Studying Sermons of the Late Middle Ages

In this episode, David Rockwell asks Pietro Delcorno, research fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, about his research related to late medieval sermons. Some of the questions discussed in this episode are how the Bible reached common people, and how flexible the Bible could be for interpretation in sermons and religious theatre. Pietro also talks about the sermons as the primary means of communicating religious content to the lay people, and what sources he uses, like model sermons, or ad-hoc notes of preachings. Sermons tell us about the shared religious language of the people, especially those who could not read and write. Preaching was the mass-media of the time. Pietro also talks about how medieval preachers incorporated histrionics into their preaching practice and what techniques they used to catch the attention of their audience. They must have been quite successful in the last regard, as some preachers rose to quite high fame, and were treated like rock stars of the Late Medieval society. Past Perfect! is CEU Medieval Radio’s show on medieval and early modern history and culture, where various issues from the crusades to archeo-zoology to medieval urine sampling are discussed. The discussions are made with the aim to popularize medieval and early modern studies with the help of experts such as early musicians, historians, philologists and archeologists.This episode was recorded in June 2019.