A bridge to Christ’s Passion. Preaching on Passion Sunday in fourteenth-century Prague
A bridge to Christ’s Passion. Preaching on Passion Sunday in fourteenth-century Prague

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes selected Passion Sunday sermons on the Biblical verses Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato? and Tulerunt lapides Iudaei . The article’s goal is to trace preaching modalities known in Bohemia in the 1360s–1370s, focusing on their didactic messages and tools of rhetorical reinforcement. While some popular non-Bohemian sermons mainly inspired by Jacobus de Voragine replicate the liturgical shift on Passion Sunday and urge the audience to do penance and commemorate Christ’s Passion, Bohemian materials present two distinctive preaching modalities formed either as a scholastic sermon or as a patristic homily. Shaped by the same liturgical context the texts diverge from Jacobus de Voragine’s model as they aim to fit different needs and address various audiences. Thus, Konrad Waldhauser’s and Milíč of Kroměříž’s university sermons construct the preachers’ authority and promote the spiritual metamorphosis of the clergy by exploiting the image of the false teachers opposing Christ. Instead, the mental imagery of Milíč’s later homily, a text intended for a mixed audience, focuses on the figure of militant Christ as a symbolic union of spiritual and political powers. The analysis demonstrates that the content of the Bohemian sermons, traditionally associated with the Czech Reform movement, is rather standard for the liturgical occasion. Yet, given the specific cultural and political context in Bohemia in the late 1360s–1370s, Milíč’s and Waldhauser’s ‘neutral’ texts might also have a deeper level, which needs to be considered in connection to the development of the Passion cult in the region.

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