Preliminaries
Preliminaries
This chapter contributes to an aspect of the history of death and supplies one of the larger pieces missing from the general picture of memorial preaching in the West. The existence of a genre of sermons ‘on the dead’, de mortuis in the period before 1350 has become evident only recently. The rubric ‘de mortuis’ in a manuscript is a rough-and-ready indication that a group of sermons should be included in the genre. The chapter deals with sermons on holders of a special social role, which is that of king or prince. It has much to tell about attitudes to the individual, to his office, and to the afterlife. It also presents some preliminary questions about the origins, transmission, and functions of the genre in the Middle Ages.
Keywords: death, memorial preaching, sermons, de mortuis, king, prince, afterlife, Middle Ages
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
