Humanist Preaching on St. Jerome: Cult of Saints or Scholarly Interest?
Italian humanists are commonly thought to have reshaped existing patterns of religious discourse by departing from the late-medieval form of thematic sermons and employing patterns of classical oratory instead. The main proponent of classicizing rhetoric in praise of the saints was Pier Paolo Verger...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Medieval sermon studies
Year: 2025, Volume: 69, Issue: 1, Pages: 44-54 |
| Further subjects: | B
Textual Transmission
B University of Padua B academic speeches B classicizing style B Codicology B St. Jerome B Sermons in honor of saints |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Italian humanists are commonly thought to have reshaped existing patterns of religious discourse by departing from the late-medieval form of thematic sermons and employing patterns of classical oratory instead. The main proponent of classicizing rhetoric in praise of the saints was Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder. His ten classicizing sermons in honor of St. Jerome (Sermones decem pro Sancto Hieronymo) are considered the first examples of classicizing oratory in praise of a saint. Vergerio is famed for having transformed the image of St. Jerome by emphasizing his intellectual achievements and glossing over his miracles. This more ‘secular’ representation is considered characteristic of sermons delivered in a classicizing style by humanists who are often thought to have departed from a typically medieval focus on miraculous performances by saints. Yet, very little research has been done on humanist classicizing sermons (orations) in honor of St. Jerome after Vergerio. The present paper studies an unedited sermon in the classicizing style, composed and performed for Jerome’s feast day in 1410 in Padua, by a little-known university student, Niccolò Bonavia. It shows that the paralepsis of Jerome’s miracles was not universal in fifteenth-century sermons in honor of St. Jerome and was not determined by the classicizing style. |
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| ISSN: | 1749-6276 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Medieval sermon studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/13660691.2025.2586403 |
