The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence

Abstract

This volume is, nevertheless, a welcome addition to the critical writings on Aelfric and Wulfstan: although Professor Gatch touches upon the literary traits of the sermons, his chief concern is to study the doctrine these sermons contain.In doing so, he reveals clearly that the works of these men merit the attention of historians of theology as well as of literature.Dom David Knowles' assessment of Aelfric, that he was **one of the most distinguished figures in the history of Western theolo- gical learning in the centuries immediately before the renaissance of the eleventh century," is given good illustration in Professor Catch's book.That he is less successful with Wulfstan is due in part to the smaller corpus of writings with which he can deal and to the ecclesiastical situation, different from that of Aelfric, in which Wulfstan was writing, but also to the narrow limits Professor Gatch has set for his investigation.His hypotheses regarding kinds of preaching, the liturgical setting for preaching and the place of the vernacular are interesting and suggestively, if cautiously, stated; scholars concerned with the history of preachingsubstance, art and circumstanceswill find much that is challenging here.