Voice and Manuscript as Mass Media: Preaching and Medieval Sermons in the West

2026/04/01

My research explores sermons composed and delivered in Western Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Across cultures, from antiquity to the present, the public delivery of religious teaching has been a common practice. Yet, in late medieval Western Europe, Christian (that is, Catholic) sermons acquired a uniquely prominent social role and developed in ways that are distinctive in world history.

In medieval Europe, books were reproduced as handwritten manuscripts. The introduction of Gutenberg’s printing press in the mid-fifteenth century is often regarded as a decisive turning point, giving rise to the modern common notion of ‘mass media’, a system for the wide dissemination of discourse. However, already in the thirteenth century, the preaching activities of mendicant orders—particularly the Franciscans and the Dominicans—established a large-scale system for the diffusion of ideas, operating independently of print. This system profoundly shaped both the Catholic Church and medieval society.

My research seeks to reconstruct the mechanisms of preaching from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries through close analysis of manuscript sources. As this work has progressed, it has become clear that many historical events of the period require renewed interpretation. I have increasingly focused on offering such interpretations and presenting new perspectives that challenge earlier views.

Before the rise of print-based media, oral communication to large audiences orally held a particular significance. Preaching, in a sense, functioned as the ‘broadcasting’ of its age—long before the invention of radio. Just as printed materials in the early modern period came under government regulation, and modern broadcasting requires state approval, so too did the medieval Catholic Church seek—often unsuccessfully—to control who could preach and what could be preached.

For a long time, sermon texts were not considered valuable historical sources. Mainstream historians prioritized political, constitutional, and socio-economic topics; literary scholars often ignored sermons, since although they were often delivered in the vernacular, the great majority of manuscripts were written in Latin; and theologians and philosophers tended to privilege doctrinal or speculative works over the practical discourse of preaching. Although such attitudes persist, scholarly appreciation of sermon literature has gradually been expanding.

Having studied sermon sources for over twenty years, I now think of them as a kind of ‘magic window’ onto the Middle Ages. I have often found myself unexpectedly stepping into entirely new aspects of medieval life. Even if the references in a sermon may not directly reflect historical reality, they can reveal what the preacher assumed would be readily accepted by contemporary audiences. Conversely, there are also cases where audience resistance is clear, which is equally fascinating.

I am currently involved in the Western Medieval Studies Course at the Graduate School of Letters. These research experiences have undoubtedly convinced me of the importance of taking a broad, interdisciplinary approach to the medieval West, while also respecting individual academic disciplines. Studying the practice of medieval preaching is not only an inquiry into a specific topic but also opens a window onto the entire medieval world. I intend to continue pursuing the academic exploration of the landscape revealed through this window to the past.