This volume developed from a conference at the University of Hull in 2017 on the same title and contains sixteen essays from scholars in North American and Europe. Central to this collection is the way in which sermon manuscripts, in particular, relate to print in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. More specifically, the volume focuses on Catholic preaching in this transitional period and crosses linguistic, geographical and confessional boundaries. The purpose of the volume is to offer “case studies” along geographical and linguistic lines that relate to how Catholic sermons and preachers navigated the shifts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

There are two essays in the section on England. Anne Thayer looks at the model sermon collections used by preachers in the early years of printing and focuses especially on the marginalia of Thomas Swalwell as he used the printed sermons of his contemporary, Bernardino da Busti, in his own catechetical preaching. Veronica O'Mara then examines English printed sermons and looks at the relationship between preached public sermons and printed sermons and why certain collections were printed.

The sections on Scandinavia and Transylvania contain a total of four essays. The first by Jussi Hanska offers a close and valuable look at the available evidence of Catholic preaching in Finland. Evidence is slim, but he surveys the limited direct as well as indirect evidence and finds that the state of preaching in Finland was cloudy at best and that it did not noticeably improve after the Reformation. Jonathan Adams, using Christiern Pedersen's Alle Epistler ocEuangelia, offers a glimpse into the destruction of Catholic Danish preaching in the early sixteenth century. Christer Pahlmblad looks at Swedish preaching using Laurentius Petri's sermon on the Passion and Olavus Petri's Easter Sermon. And Adinel C. Dincǎ and Paula Cotoi offer a valuable roadmap into late medieval preaching in Transylvania

There are three articles in the section on the Romance Region. The first by Orion Catalán compares some of the controversial topics in the sermons of Vincent Ferrer both in the late medieval and in the early printed editions and argues that there was not as much censorship of these topics as previously thought. Sophie Delmas studies the relationship between manuscripts and printed texts of sermons by the thirteenth-century Dominican Nicolas de Biard. Pietro Delcorno focuses on Ludovico Pittorio's popular but lesser known Lenten sermon collection, the Omiliario quadragisimale. What sets this work apart is its appeal to lay and clerical readers alike with an easy access to the Bible and practical applications.

The sections on Germanic territories and the Low Countries offer an additional three articles each. Combing through Carmelite library catalogues, Ralf Lützelschwab offers a wealth of information on “neglected” Carmelite preaching in the late medieval period. Natalija Ganina looks at the fifteenth-century preacher, Johannes Kreutzer and his work in Strasbourg and Basel. This article illustrates well how one popular individual's reform efforts may have contributed to a relative lack of textual transmission in sixteenth-century printed texts. Rita Voltmer then focuses on Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg and the strong efforts made to preserve his written work in print for successive generations. Thom Mertens looks at the manuscript and print transmission of the Middle Dutch pericope sermons of the Gouda cycle. This essay examines how a once popular collection of pericope sermons fell out of usage in the late sixteenth century, following the Council of Trent. Kees Schepers then compares two sixteenth-century editions of Johannes Tauler's sermons, one from Cologne for Catholics and the other, a Dutch translation, for Protestants. The final essay in this collection is from Patricia Stoop and looks at the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century manuscript and early print sermon collections of the Jesuit Franciscus Costerus and how those sermons were used for Counter-Reformation efforts in the Low Countries.

What comes out clearly in this excellent collection of essays is the variety of ways in which manuscript and printed texts coexisted, were used and how the manuscript tradition was not simply eliminated with the rise of print. This volume also highlights the much needed continuation of research in these fields. To that end, each of these articles provides a wealth of information in the form of appendices and bibliography to help scholars working the field of sermon studies, preaching and early printed books continue this important work.