Most of the extant material in the Repertorium dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the period normally meant by Middle English prose sermons. In each case there is a manuscript description divided into the following: Description, Contents (of the manuscript), Comments (on the manuscript), Parallel Tradition (information on other versions of the individual sermons), and Bibliography. This is followed by the description of the individual sermon divided into the following sections: Author (for example, John Mirk), Occasion (for example, Purification), Heading/Title (as given in the manuscript), Theme (biblical theme), Length, Incipit (the first edited one hundred words), Explicit (the last edited fifty words), Summary (of the text), Biblical quotations (with an added symbol (L) if they are in Latin), Proper names (for example, St Peter), Place names (for example, Jerusalem), Theological concepts (that is, where a sermon contains an extensive discussion of theological issues such as penance or pilgrimage), Exempla (moralised stories), Verse (both Middle English and Latin), and Bibliography (relating to the sermon description or text). In the case of all these categories the items are listed in the order in which they occur in the texts. If there is no information to go into a particular category either in the manuscript or sermon description, then it is omitted completely.
A full explanation of all the guidelines is available in the introduction to the published volumes but a note here is needed about Parallel Traditions. Basically this means that in cases of multiple manuscripts (such as the Wycliffite sermons where there are some 294 sermons in some thirty manuscripts) one 'base text' is chosen for the sermon record so as to eliminates needless duplication; in the Sample Sermons below where the base manuscript is not one of the Cambridge manuscripts being described, this is noted in the summary field (for example, Cam/Christ's/7 is used for the summary of the sermon on John 10 but in the case of CUL/Ff.2.38 the summary of the St Thomas Becket sermon comes from the base text in BL/Claudius A.ii). In the Sample Sermons only one sermon record is provided from each major cycle or collection of sermons whereas in the Repertorium as a whole the full cycles or collections are given (for example, in the case of CUL/Add 5338 only the opening Advent sermon is provided here, whereas in the printed Repertorium all the sermons in the cycle are given). Where more information is provided under the 'base text', the reader will be referred to this; in some instances here the cross-reference will be to information only available in the printed volumes (for example, under CUL/Dd.10.50 and CUL/Ff.2.38 full information about the manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial is only available under the 'base text', BL/Claudius A.ii).
The sermons selected are from repositories in Cambridge (with those from the University Library being prefixed by CUL and those from the college libraries by Cam). These manuscripts were chosen for a number of inter-related reasons, both scholarly and pragmatic. Not only do they represent a good cross-section of varied manuscripts and sermon collections, but work was already considerably advanced on the Cambridge repositories by the time funding became available. When initially approached, the relevant librarians responded with much interest and it was clear from the outset that the digitisation was going to be easily and cheaply accomplished by the excellent photographic services available in Cambridge. Finally, the case for Cambridge was strengthened by the long-standing historic links between the University of Hull and St John's College: the original constitution of the University College of Hull, incorporated on 7 October 1927, included a provision for a representative of St John's on the University Court and from 1932 the annual St John's Lecture was established at the University of Hull.
At the outset it should be noted that the sermons found in this Cambridge sample cannot be seen as a microcosm of the whole; indeed it is in turn only a small sample of the material available in the Cambridge repositories. There are other examples of equal interest in the Repertorium that are not represented here. In effect no sample of fourteen manuscripts out of over one hundred and sixty could be comprehensive. What is presented here is simply to alert both the academic and general reader to the material and to provide an example of what is published in the printed volumes. (For further detailed information about the medieval English sermon see Spencer 1993 and Manual.) In the Sample Sermons there is a representation of the most widely-known collections: the Mirror (a translation of Robert de Gretham's Anglo-Norman Miroir), the Wycliffite sermons, and John Mirk's Festial, as well as Thomas Wimbledon's popular sermon, Redde racionem villicationis tue, which is extant in nineteen manuscripts. But alongside these are some examples of the unique, for example, the sermon in CUL/Hh.1.11, which is the only extant nunnery sermon in manuscript form in medieval English, and which is in essence a patchwork from the Birgittine sources, the Revelaciones of St Birgitta of Sweden and the Sermo angelicus (as noted below and fully explained in O'Mara 1994:173–85). It is clearly addressed to nuns but internal evidence shows that the nuns in question are not the Birgittine nuns at Syon; linguistic evidence points to a nunnery in East Anglia and further study of all available evidence would suggest that the convent may be that of the Benedictines of Norwich at Carrow (O'Mara 1994:162–72). Earlier commentators tried to make a case for the manuscript having been written by the nuns themselves but prolonged study of female literacy in late medieval England makes this highly unlikely (O'Mara 1994:154–62 and O'Mara 1996).
The sermons here, which are almost entirely anonymous, extend from the late fourteenth century with Cam/Corpus/282, to the very late, CUL/Add 2829, from c. 1500.
They encompass the usual spread of occasions, both temporale and sanctorale but in the main, like the Repertorium itself, concentrate on the popular periods of preaching in medieval England: in other words, apart from cycles like the Mirror, the Wycliffite sermons, and the Festial, which were intended to cover the church year (in the case of the Wycliffite cycle to an exhaustive degree), most extant sermons cover the Lent and Easter periods, with relatively few sanctorale sermons being represented (in the present instance the only example is the Assumption sermon in CUL/Hh.1.11), and generally where they occur they do so for a particular reason. The sermons cover the usual teaching of the medieval church and yet each sermon does so in a way that is unique to itself. For instance, CUL/Add 2829, a sermon for Easter Day, incorporates two distinct verses into what is essentially a sermon about the need to confess so as to be ready to receive Christ at Easter (O'Mara 1986).
Even more interestingly, Thomas Wimbledon in his sermon that concentrates on the different sorts of judgment to be had by the different estates in society grapples with the exact date of the end of the world; writing in approximately 1388 he posits that the world has another twelve years or so to run which would fix the end in 1400, though having done so, he then retreats again behind a cloak of uncertainty.
Cam/Corpus/357/Part. II/f. 11r
Although the manuscripts are currently located in Cambridge, the sermons are of varied provenance though information about this provenance is haphazard at best. A clue to where the manuscripts originated from may be found when the language has been localised in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) and in the current sample this information is included where it occurs; as will be seen from the entries here, they cover various parts of the country, though this does not preclude the possibility of the present texts being copies of copies (which is clearly the case with some of the various manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial where the original home would have been in Shropshire). In some cases both linguistic and other evidence support each other; an obvious example here is that of Cam/Magd/Pepys 2125, where there is a trail of evidence linking the manuscript with Gloucestershire. This includes not only the dialect but references to Gloucestershire in the manuscript.
In some cases, however, there may be other evidence about earlier provenance that are now only vague hints, for example, in the manuscript of the Mirror an exemplum occurs that is set in Knaresborough. There is nothing to distinguish this exemplum about a man's vision of hell, dramatic as it is, but what is unusual is its localisation; normally exempla are more generic, localised in Paris or London or some major metropolis or exotic country like India, and so the precise geographical location here would seem to suggest that either Robert de Gretham, the author of the Anglo-Norman Miroir, and/or his translator may have had some link with northern England. However, this cannot now be reconstructed because there is no other evidence to prove it.
As with the Repertorium as a whole, there is no single case here where a continuous provenance can be traced from the medieval period onwards and the degree of information (if any) is patchy. It is unsurprising to find manuscripts associated with major figures of the day, such as Matthew Parker (1504–75), Archbishop of Canterbury, whose collection of books make up the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College or Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) whose books were donated to establish the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, or lesser figures such as John Moore (1646–1714), Bishop of Ely, whose library was presented to the University Library in 1715 and who owned CUL/Ff. 2.38.
Other manuscripts may be associated with figures with known links to Cambridge in general or to individual colleges in particular, for instance, William Crashaw (1572–1626), the father of the poet, Richard, was a fellow of St John's and many of his books and manuscripts ended up there eventually; John Boys obtained his BA in 1623–24 and donated Cam/Christ's/7; and Richard Holdsworth (1590–1649), theologian and Master of Emmanuel College, owned CUL/Hh.1.11.
The latter's library was allotted to Cambridge University in the 1660s after protracted dispute between the University and Emmanuel College, though in fact the University had been in possession of it for some years before the Restoration. As with many other medieval manuscripts, according to J. C. Oates (1986:331–32), 'Holdsworth's library is strangely anonymous. He set no [p. 332] regular mark of ownership on his books, nor did he annotate them, either as to their contents or as to their circumstances of their acquisition ... his motive in amassing a collection so large, multifarious, and impersonal must always have been that it should pass after his death into institutional keeping'. Overall it has to be admitted that much of the information available about provenance is incidental. Whereas it is known that CUL/Add 2829 was purchased, together with three other manuscripts and two printed books, with £250 given by Samuel Sandars in March 1881, to the University Librarian, Henry Bradshaw (they were acquired from a house in Sutton Coldfield, from a Mr Chadwick's library), nothing at all, apart from that which can be abstracted from the language, is known about the original provenance of CUL/Add 5338. Indeed, as with most medieval manuscripts, it is hard to trace back the manuscripts here much before the seventeenth century with any certainty. There is just one example here where the provenance, albeit unusual, can be fixed with great certainty. Like many medieval fragments, that in Gonville and Caius 803/807, fragment 53, was found as a binding fragment.
Gonville and Caius 803/807/Fragment 53
What is exceptional about this example, however, is that the source of the book is known.
Gonville and Caius 803/807/Fragment 53 & Book
The fragment was extracted from F.31.25 (formerly F.46.25), the Flores doctorum (Geneva, 1593), attributed to Thomas of Ireland; the name and shelfmark of the volume in which this fragment was used as a pastedown are recorded on the recto. This book has a Cambridge binding (so clearly the fragment had been left lying about in the bookbinder's) and it entered the College library from the collection of William Branthwaite (d. 1620), a former Master. Nevertheless what the early history of the fragment is or what was contained alongside this fragment of what appears to be an Easter Day sermon is not known. Tracing the early provenance of a manuscript can also made more difficult by the tendency to rebind codices. These Cambridge manuscripts reflect the Repertorium as a whole in being mostly later bindings. Indeed usually the earliest that can be hoped for is a seventeenth or eighteenth-century binding, like those in Cam/Magd/Pepys 2125, Cam/SidSus/74, and CUL/Hh.1.11.
As will be noticed from the images, the appearance of the sermons on the page is varied. Although it is unheard of for Middle English sermon manuscripts to be illuminated, with the single exception of the image of the preacher at the beginning of John Mirk's Festial in Dur/Cosin V.III.5, certain manuscripts are clearly of a higher quality of production than others.
In the main the manuscripts where some degree of decoration may be present are the Wycliffite sermon manuscripts, as witnessed here by Cam/Christ's/7 or CUL/Ii.1.40.
In general though Middle English sermon manuscripts are fairly humble-looking productions, occasionally imperfect and in a poor condition, such as CUL/Add 5338 which is much mutilated at the beginning of the manuscript, though in this case we are in the fortunate position of having other manuscripts from which to reconstruct the missing texts as this same collection of Wycliffite-derived sermons is also found in Dub/Trinity/241 and in Cam/StJo/G.22. Then in its turn CUL/Add 5338 in its second collection of sermons on ff. 67v–102v makes good a deficiency in its sister manuscript, Lond/Lamb/392.
Of course, such mutilation, whether deliberate or accidental, may not have occurred in the medieval period. There is evidence here, as in many other medieval manuscripts, of deliberate destruction or cancellation in the post-medieval period of sermons associated with St Thomas of Canterbury, although in CUL/Ff.2.38 the iconoclast has restricted himself to crossing out the sermon systematically rather than, as happens in some other Festial manuscripts, tearing out the offending page.
In the post-medieval period too there are some intriguing examples of annotation which serves on the one hand to show that the manuscripts were still being read during this time but on the other serves to focus attention on what later readers thought about these texts. To this extent they are almost more interesting than the frequent medieval annotation and expansions that also occur, for example, in CUL/Dd.10.50 where in the Annunciation sermon a medieval hand has provided extra-biblical genealogical information in the lower margin.
In the Repertorium as a whole there are several post-medieval examples, particularly in the Wycliffite sermons or Wycliffite-related sermons or Wimbledon's sermon, where annotators demonstrate an engaged reading of the texts. For example, in Cam/SidSus/74 there is both a vibrant, if patronising, initial comment upon the Wycliffite-related sermons on a flyleaf as well as some more seventeenth-century annotation in another hand; here the annotator not only adds a heading to Wimbledon's sermon but also takes it upon himself not only to gloss but also 'to improve upon' Wimbledon's sermon.
- Cam/SidSus/74/Flyleaf
- Cam/SidSus/74/ff. 167v–168r
- Cam/SidSus/74/Wimbledon Annotation
- Cam/SidSus/74/Wimbledon Annotation (Close-up)
Another example is the seventeenth-century annotator of the Cam/St John's/G.22 sermons who demonstrates an equally responsive reading of the text.
Finally, in the same way that these manuscripts may differ in terms of appearance and approach, albeit drawing on a common pool of material, so do their contents, as may be seen from the descriptions. While certain manuscripts are restricted to sermon material, as is often the case with the Wycliffite sermons, many of them, particularly those with single or small groups of sermons, comprise devotional anthologies. Yet there are those that stand out from the ordinary by virtue of their contents or composition. One of the most telling examples of these is Cam/StJo/G.19 which is, as the original owner, William Crashaw, makes no secret of and which the original scribe is almost blatant about, is a version of the Festial, together with William Caxton's Quattour sermones, which has been copied from the 1499 Rouen printed edition.
Although it may seem strange to a modern readership, such manuscript copies of printed works were not uncommon in the later Middle Ages and this is not the only example in sermon studies. One of the most striking examples in the current Repertorium are the two chapters taken from William Caxton's printed Golden Legend that have been turned into sermons in Lond BL/Lans 379 for the feasts of All Saints and All Souls respectively (O'Mara 1992). Such examples demonstrate that very fluid interaction between manuscript and print that marks the end of the Middle Ages. It also shows how the sermon, which has been an essential part of English literature since the tenth century, continues to transmute and develop into the post-medieval period.