Book Description

The Dominican Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and the Franciscan Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444) were the most important preachers in the generation before Savonarola. Dominici's and Bernardino's sermons, as they appear in Tuscan reportationes of their preaching, are a valuable historical source. Written down by anonymous listeners, these are the major reports of sermons preached in early fifteenth-century Florence. The reportationes are unique in that they transmit in full the actual preaching event and are not merely a doctrinal summary composed by the preacher. They have never been studied in detail and remain unpublished to this day. Dominici and Bernardino were active in Florence at a time when broad legal, social and cultural changes were taking place. The central purpose of this study is to examine the response of these preachers to the changes, the alternatives they offered and their attempts to direct the life of the laity. The four principal chapters are devoted to the preachers' opinionson secular,and ecclesiastical politics, education and humanism, morality and the family and the economy and usury (the role of the Jews), the discussion built around a comparison between the two preachers. The preachers had a crucial and widespread impact on the spiritual lives of the people (especially women) and their daily habits, on political developments and on legislative measures against such fringe groups as Jews, homosexuals, prostitutes and the like. The study includes a methodological discussion of how to study these sermons as historical source, and an edition of ten sermons from MS Ricc. 1301, a collection of 47 sermons by Dominici delivered in Santa Maria Novella in Florencebetween 1400 and 1406.