SERMONS IN VERSE
. A number of 12th- and 13th-century poems were called “sermons” by their authors, but
the term seems to have referred as much to their oral mode of presentation as to their
religious content. The eight extant 12th-century “sermons,” including the Norman Grant
mal fist Adam, are mostly in stanzaic form and urge contempt for the world. In contrast to
the others, Thibaut de Marly’s Vers (ca. 1182–85) was addressed to court circles,
recalling its audience to chivalric as well as Christian virtues. At the end of the century,
the Poème moral, a systematic moral treatise in the form of a sermon that dealt in turn
with penitence, salvation, and vigilance, was addressed to a popular audience.
In the 13th century, Gautier de Coinci addressed two sermons to a convent of nuns.
Hélinant de Froidmont’s Vers de la Mort, a meditation on death as the culmination of the
Christian life, was the earliest of a series of such sermons. Other cycles of sermons were
written by Robert de Gretham and Nicole Bozon.
Maureen B.M.Boulton
[See also: BOZON, NICOLE; GAUTIER DE COINCI; HÉLINANT DE
FROIDMONT; PREACHING; ROBERT DE GRETHAM]
SERMONS JOYEUX
. Among the dramatic monologues or one-character plays of the late Middle Ages are
parodies of wills, mandates, prognostications, and especially of sermons. About thirty of
these sermons joyeux have survived from the 15th and early 16th centuries. Short, comic
pieces (150–400 octosyllabic lines), carnivalesque in their bacchic and alimentary themes
and obscenity, they were usually performed in festive contexts, such as weddings,
tradeguild banquets, or monastic holidays.
Some of the sermons joyeux are parodies of saints’ lives. Instead of the saint whose
feast it is, they tell of carnivalesque saints, using the same rhetorical eloquence prescribed
by the artes praedicandi. The actor who “preaches” the sermon relates the saint’s life,
describes the martyrdom, and reveals the miracles worked by the saint. Typical subjects
are St. Oignon, who makes people cry; St. Hareng, who was martyred on the grill; and
the priapic St. Billouard, who repopulated the earth after the Flood. Other sermons, based
on nuptial folklore, give rudimentary (and comic) instruction in sexual behavior to
newlyweds. Still others, from monastic and school milieux, have a goliardic character.
One treats the great deeds of Nemo (Nobody), who, taken as a person, is all-powerful.
Another is the polemical sermon of La Chopinerie, in which the students of Paris defend
their privileges and vaunt their drinking prowess.
The sermon joyeux depends for its basic meaning and comic effect on the opposition
between its serious form, derived from the sermon tradition, and its comic content, based
on carnival themes. Often, however, the imagery of the piece suggests another level of
meaning. The Sermon de saint Jambon et sainte Andouille, for example, may be read as
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