Resumen de Between Text and Orality, Between Legend and Doctrine: The Model Sermon in Dominican Preaching and the System of Communication Established in the Thirteenth Century

Giovanni Paolo Maggioni

• Stories of the saints are set between the divine and the human, between transcendence and reality and between eternity and the momentary. They are crucial for medieval culture, for the transmission of the traditions of the cult, and they are the essence of religion. The thirteenth-century Latin texts written for Dominican preachers were composed according to the Scholastic method and incorporated elements of the saints’ stories. Some collections of model sermons, by different authors but directed at different auditors, explicitly or implicitly enable us to grasp the varied modulations possible in one subject. Two different compilations exist of De sanctis, the sermons by Iacopo de Voragine (1228–1298), one for the brothers of the order, and the other for preachers generally. They enable us to grasp the dynamics of the Dominican system of communication established in the thirteenth century, especially when important saints – Francis, Dominic, Peter martyr – are examined, and also the doctrinal content that was important for religion in the society of the time.