The 13th-century transformation of preaching in response to the spiritual ferment of
the 11th and 12th centuries was largely completed by the mid-14th century. The last two
centuries of the medieval era saw a refining and elaboration of the system. Everywhere,
there came to be more preachers, more sermon aids of every sort, more opportunities for
study. France continued to be blessed with gifted preachers of every stripe, whether a
pope like Clement VI, an academic like Jean Gerson, or a mendicant like Vincent Ferrer.
None of these gifted men, however, came from an unexpected quarter; the system was
firmly in place. There would be no substantial change to the office of preaching until the
16th century, the advent of Calvinist preaching, and the Catholic response inaugurated at
the Council of Trent (1563).
Robert Sweetman
[See also: ALAIN DE LILLE; BÉGUINES; BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX;
BERSUIRE, PIERRE; BONIFACE VIII; CAESARIUS OF ARLES; CLEMENT VI;
DOMINICAN ORDER; EXEMPLUM; FRANCISCAN ORDER; GERSON, JEAN;
GUERRIC D’IGNY; INNOCENT III; JACQUES DE VITRY; MAURICE DE SULLY;
POPULAR DEVOTION; PRÉMONTRÉ; ROBERT D’ARBRISSEL;
WALDO/WALDENSES]
Bourgain, Louis. La chaire française au XIIe siècle d’après les manuscrits. Paris: Société Générale
de Librairie Catholique, 1879.
Charland, Thomas-Marie. Artes praedicandi: contribution a l’histoire de la rhétorique au moyen
âge. Ottawa: Institut d’Études Médiévales, 1936.
D’Avray, David L. The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
Lecoy de La Marche, Albert. La chaire française au moyen âge, spécialement au XIIIe siècle,
d’après les manuscrits contemporains. Paris: Renouard, 1886.
Longhre, Jean. Œuvres oratoires des maîtres parisiens au XIIe siècle: étude historique et
doctrinale. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1975.
——. La prédication médiévale. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983.
Schneyer, Johann Baptist. Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters, für die Zeit von
1150–1350. 11 vols. Münster: Aschendorff, 1969–90.
Zink, Michel. La prédication en langue romane avant 1300. Paris: Champion, 1976.
PRECARIA
. A contract by which land was leased in perpetual usage by ecclesiastics for a nominal
annual rent to local knights and lords of castles. The precaria was in use throughout the
early Middle Ages. The precarial grant frequently was made to knights who would be
expected in return to protect the church in question (protofeudal contracts), and it may
have been by such contracts that the early Carolingians provided support to the warriors
needed to defeat the Muslims. In the upheavals of the 10th and 11th centuries, the
precarial grant was often used to regularize a usurpation of church land by knights; in
such a case, in return for the church’s grant of precarial rights the warrior, who continued
to exploit the land, would concede allodial rights to the monks or bishop. Precarial grants
could also be used to retrieve for heirs of donors to the church what those heirs
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