Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England

by Edward Lewes Cutts

CHAPTER XIV.

PREACHING AND TEACHING.

here is a chain of evidences that the rulers of the Church not only enjoined the diligent teaching of the people by their parish priests in sermon[208] and otherwise, but also gave the clergy the assistance of manuals of teaching and sermon helps; and, further, took pains at their visitations to ascertain that the duty was efficiently performed.

So early as the beginning of the eighth century, Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, published a poem in four hundred and fifty-eight Latin hexameters, “De Octo[209] Principalibus Vitiis.”

Ælfric’s address to the clergy (c. 1030) at the distribution of the chrism seems to have been written for his Bishop Wulfsine to deliver to a synodical assembly of the clergy of the Diocese of Sherborne. It is an instruction to the clergy on the duties of their office; dealing first minutely with their duty in baptism, unction, the eucharist, etc.; then it bids them to know by heart and explain to the people the Ten Commandments, and gives a brief explanation of each; then it goes on to explain the eight[210] capital vices. It is the first which has been preserved to us of a long series of synodal instructions.

PREACHING. FROM THE XIII. CENT. MS., EGERTON, p. 745, f. 46.