The published Repertorium contains entries for some 1450 sermons in over 160 manuscripts. Not all sermons contain quotations but some 3000 separate quotations have been recorded from several hundred sermons. In view of the disparate nature of this material and the impossibility of indexing it efficiently in its current format in the published volumes, it is presented here as an ongoing research project. In the published volumes a simple listing of this material by the author cited in the relevant sermon is given as an appendix so that readers may be alerted to the fact that a preacher in a certain sermon cites a particular source for his quotation (which may or may not be a quotation in the current sense of the term); the reader may then find the particular quotations listed here.
There are two search options: Search uses drop-down menus to search fields such as Author and Sermon Occasion, and Advanced Search offers a free-text search, including the option to search the actual text of the quotations.
Although individual editors have identified the sources used in some sermon collections and individual works, this search tool offers a general overview of the quotations used in Middle English sermons and the potential for further in-depth study in this relatively neglected area. Using the drop-down menus, for example, it is possible to see the whole list of authors cited by name and works cited by title in the sermons. Searches allow one to gauge the relative popularity of various authors or works. It is possible to narrow the search to examine the authorities cited on one particular liturgical occasion or in one particular collection or to discover which quotations are used in multiple sermons, information which may help to identify relationships between collections or common sources. In some sermons multiple quotations cluster together, perhaps indicating the use of a florilegium in their compilation; by identifying such patterns and isolating them, it may be possible to identify the particular compendium used.
This is an ongoing project and the first phase of it has been the collection of the data, that is, the transcription of the quotations. Information is being added where editors have already identified sources but these identifications have not yet been verified and it must be stressed that the vast majority of quotations have not yet been identified. Information will be added as the project goes on but it may be noted that some quotations by the very nature of source study in medieval texts may never be identified with any certainty, if at all. At the moment the information given concerning authorship and sources is principally that given in the manuscript. Where a quotation has been identified as coming from a particular source, a full reference will be given but it must be remembered that this does not necessarily mean the sermon author took the words directly from, for example, Bernard's Sermones in Cantica canticorum or Augustine's De civitate dei. The quotations may well have come indirectly from some intermediate source. It is to be hoped that the current project will have a part to play in uncovering further details of this aspect of sermon composition.