Peter the Chanter and the "Miscellanea del Codice del Tesoro" (Etimology as a Way for Constructing a Sermon)

Text of a paper presented at an international conference held in Stockholm, 7-9 October, 2004.The paper analyses one of the sermons (“Text IX”) contained in the last three quires of MS 720 of the Biblioteca Antoniana in Padua, one of the most important witnesses of the Sermones dominicales and Festiui of St. Anthony (d. 1231). The sermons and fragments of this part of the MS have been published as a “Miscellanea del codice del tesoro”. In Sermon IX a subdivision of the senses of the Scripture is found, enriched with etymological observations about the words “history”, “allegory”, “tropology”, and “anagogy”. Besides the sources of each definition, indicated by the editors, a source for the whole passage can be found, namely one of the “Sacra Scriptura” entries from Peter the Chanter’s (d. 1197) Distinctiones “Abel”. This suggests a comparison of this sermon, as well as the whole of this miscellaneous collection, with the theological works and the tools for preachers prepared by the secular masters in Paris, chiefly Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton (d. 1228 as archbishop of Canterbury). The comparison allows us to identify several parallel texts, and also to recognise a certain similarity in inspiration (concerning e.g. the duties of the preacher or the importance of the sacrament of penitence), and even a common fundamental religious attitude in both groups of texts. The paper concludes by underlining the importance of the theology of the secular masters of the late 12th and early 13th centuries, in order to understand the attitude of early mendicant preaching. These masters, in fact, outlined a wide-ranging project of reform of the Church, which in part inspired the action of early mendicants, and they also provided a set of practical tools to facilitate preachers. Taking this kind of rather neglected literature into account, we can better understand how the sermons of such early mendicant preachers were constructed, and also recognise the kind of spirituality they found in contemporary theology.