The last thirty years have seen sermons move far more centre-stage in many areas of medieval studies. The SERMO project to publish catalogues of medieval European vernacular sermons, of which these Middle English volumes are part, is both a major contribution and a tool which will expedite further work. It is a massive undertaking: these four volumes catalogue 1,481 texts of sermons (the longest of 121 folios) in 162 manuscripts.

The problems of definition, procedure and dating are immense. The sermons surveyed here date mostly from the late fourteenth to the late fifteenth century. It is the editors' judgement that only two manuscripts contain genuinely Early Middle English prose sermons, rather than sermons which, though Early Middle English in date and language, have Old English textual links (p. xxxiii). These are narrower criteria than those of Thomas Hahn's discussion in the Cambridge history of medieval English literature (Cambridge 1999, 81–4) which attends rather to the presence of distinctively Early Middle English strategies for vernacular instruction, and correspondingly includes a wider range of homiletic collections from the period. The editors also present (pp. xxxiv–xxxvii) the arguments underlying their omission of incunabula, and a cut-off point of c. 1500, clearly difficult decisions because they exclude many sermons from the most controversial period of English church history, but their arguments command respect and the decisions emerge as sensible and practical.

The system employed is designed to provide readers, coming to these volumes from many different research areas and priorities, with a flexible, multiple, yet user-friendly apparatus of information, summary, search-terms and cross-references. Biblical allusions, 13,224 of them, sometimes quite vaguely worded in the sermons, are identified and listed. There are separate indices of manuscripts, their owners and scribes; and similarly indices of sermons, their authors, occasions, themes, biblical citations, proper names, place names, concepts, exempla and verses inserted into sermons. Concepts (themes like simony, five wounds, love, Jews, women and many others) are additionally grouped in a table of larger religious categories that include divinity, earthly world, afterlife, etc.

Each manuscript entry provides essential facts; a summary of contents; a list of other manuscripts containing the same or closely related sermons; additional comments; and a bibliography. Ensuing entries for the manuscript's individual sermons provide information on the sermon's occasion, title, biblical text and folio numbers, followed by helpfully full incipit and explicit passages; a summary of the sermon; separate summaries of any exempla; all biblical quotations; names; concepts contained in the sermon; and bibliography.

The result is an admirable reference work. But it is also a fascinating read, and reading instantly reveals the possibilities of new directions for thinking and research – and for teaching. Although not a history of Middle English preaching, this anthology of sermon summaries provides a graphic survey of variety and change in the medieval sermon. It is arranged by library and manuscript, with no attempt at a chronological date-line (perhaps a simple table, listing sermons by probable periods, would have been useful). Nevertheless, the fact that sermon collections often have chronological and ideological coherence, makes it an excellent mirror of contrasts like that between exempla- and miracle-filled sermons and the more austere Lollard method, based on Gospels and moral guidance, though often equally animated with savage attacks on Wycliffite ecclesiastical targets. Students will also get an invaluable first-step guide towards studying topics like how different authors treat biblical themes, moral teaching or saint's legends. The medieval world illustrated is one that promulgates, at one extreme, the weirdest and most unedifying elements in medieval faith, with preachers assuring parishioners of the penchant of celestial figures for punitive and partisan acts of vengeance, magic and favour, through the period's more typical spectrum of homiletic allegories, etymologies, exempla, and miracles, issuing out of many traditions, sources and ideologies; through to sober, humane and perceptive moral counsel, sound teaching of the faith and exposition of the Gospels.

The Repertorium will facilitate research in hagiography and devotional traditions, exempla, the use of the Bible, eschatology and related practices, Lollardy and orthodoxy, changing theological tenets and teaching, the use of classical, pre-Christian allusions. The editors point to the potential for asking further questions about preaching for urban and rural audiences, methods of preaching, source studies and the Latin and continental connections (pp. lii–lx). They observe that the texts make surprisingly infrequent allusions to the writing and design of sermons, their divisions and technical terminology (pp. liv–lv). Their excellent introduction also discusses the vital, complex, question of what counts as a sermon (pp. xxxvi–xxxiii).They report that their survey yields fewer references to Mary, though there are still many, and fewer misogynist statements, than expected but they caution that preachers perhaps took the importance of both as self-evident. While allusions to Lollardy as such are fairly rare, many sermons are recognisably Wycliffite in provenance, arguments and rhetoric, and the presence of ‘sect vocabulary’. Contemporary politics are evident too: discussions of schism, of martyrdom, including burning, in fifteenth-century Wycliffite texts, or John Russell's parliament sermons for 1483 and 1484. As the editors observe, developments in dating may in time yield further insight about how some individual sermons possibly relate to contemporary politics.

Despite the extensive index of concepts, certain themes that will be of interest to some researchers and critics, and recur reasonably frequently, are not obviously indexed anywhere. These include food, illness, dreams and visions, begging, leprosy, cross and crucifix, prostitutes, fashions and clothing. Perhaps the project's definition of ‘concept’ is an essentially religious one and therefore at least some of these recurrent themes end up with no obvious home amid the indices. The heading ‘war’ too proves to cover only two allusions, although several other sermons dwell on allegories of the siege of the soul, knights, fighting and related imagery, and the two entries under ‘purity’ seem to miss additional references to cleansing of the soul. On the other hand, these are quibbles: the question of how extensive to make an index is always difficult; it would be impossible in such a large undertaking to take account of all the possible specific interests of every reader who will consult these volumes in the future.

The editors are wittily self-deprecating about their achievement of the enormous, complicated task of creating the Repertorium, citing Samuel Johnson's comparison of women's preaching to a dog's walking on hind legs (it was not well done but you were surprised to see it done at all). They are mistaken. The future would eventually prove Johnson wrong about women's preaching. It will instantly give its accolade to the excellence of this new research tool.