traditions of the patristic world. Few monuments to their early homiletic effort survive.
The sermons of Caesarius of Arles represent an exception that allows one to see both the
continuity of context and pastoral intent between his preaching and that of his patristic
predecessors, even while noting the considerable changes in circumstance and a
heightened awareness of the countryside and of the enormous dislocations of the day.
The pastoral situation of the Merovingian church was poorly fitted to the rhetorical
and institutional framework evolved in the ancient church, which had concentrated
pastoral (preaching) efforts in the hands of a bishop and the clergy who made up his
immediate household. Merovingian dioceses were sprawling affairs whose sheer physical
size necessitated the development of subdiocesan centers of pastoral care, that is, parishes
endowed with clerical communities. Who were these parish priests to be? How were they
to be trained to pastoral office? And how was their pastoral activity to relate to that
carried on by the bishop and his household clergy?
Clear attempts to answer such questions survive only in Carolingian sources (751–
989), such as capitularies. The Admonitio generalis (789) established doctrinal ends of
preaching—faith in the Trinity, Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection. It recommended
that preachers make use of the Articles of Faith, the list of sins contained in Galatians 5,
and the spiritual counsels found in the Sermon on the Mount. At Tours in 813, bishops
were admonished to preach to their subjects concerning the Last Things and to do so in
the vernacular. At Attigny in 822, they were exhorted to establish assistants within their
dioceses who would be competent to help them fulfill their preaching office. The
capitulary of Haito, bishop of Basel, demanded that parish priests have in their possession
all books requisite to the administration of their responsibilities, among which was to be a
collection of sermons covering all Sundays and feast days.
This legislation suggests that by the 8th and 9th centuries the Frankish church had
begun to adjust to the logistics of its situation. While the identification of the church’s
“order of preachers” with the episcopacy remained current, the bishop’s office, including
his preaching ministry, was assumed to be carried on with a fair degree of autonomy by
clerical delegates at the parish level. Preaching was for the most part conceived in terms
of the public worship of the faithful. The bishop’s preaching, to be carried on in the
vernacular, was intended to instruct the faithful in the obligations of membership in the
community, obligations of both word and deed.
Haito of Basel’s capitulary alludes to another Carolingian initiative. Bishops and
clerics became increasingly busy with the compilation and dissemination of homiliaries,
collections of sermons covering the readings of the liturgical year. Many were produced
in a monastic context with the contemplative lectio divina in mind; others were produced
primarily for the edification of the clergy. Some, however, were compiled in response to
the desire recorded in Haito’s capitulary that every parish priest have access to a
collection of sermons covering the readings of the entire liturgical year.
This survey of early-medieval preaching must be modified somewhat by pointing to a
revival of kerygmatic preaching in the Frankish church. The Gallo-Roman domination of
the episcopacy gave way in the latter half of the 7th century. The new willingness of the
Frankish nobility to pursue ecclesiastical careers went hand in hand with the wanderings
of St. Columbanus and the establishment of Irish monasticism throughout the Frankish
lands. A new missionary spirit emerged among Frankish ecclesiastics that culminated in a
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