Feasts of the Temporale

Prosulas are a form of exegesis. Those for the feast of the Temporal (connected to episodes of the life and mission of Jesus) interpret the originally Old Testamentary texts of the parent chant into a Christological perspective, with those for graduals and tracts often displaying special rhythmic patterns in their texts and melodies. This typological interpretation of the Bible—here reflected in chant composition—is in line with the exegetical procedures there were taught in ecclesiastical schools in the Middle Ages. The chapter also ponders the possibility of anti-Semitic sentiments in Temporal prosulas and suggests that the high number of Temporal prosulas in manuscripts used in nunneries might be tied to the devotion to Jesus as “spiritual spouse” ’ that was typical of female monasteries and that inspired many works of vernacular theology.

Food for the Journey

The one surviving French sermon on the Eucharist of Guiard of Laon, bishop of Cambrai (1238-1247) and supporter of the movement to establish the feast of Corpus Christi, was long thought to be the record of vernacular preaching by the bishop, until the discovery of a Latin original prompted a reassessment. Using all available manuscript evidence, and carefully comparing the Latin and French sermons, I position the French sermon as a work of vernacular theology created during Guiard’s episcopate, infused with the spirituality of Eucharistic devotion that culminated in the Corpus Christi movement. It was well received by an elite lay audience, continuing to circulate in collections of devotional texts for the next two centuries.

‘Anticlericalism’, Inter-Clerical Polemic and Theological Vernaculars

This chapter examines Chaucer’s use of ‘anticlericalism’ and ‘vernacular theology’ in the Canterbury Tales, arguing that he uses neither in a straightforward way. While many examples of anticlerical and antifraternal language appear in the Canterbury Tales, and while such language carries theological and polemical weight, Chaucer’s use of antifraternal/anticlerical sources is literary rather than theological or polemical. By applying antifraternal language to non-fraternal figures and having clerical figures use such language against each other, Chaucer highlights the intraclerical debates among his pilgrims. An examination of the Second Nun’s Tale shows that Chaucer was engaged not so much with the creation of a ‘vernacular theology’, but rather with a process of ‘theological vernacularizing’ where he translated theological ideas, expressing them in his characters’ voices. Through his fictive guises Chaucer performed an essential truth of all theological discourse: whatever vernacular it is expressed in, it is always in via, always in translation.

‘Grant me Grace’: Alternative Visions for Vernacular Theology and Lay Devotion in Richard Caister and Nicholas Love

Richard Caister is an important but unstudied example of vernacular theology in England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Himself a priest, Caister’s extant work indicates a figure who departed from the conservative instutionalism of Thomas Arundel’s regime on two very important points: the suitability of the vernacular for theological and spiritual discourse and the necessity of auricular confession. The distinctive position Caister takes on these points can be observed best by a comparative analysis to Nicholas Love’s theological work which provided a theological rationale for Arundel’s restrictive legislation, articulating a negative view of the vernacular and of the capacity of the laity which endorsed lay dependence upon their Latinate clergy. This article argues that Caister provides an important alternative vision for vernacular theology and the laity predicated upon a thorough Christocentrism.

Stars

This chapter examines colonial modes of prediction, especially astrology and popular forms of divination. While most people in New Spain believed that heavenly objects could influence conditions on earth, there was great disagreement on the relative strength and importance of such forces and whether or not humans could or should discern them. Colonial consumers of prediction understood the twin notions of free will and divine intervention and used a vernacular theology to evaluate diviners and their accuracy. As a result, by the eighteenth century, many subjects in New Spain had adopted a more critical attitude toward the information produced by astrology and divination. As colonial subjects employed these tools of tradition, often in conversation with the Inquisition and its investigations, they helped to create a new culture of knowledge that championed a more precise and empirically grounded telling of the future.

The Senses and Religious Experience in Vernacular Theology

This chapter utilizes fifteenth-century vernacular culture to challenge the notion that learned understandings detailed in chapter 2 fully determined the meaning of sensuous worship on the eve of the Reformation. Through analysis of the unusual diary of the Nuremberg widow Katherina Tucher (d. 1448) and a critical mass of personal vernacular prayer books, this chapter shows that people made use of some learned ideas about the senses promoted by learned culture but went well beyond them in many cases. Educated, urban lay men and women played games with sensory language in their personal devotional experiences and, in doing so, exercised limited agency as vernacular theologians in their own right. Following this analysis, this chapter shows how male intellectuals responded by increasingly identifying sensuous worship with femininity and non-Christians. It concludes with a summary of part 1.