672 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
as upon the mass. Those who left church before the sermon began were pronounced deserving excommunication. Wolff's penitential manual of 1478 made the neglect of the sermon a violation of the 4th commandment. The efficacy of sermons was vouched for in the following story. A good man met the devil carrying a bag full of boxes packed with salves. Holding up a black box, the devil said that he used it to put people to sleep during the preaching service. The preachers, he continued, greatly interfered with his work, and often by a single sermon snatched from him persons lie had held in his power for 30 or 40 years.^
By the end of the 15th century, all the German cities and mostToTtlie larger towns had regular preaching. ^ It was a common thing to endow pulpits, as in Mainz, 1465, Basel, 1469, Strassburg, 1478, Constance, Augsburg, Stuttgart and other cities. The popular preachers drew large audiences. So it was with Geiler of Strassburg, whose ministry lasted 30 years. 10,000 are said to have gathered to hear the sermons of the barefooted monk, Jacob Mene of Cologne, when he held forth at Frankfurt, the people standing in the windows and crowding up against the organ to hear him. It was Mene's practice to preach a sermon from 7-8 in the morning, and again after the noon meal. On a certain Good Friday he prolonged his effort five hours, from 3-8 p.m. According to Luther, towns were glad to give itinerant monks 100 gulden for a series oi Xenten discourses.
Other signs of the increased interest felt in sermons were the homiletic cyclopcedias of the time furnishing materials derived from the Bible, the FatherSj^ classic authors and from the realm of tale and story. To these must be added the plenaria, ^ collections from the Gospels and Epistles with glosses and
1 Wolff's and the Augsburger Beichtbilchlein, ed. Falk, pp. 78. 87 ; Gnte Vermaninge, ed. by lialihnann, p. 73 ; Nichola.s Russ of Rostock as quoted by Jaiissen, I. 39. De7- Spieyd des Sunders about 1470. See Geffcken, p. 59. Seelenti-ost, 1483, etc.
2 Cruel, pp. (547, ();V2, closes his treatmont of the German pulpit in the M.A. with the observation tliat the old view, reducing the amount of preaching in Germany in the 15th century, must be abandoned. Gruel's view is now generally accepted by I'rotestant writers.
§ 74. PREACHING. 673
comments. The plenarium of Guillermus, professor in Paris, went through 75 editions before 1500. Collections of model sermons were also issued, some of which had an extensive circulation. The collection of John Nider, d. 1439, passed through 17 editions. His texts were invariably subjected to a threefold division. The collection of the Franciscan, John of Werden, who died at Cologne about 1450, passed through 25 editions. John Herolt's volume of Sermons of a Disciple — Sermones discipuli — went through 41 editions before 1500 and is computed to have had a circulation of no less than 40,000 copies.^ One of the most popular of the collections called Parati sermones — The Ready Mail's Sermons — appeared anonymously. Its title was taken from 1 Peter 4 : 6, "ready — paratus — to judge the quick and the dead " and Ps. 119 : 60, " I made haste [ready] and delayed not to observe thy commandments." In setting forth the words " Be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is " the author says that such wisdom is taught by the animals. 1. By the lion who brushes out his paw-prints with his tail so that the hunter is thrown off the track. So we should with penance erase the marks of our sins that the devil may not find us out. 2. The serpent which closes both ears to the seducer, one ear with his tail and the other by holding it to the ground. Against the devil we should shut our ears by the two thoughts of death and eternity. 3. The ant from which we learn industry in making provision for the future. 4. A certain kind of fish which sucks itself fast to the rock in times of storm. So we should adhere closely to the rock, Christ Jesus, by thoughts of his passion and thus save ourselves from the surging of the waves of the world. Such materials show that the homiletic instinct was alert and the preachers anxious to catch the attention of the people and impart biblical truth.
The_serinons_of_the German preachers of the 15th century were written now in Latin, now in German. The more famous of the Latin sermonizers were Gabriel Biel, preacher in Mainz and then professor in Tubingen, d. 1495, and Jacob Jiiterbock, 1383-1465, Carthusian prior in Erfurt and professor in the
1 Janssen, 1 : 43. 2x