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“his own collection of ideas”41 and re-used snippets from model sermons
to create a new text. although often following his direct source for longer
passages, usually a subsection, Johannes would insert occasional words or
even quotations, sometimes jumping over thematic units. Some passages
are modelled freely, and the degree to which Johannes alters his source
sermons might vary from verbatim quotation to the mere loan of ideas, the
latter being especially hard to track down. a similar phenomenon has been
observed for preaching literature in Middle High German.42 In both cases,
the interrelation between the compiled sermon and its sources is rather ob-
vious because the source texts are known. for fourteenth-century Iceland,
this kind of comparison is impossible to conduct because the manuscript
tradition is nearly completely lost, as is the other evidence supporting it.
However, internal evidence in the text, i.e. inconsistencies in the use of
biblical authorities and rhetorical means, indicate that the Þorlákr sermon
was forged with the same techniques as employed in the rest of Europe.
In this context, it is also important to point out that the compilatio
technique was not a phenomenon restricted to the periphery of Europe.
neither was it a characteristic of an uninspired or untalented preacher, as
originality does not seem to have been a goal in preaching.43
Preaching on St Þorlákr
as indicated above, the Þorlákr sermon might be the only sermon that
can positively be connected with medieval Iceland. there is abundant
evidence for the preaching of exegetic homilies in the form of transla-
tions and homily collections listed among Church possessions.44 All this
41 Hedlund, “Vadstena Preacher,” 48.
42 andrea Syring, “Compilatio as a Method of Middle High German Literature Production: an
anonymous Sermon about St. John the Evangelist and its appearance in other Sermons,”
Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University: Proceedings of International Symposia
at Kalamazoo and New York, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse (Louvain-la-neuve: fédération
Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 1998), esp. 117–19.
43 D’avray, Preaching of the Friars, 52; H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle
Ages (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 21 and 270.
44 the Icelandic máldagar use the terms (h)omilia and sermo for earlier collections, e.g. by
augustine or Gregory the Great, which corresponds to continental habits. finding a refer-
ence to a sermon book in these sources therefore does not allow us to identify them with
high medieval sermons in the scholastic style.
FORGOTTEN PREACHING