Hard on the heels of the weighty first volume comes the almost seven hundred pages of the second volume of the collected sermons of the early thirteenth-century theological master and bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne. In volume i, Morenzoni edited the first 135 of William's sermons De tempore; this volume presents the remaining 189. Subsequent volumes will make accessible a further 120 sermons De sanctis and 113 De communi sanctorum et de occasionibus. This welcome edition is a first printing for most of the sermons, since those to be found in the seventeenth-century edition of William's Opera omnia are the work of his near-contemporary William Peraldus. Since volume i also contained Morenzoni's useful preface to all the De tempore sermons, this volume has no extra material. The sermons come in a variety of lengths and states of completeness, and we cannot be sure what stage of production or reception any represents, although some appear to be reportationes and others preacher's personal notes. Six of the sermons printed here are extant in more than one version, all of which Morenzoni has edited, posing fascinating puzzles for his readers. Three versions of sermon 155 (Palm Sunday), for instance, are presented, the latter two (at four printed pages each) being around half as long as the first. The shorter versions seem, to this reader, unrelated to one another, though both are reasonable summaries of the longer form; and although one reads like a hastily taken note taken during the longer sermon, the other could convincingly pass for a plan made in advance. Are we seeing the work of two listeners, one more accomplished than the other, or is one really William's original model? Morenzoni's epic work allows us to gobble these sermons like pigs at the bran tub, as William himself would have said.
No CrossRef data available.
