Parergon

Yuichi Akae’s contribution to Brepols’s Sermo series sets out to clarify and detail the systems constructed by the mendicant orders to support their preaching ministry, in particular that of the Austin friars in fourteenth-century [End Page 252] England. Akae undertakes what he calls a ‘vertical approach’ to his topic by focusing on a single-author model sermon collection, Novum opus dominicale, written by John Waldeby at the Austin convent at York. In contrast to previous horizontal approaches, which compare a number of sermons from different collections in order to ascertain the typicality of a sermon subject or its form, Akae explores Waldeby’s collection as a microcosm through which the technologies of late medieval England’s entire mendicant preaching and education systems can be determined.

The book is divided into two distinct sections. The first section establishes in three chapters the wider context in which the Novus opus dominicale operated. Akae positions Waldeby as an important mendicant preacher and places him at the heart of the Augustinian educational reforms of the 1350s. Rejecting as overly speculative previous attempts to reconstruct Waldeby’s career through an examination of the wider educational system in which he acted, Akae provides a thorough and definitive replacement for previous biographical works on Waldeby based solely on available documentary evidence. Continuing a close textual examination, demonstrating linguistic and codicological proficiency, Akae compares surviving manuscripts of the Novum opus dominicale and their use and placement in the York convent library. He thus reveals the way that Waldeby’s sermon collection was ‘intended for multiple audiences’ and had multiple functions for its readers, the Augustinian youths in their novitiate and preachers from both within and beyond the York convent.

The long and dense fourth chapter, which marks the beginning of Section II, is where Akae’s labour is most evident. Undertaking a complex comparison of Waldeby’s Novum opus with the Forma praedicandi of Robert Basevorn, he anatomises the modern sermon form used by the mendicants that appeared at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Placing the texts within the ‘same intellectual milieu’, he demonstrates that ‘Basevorn’s discussion of preaching techniques illuminates the intentions behind Waldeby’s particular practices. Waldeby’s sermons, on the other hand, supply concrete contexts for Basevorn’s explanatory language’ (pp. 116–17). While Akae admits that Waldeby’s and Basevorn’s shared context cannot be proven categorically, he maintains that the similarities between their approaches are ‘robust enough’ to conclude that they both relate to an identical and particular form of the modern sermon.

In addition to revealing much about the techniques of sermon composition, viewing each text through the lens of the other has the benefit of adding to the discussion of the mindset of mendicant preachers and the paths that they needed to negotiate between language and audience, and the literacy and levels of education of their readers and hearers. When combined with Chapter 5, which analyses the role played by the concept of sign (signum) [End Page 253] as biblical interpretation and mnemonic technique to shed further light onto Waldeby’s mindset and the possible experiences of his audiences, Akae’s analysis draws attention to the hybrid nature of the modern sermon form between text and performance. He concludes that the preachers and audiences shared ‘a world of imagery’, going on to say: ‘The mental space visualized by the preacher is transmitted through his preaching to the audience, who is led to share the space and “see” things in this space’ (p. 260). Indeed, Akae likens this experience to the modern phrase ‘virtual reality’.

In one of the more fascinating aspects of his analysis, Akae coins the term ‘fractal’ to describe the dynamic process of the modern sermon, which leading sermon scholar David d’Avray...