English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages

by H. Leith Spencer

Overview

This interdisciplinary study of English sermons written in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries focuses on material recorded in English and relates the surviving texts to their historical and cultural background. H. Leith Spencer shows how the use of the vernacular to explore ideas hitherto expressed in Latin anticipated the better-known developments of the sixteenth century. His detailed and original study, drawing on the most up-to-date research, uncovers the pluralism of the medieval English church that anti-heretical legislation and Reformed propaganda sought to deny.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198112037
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/27/1994
Pages:	558
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.56(d)
Lexile:	1650L (what's this?)

About the Author

Exeter College, Oxford

Editorial Reviews

"Spencer provides an interdisciplinary, illuminating, and much-needed study of late medieval English sermons and preaching. This seminal work...[is] an important addition to libraries."—Choice

"This judicious and immensely learned book satisfies the promise of its title....The book is filled with lots of ...fascinating, sometimes amusing, information....This book is an important contribution to the history of Christian preaching."—Sixteenth Century Journal

"[A] fine study....This is a book to purchase, for it will not be superseded for some time."—Studies in the Age of Chaucer

"[A] learned, exhaustive, and at times witty treatment of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sermons and English preaching.""—Religious Studies Review

"This book satisfies a real need. Not since G.R. Owst's pioneering efforts more than a half-century ago...has anyone attempted such a comprehensive survey of the field."—The Journal of Religion

From the Publisher