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Stephen Morrison, The Sermons of William Peraldus: An Appraisal. By Siegfried Wenzel, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 70, Issue 2, October 2019, Pages 891–893, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flz138
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Siegfried Wenzel’s latest book is an introduction to, or, as he puts it, an appraisal of, the sermon output of the French Dominican William Peraldus, who died in 1275. Peraldus, also known as Guillaume Peyraut/d, is best known today as the author of two popular treatises: the Summa de vitiis (of which a critical edition under the direction of Richard Newhauser is currently in preparation) and the Summa de virtutibus. Less well known is his authorship of several sermon cycles, one on the Sunday Epistles, another on the Sunday Gospels, and a third on saints’ days and immovable feasts. While some attention is given to this third cycle, the main thrust of Wenzel’s analysis is firmly on the first two.
The book is made up of seven chapters followed by an epilogue, together with 11 appendices. While the chapters are necessarily expository and analytical, the appendices, made up for the most part of texts and translations, illustrate the important claims made throughout this groundbreaking study. Though little studied, Peraldus’s sermons are worthy of interest, both for what they have to say about the development of medieval preaching as a whole, and for their relation to the two great summae mentioned above. As to the first point, Wenzel’s most important insight is that his subject ‘attempted something new in the history of sermon making: not to furnish sermons in well-ordered cycles but to provide treatises that would comment systematically on the liturgical texts that preachers were expected to preach on’ (p. 76). For want of a recent edition, Wenzel turns to the Sermones attributed to William of Auvergne, volume 2, printed by André Pralard in Paris in 1674, supplemented by the Tübingen incunable, the Sermones Dominicales ex Epistolis et Euangelys … (1499) and the manuscript testimony of Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 12422, both of which are consultable online.
