Preaching and History: The Audience of Ranulf Higden’s Ars componendi sermones and Polychronicon

ABSTRACT

In his Ars praedicandi sermones, in traditional yet rich metaphoric language, Ranulf Higden compares Christ to a fountain, a shepherd, a rock, a lily, a rose, a violet, an elephant, a unicorn, and a youthful bridegroom wooing his beloved spouse. Ranulf encourages preachers to use such metaphors while using them himself, rendering his text a performed example of what he encourages. This text is clearly linked to two others: Ranulf’s Latin universal history, the Polychronicon, and John Trevisa’s English translation of it. In the Polychronicon, Ranulf relates the life of Christ, utilizing some of his own rhetorical suggestions from his preaching manual. He also depicts a cross-section of good and bad preachers, including Gregory, Wulfstan, Eustas, St Edmund, and one William Long-Beard and his kinsman, who exemplify (in different ways) the wisdom conveyed in Ranulf’s instruction in the Ars praedicandi. This essay suggests that the literary relationship between the preaching manual and the Polychronicon supplies additional support for the idea that the audience of the latter was not noblemen exclusively, but also clergymen who preached and had responsibility for the care of souls (cura animae).

KEYWORDS:

• Ranulf Higden
• ars praedicandi sermones
• Polychronicon
• John Trevisa
• Latin
• English
• audience
• preaching manual
• preachers
• sermons
• Christ

Notes on contributor

Jane Beal, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. She is the author of The Signifying Power of Pearl (Routledge, 2017) and John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon (ACMRS/Brepols, 2012), editor of Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance (Brill, 2014) and Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages (Brill, in progress), and co-editor of Translating the Past: Essays on Medieval Literature in Honor of Marijane Osborn (ACMRS, 2012) and Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (MLA, 2017). She also writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction: http://sanctuarypoet.net.

Notes

1. John Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulph Higden (Oxford, 1966), pp. 1–3. For discussion of the broader historical context, see R. V. H. Burne, The Monks of Chester: The History of St. Werburgh’s Abbey (London, 1962).

2. Taylor, The Universal Chronicle, pp. 182–84, which contain Appendix V, ‘Writings by Higden and Writings Attributed to Him’. In addition to the three signed works and the three probable works of Ranulf Higden, other works have been attributed to him, including two collections of Distinctiones and the Abbreviationes Chronicorum. The Chester Cycle of mystery plays was attributed to him in the Tudor period, but these plays, written in English, are not in keeping with the Ranulf’s literary career and unlikely to have been written by him (Taylor, The Universal Chronicle, pp. 6–7). See also Margaret Jennings, ‘Higden’s Minor Writings and the Fourteenth Century Church’, Proceedings of the Leeds Literary and Historical Society, 16 (1977), 149–58.

3. On the audience of the Polychronicon, see A. S. G. Edwards, ‘The Influence and Audience of the Polychronicon: Some Observations’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, 17 (1980), 113–19; Lister Matheson, ‘Printer and Scribe: Caxton, the Polychronicon, and the Brut’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 593–614; Ralph Hanna III, ‘Sir Thomas Berkeley and his Patronage’, Speculum, 64 (1989), 878–916; Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge, 1991), and Jane Beal, John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon (Tempe, 2012), esp. chap. 4 ‘Translating Truth: Vernacular Preaching, English Bibles, and Trevisa’s Audience’.

4. Ranulf Higden wrote and re-wrote the Polychronicon over a span of years, thinking first to end it in 1327, then adding material to 1340; later continuations were added by others. For discussion, see V. H. Galbraith, ‘An Autograph Manuscript of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 23 (1959), 1–18. Ranulf’s Ars componendi sermones, which Margaret Jennings dates to 1340, possibly post-dates the earliest versions of the chronicle; it probably coincides with the dates of some of his revisions of his chronicle. It is worthwhile to consider the relationship between the two works, as this essay does, for it appears that Ranulf’s ideas expressed in the preaching manual subtly shape certain aspects of the chronicle, including the life of Christ and representation of preachers contained therein.

5. Ranulf Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Margaret Jennings and Sally A. Wilson, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 2 (Leuven, 2003), p. 34. For the Latin, see The ‘Ars componendi sermones’ of Ranulph Higden, O.S.B., ed. by Margaret Jennings, Davis Medieval Texts and Studies, 6 (Leiden, 1970, repr. 1989, 1991). For contextual discussion, see Margaret Jennings, ‘Monks and the Artes praedicandi in the Time of Ranulph Higden’, Revue Bénédictine, 86 (1976), 119–28.

6. The bride of the Hebrew Bible is Israel; in the Christian New Testament, the Church. The interpretation of the bride as the individual Christian soul originates with Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs in the second century. Thus, like the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene, each Christian soul is a sponsa Christi. This idea was ubiquitous in late-medieval monastic thought and practice. For further discussion, see E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, 1990).

7. See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, The William James Lectures (Cambridge, MA, 1975).

8. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. by Edmund Hill (New York, New City Press, 1996), p. 237 (my emphasis).

9. Gregory the Great, Homilarum in evangellia, Lib. I, Hom. xii; cited in Wilson, Concerning the Art of Preaching, p. 6.

10. Claire Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2004), p. 2.

11. James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1974), p. 275.

12. Marianne G. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, Fasc. 61 (Turnhout, Brepols, 1992), p. 21.

13. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, p. 22.

14. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, p. 23 (paraphrased).

15. On sermon types, see Beverly Mayne Kienzle, The Sermon, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental (Turnhout, 2000).

16. Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures, p. 2.

17. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 33.

18. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 34.

19. Jennings, ‘Introduction’, in Higden, Ars componendi sermones, p. 20.

20. Jennings, ‘Introduction’, pp. 20–21.

21. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, p. 276.

22. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 46.

23. Siegfried Wenzel has shown that Higden borrowed this verse and its use for the introductio of a thematic sermon from an anonymous art of preaching called Quamvis. See Wenzel, The Art of Preaching: Five Medieval Texts and Translations (Washington, D.C., 2013), pp. 250–55. The eight repetitions of the verse in the preaching manual suggests that Ranulf Higden meditated on this verse before choosing to include it here, perhaps as part of a lectio divina practice of Bible study or in response to the use of the verse in a Book of Hours. This would be consistent with medieval Benedictine monastic orthopraxis.

24. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 51. In an earlier, unpublished translation completed by Sally Wilson alone, key words are rendered slightly differently in this passage: ‘virgin’ is given as ‘maiden’; ‘mystically’ as ‘allegorically’; and ‘authenticated’ as ‘factually verified’. Wilson, trans., Concerning the Art of Preaching, p. 28 (personal communication).

25. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 52.

26. For historical overviews of the reception the idea of the unicorn in the biblical, classical, and medieval writings, see Odell Shephard, The Lore of the Unicorn (London, 1930) as well as a critical response to that study by Allen Godbey, ‘The Unicorn in the Old Testament’, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 56.3 (1939), 256–96; Margaret Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (New York, 1976), esp. chap. 1 ‘The Unicorn in Ancient and Medieval Texts’, pp. 11–32 and chap. 2 ‘The Unicorn in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art’, pp. 33–66; and Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces (Knoxville, 1977). See also Jane Beal, ‘The Unicorn as a Symbol for Christ in Medieval Culture’, in Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jane Beal (Leiden, forthcoming). For a select bibliography, see ‘Unicorn’, in The Medieval Bestiary (online): http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastbiblio140.htm.

27. On the seven ages of the world, their beginning and end points, and their influence on the chronicle tradition, see Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Late-Medieval England (London, 2004), esp. chap. 6, ‘Time and Place’.

28. Polychronicon, iv, ed. by Babington and Lumby, p. 279; cf. Seeger, Polychronicon, p. 389. Translations are given from John Trevisa’s English Polychronicon: together, the Latin and English versions of the chronicle reached a very large English audience in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and beyond. For further detail on the early modern audience, see Beal, John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon, esp. p. 6 ‘Translating Culture: Manuscripts, Printed Editions, and Early Modern Materia’.

29. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 49.

30. Polychronicon, iv, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 332–35; cf. Seeger, Polychronicon, pp. 401–02.

31. Polychronicon, iv, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 338–39.

32. Polychronicon, vii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 374–77.

33. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 49.

34. Polychronicon, vii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 380–81.

35. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 182–85.

36. See also Matthew 9. 37–38.

37. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 222–23, 226–27, 234–35.

38. As far as modern scholars know, William Fitz Osbert was not a priest or licensed preacher. He did have a university education and had apparently been on Crusade. The Polychronicon interprets the speech he gave to foment an uprising among the English poor as sermonizing (‘exorsus est’ / ‘preche’) and, by extension, presents William Long-Beard as a preacher. However, it should be noted that it was not uncommon for speeches that were not sermons, such as academic or Parliamentary discourses, to open with a scriptural verse.

39. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, p. 147.

40. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, p. 151.

41. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 152–53.

42. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 154–57.

43. Polychronicon, viii, ed. by Babington and Lumby, pp. 156–57.

44. Higden, Ars componendi sermones, trans. by Jennings and Wilson, p. 36.

45. The Speculum curatorum is currently being edited: the first two volumes have appeared and a third is planned. See Ranulf Higden, Speculum curatorum. A Mirror for Curates, Book I: The Commandments, ed. and trans. by Eugene Crook and Margaret Jennings, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 13.1 (Leuven, 2012), and Ranulf Higden, Speculum curatorum. A Mirror for Curates, Book II: The Capital Sins, ed. and trans. by Eugene Crook and Margaret Jennings, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 13.2 (Leuven, 2016).

46. For discussion of Trevisa as a Bible translator, see David Fowler, ‘John Trevisa and the English Bible’, Modern Philology, 58 (1960), 81–98; Jane Beal, John Trevisa and the English Polychronicon, pp. 67–87; and Anne Hudson, ‘The Origin and Textual Tradition of the Wycliffite Bible’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts (Leiden, 2017), pp. 153–56.