); and the Speculum laicorum (sermon 40).Footnote ⁸² All these works appear but once, and they are by far outdone by the Liber revelationum of Saint Bridget of Sweden, a series of visions in which Christ or his mother teaches spiritual truths.Footnote ⁸³ This work is quoted, often with lengthy excerpts, at least two dozen times throughout Congesta.

As a final observation on these many and varied quotations and excerpts, it should be mentioned that often a reference to a given author or work is soon followed by another to the same. This happens frequently in the surviving text, especially with extracts from Berchorius. This must mean that its author had a given work before him and, as he was copying one passage, remembered another in it that would fit his explanations.

But who might this author have been? The two manuscripts, A and B, give us no name or even a clear hint. Only occasionally do we hear what might be the author's own voice, in a number of statements in the first person singular, such as dico, non insero, per quam intelligo, suadeo, ut predixi, propter prolixitatem omitto, even if such cases have to be taken with some care since the verbs may come from a cited source. His voice appears more clearly in such a remark as “ille Augustinus quadam sua Epistola ad Publicolam secundum cotacionem quam vidi Epistola 90.”Footnote ⁸⁴ And even more definite is his use of Actor or Auctor in several sermons where he takes part in a controversy, such as over the primacy of Peter (sermon 11), and especially in his lengthy discussion of religious orders in sermon 46, where he declares: “All these things I thought should be recited so that all modern religious could see in the mirror of their fathers what they have lost from their observation of the Rule in the sons.”Footnote ⁸⁵

Remarks like this suggest that the author himself was a member of a religious order. He also was undoubtedly a very learned man, as is witnessed by the breadth of the sources for his quotations and excerpts: he was definitely familiar not only with major biblical commentaries but also with significant systematic theologians of the later Middle Ages. He certainly was English, as is shown by his interest in the history of London and, more importantly, in his writing a fairly large number (over 75 instances) of English words,Footnote ⁸⁶ phrases,Footnote ⁸⁷ distinctions,Footnote ⁸⁸ popular sayings,Footnote ⁸⁹ and even genuinely macaronic clauses.Footnote ⁹⁰ His scholarly penchant appears very clearly in several statements indicating the volume in which a particular sermon by Augustine appearsFootnote ⁹¹ and in similar references to other works.Footnote ⁹² And he was evidently connected with Oxford, as he reveals when, after reporting Grosseteste's excommunication and the pope's dream, he concludes:

Curiously, the just quoted remark is echoed by Thomas Gascoigne in two references to what may have been the same book:

And even closer to Congesta: “Haec [regarding the bodies of saints Cuthbert and Bede] vidi in Cronica bona Eveshamiae per 30 miliaria ab Oxonia.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Gascoigne, who read and owned many of the works that are quoted in Congesta, including Saint Bridget's Revelations (which he saw at Syon monastery) and works by Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, Ivo of Chartres, and Walter Burley,Footnote ⁹⁶ was earnestly concerned for a well-educated and morally pure clergy and for the importance of good preaching, and therefore could be thought to have written Congesta. However, several features that characterize Gascoigne's best known work, the Dictionarium theologicum, speak decisively against his authorship. One is his oft-repeated animus against Reginald Pecok regarding the latter's claim that bishops do not need to preach — of which I find no trace in Congesta. Another is Gascoigne's critical view of the scholastic sermon structure, in which “modern preachers,” that is, predominantly the friars, are more concerned “with the form and way of making divisions and verbal agreements … rather than declaring useful things.”Footnote ⁹⁷ In contrast, Congesta once selectively excerpts a longer passage from De theoria sive arte praedicandi by Thomas Waleys, a substantial handbook teaching the scholastic sermon structure.Footnote ⁹⁸ Gascoigne and Congesta further differ stylistically: the former regularly uses “sanctus” with proper names (“sanctus Augustinus,” and so on), whereas the latter has a plain “Augustinus.”Footnote ⁹⁹ And finally, Gascoigne belonged to the secular clergy, whereas there is a strong probability that the author of Congesta was a member of a religious order.

If the latter was indeed the case, what order would he have belonged to? The quotations in Congesta allow for several possibilities without being decisive. Thus, the Dominican authors quoted are matched in number by Franciscans. Though Aquinas occurs very frequently, Bonaventure is not far behind him, and the same is true of their later Dominican (Durandus de S. Porciano, Dymock, Holcot, Thomas Waleys) and Franciscan brethren (Cowton, Cossey, Duns Scotus, Lathbury, Woodford). The Carmelites, another order whose members were active in fifteenth-century England, are represented by Thomas Netter (“Walden”), as well as by one Johannes de Rivo Forti, who flourished c. 1400 and is otherwise fairly unknown.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In addition, Congesta quotes the Regula Carmelitarum of Albertus Patriarcha, the founder of that order.Footnote ¹⁰¹

There is, however, one small detail that bring us closer to the author's identity. Near the end of the long sermon Ad religiosos (46; notice: not Ad cleros!), where Congesta praises the religious life and speaks of the rules and ideals of many orders, its author says: “About the beginning of the Carthusian Order, as our fathers have told us” and reports the story of Saint Bruno.Footnote ¹⁰² Patres nostri, “our fathers,” a phrase not used about any other order, suggests that the author of Congesta was a Carthusian. This suggestion would gain strength from the author's familiarity with the Speculum spiritualium, a Carthusian work, and especially with Saint Bridget's Revelations, which was a great favorite with the Bridgettine nuns at Syon, as well as with the Carthusian monks at the recently founded charterhouses at Sheen and London.

What may very well clinch the case for Carthusian authorship are four excerpts from a source I have so far not mentioned. This is the Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis, known at the time as Musica ecclesiastica and written between 1420 and 1441. The four passages all appear separately in a single sermon (18). They come from books 1, 2, and 3 of the Imitatio and total 226 lines in Magdalen College MS 96.Footnote ¹⁰³ Their form agrees completely with the text edited by Pohl.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Thus, the author of Congesta quotes from what would to him have been a contemporary work without giving its title or the author's nameFootnote ¹⁰⁵ — an act quite contrary to his normal procedure.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Though the Imitatio was immensely popular in later years and centuries, especially in its many vernacular translations, in fifteenth-century England possession of the Latin Imitatio was limited to an elite, especially the Carthusian Order and the Bridgettines.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ David Lovatt, to whom we owe a substantial study of the Imitatio Christi in fifteenth-century England, speaks of the “[Carthusian] order's enthusiasm for the Imitatio.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Most early copies of this text do not contain the author's name,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ which might explain its absence in Congesta. This is also the case with the earliest copy of the Latin text in England, which belonged to, and was in part written by, John Dygon, fifth recluse at the Carthusian priory at Sheen, Sussex.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Since the neighboring Bridgettine house of Syon owned several copies of the Musica ecclesiastica, as well as Bridget's Revelationes, the Speculum spiritualium, and the works of Berchorius,Footnote ¹¹¹ Congesta may well have originated in this milieu.

We can therefore see in the author of Congesta a man who, in accordance with Carthusian custom, preached “with his hands.”Footnote ¹¹² Instead of literally preaching and then recording his words, or providing model sermons for others, he collected (congessit) a vast amount of material for preachers from his readings and recorded it in these volumes. Collecting such a massive amount of material from a wide range of authorities characterizes not only Congesta but other works of the fifteenth century, such as the Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae, with its protracted arguments against Wyclif by Thomas Netter (c. 1370–1430),Footnote ¹¹³ or the encyclopedic compilations made by John Whethamstede, abbot of St. Albans (c. 1392–1465), with such titles as Granarium, Pabularium, and Palearium, titles that suggest collected material.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It is likewise typical of two other works written several decades before Congesta that are both concerned with sermon-making.

The first is an equally little-studied lecture course on the Gospels for a de sanctis et festis cycle of the Church year, preserved in Oxford, Magdalen College MS 156 (henceforth referred to as M), one of the codices bequeathed to the college by John Dygon.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Its anonymous author had studied at Oxford under William Woodford, OFM, who at the time that M was written was still alive (Woodford died c. 1400). He calls the pieces he writes omelie, “homilies,” and consistently begins with a division of the lection from the Mass for the respective day (divisio textus), then offers a number of notable things (notabilia) contained in the successive phrases of the lection, and finally adds a number of questions about those phrases (dubia) and records answers given by previous commentators and occasionally himself. In all this, he quotes and excerpts material from some 130 authors and anonymous works.Footnote ¹¹⁶

The second work is a cycle of sermons on the Sunday Gospels called Sermones dominicales, written by Repingdon (henceforth referred to as R).Footnote ¹¹⁷ Whether its author was Philip Repingdon, the erstwhile follower of Wyclif and later chancellor of Oxford University (1400–1403) and bishop of Lincoln,Footnote ¹¹⁸ or else, as has been recently argued, John Eyton, also known as “Repingdon,”Footnote ¹¹⁹ is of no concern here. The title of R, Sermones, appears to be medieval, but it is clearly a misnomer because Repingdon himself consistently speaks of its pieces as omelie, “homilies,” just as does M; and one manuscript in fact calls them “Omelie Repyngton super euangelia dominicalia.”Footnote ¹²⁰ The difference between omelie and (scholastic) sermones lies in the form in which they deal with the biblical text to be preached on. “Homilies” comment on, or postillate, the phrases of the entire biblical lection, while “sermons” select a small part of it as their thema, which they then divide into parts that are developed at some length (with or without several introductory elements).Footnote ¹²¹ The sections in R, called omelie, do not contain such characteristic features of a scholastic sermon, except for an occasional closing formula (which could have been added by a scribe). In other words, by their inherent terminology as well as their structure, both R and M follow the ancient structure of “homilies.”

Both also collect a vast amount of material for use by preachers. Repingdon himself, in his highly rhetorical prologue, does not say that he is furnishing model sermons but rather that he aims at providing instruction for “understanding the faith of the most blessed Trinity as it is most powerfully contained in the gospel.” To do so, he will not rely on his own knowledge but instead “collect thoughtful sayings (sentencias) from other holy doctors and faithful postillators.”Footnote ¹²² What R thus does for the Gospels of a de tempore cycle, M does for those of a de sanctis et de festis cycle,Footnote ¹²³ although in a quite different form, namely, that of lectures.

Another characteristic shared by both R and M is their focus on evangelium, the gospel. R's prologue begins with “Euangelice tube comminacio,”Footnote ¹²⁴ while M constantly speaks of “doctrina euangelica” and of preaching the euangelium rather than the more customary verbum Dei. Footnote ¹²⁵

To return to Congesta: though it uses the term sermo rather than omelia,Footnote ¹²⁶ it agrees with R and M in collecting a vast amount of material, as the analysis above has shown. Like M, it quotes or presents excerpts from some 130 different authors and anonymous works, albeit different ones, for its major sources.Footnote ¹²⁷ Moreover, like R and M it does not structure the main sections of its pieces according to the scholastic sermon form but avoids choosing a thema, dividing it, and developing its parts, and instead postillates the entire text of the lection.

Thus, Congesta, written after the Council of Basel (1438 or 1431, the latest quotation),Footnote ¹²⁸ can be seen, with the earlier M (before c. 1400) and R (perhaps composed in the 1380s), as part of the “new emphasis” of fifteenth-century preaching in England. Was it ever used as a source by later preachers? I do not know of any quotations of Congesta in the sermon collections known to me. But both manuscripts, A and B, contain marginal annotations in a late-medieval hand throughout that range from a simple “N” (for nota!) and a vertical line to “nota processum” and such topical attention getters as “nota hec 4 pro episcopis et sacerdotibus,” “vocacio simplex,” and so on.Footnote ¹²⁹ Thus at least one late-medieval reader profited from it, though to what extent exactly we do not know.