Representation of sanctity and popular imagery in Nicolas de Biard's Sermones de festis: a critical edition

Thesis

This doctoral thesis aims at filling the gap in scholarship around the availability of critical editions of medieval sermons. In doing so it focuses on the de festis model sermon collection of Nicolas de Biard, a friar active in Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century. This thesis explores the role of homiletic materials as primary sources for understanding medieval society by acknowledging their importance as direct sources of medieval public discourse and their quality of being a textual bridge between clerical and religious knowledge and the audience that may be comprised of lay people. To accomplish its aim to present the key elements of Nicolas’ worldview in the elaboration of his sermons this thesis has been organized into three chapters. The first chapter presents the status quaestionis and the necessary information about homiletic production in the thirteenth century, the Parisian environment, the mendicant formation of novices, and the information on Nicolas de Biard available in previous scholarship. The second chapter focuses on the editorial practices and the recension of the fifteen manuscripts that preserve the complete de festis collection, which is comprised of thirty-two sermons, with a focus on its liturgical framework and its parallels with the other works of Nicolas. The third chapter presents the sources employed by Nicolas and attempts a presentation of Nicolas’ worldview through the text of his sermons with a particular interest in his employment of similitudes that allowed for a better understanding by the audience. Finally, the dissertation ends with the critical edition of Nicolas’ de festis sermons.

Authors: Marson Franchini, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kz6rm99w6
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: sanctity; critical edition; Nicolas de Biard; preaching; model sermon
• Subjects: Literature, Medieval; Religious history; Philology; Preaching