English Wycliffite Sermons: Volume II

This second volume of English Wycliffite sermons is an edition of the sermons for the Proper and Common of Saints together with two Wycliffite tracts. It is intended to be used with close reference to Volume 1, comprising the sermons on Sunday Epistles and Gospels, which appeared in 1983. The sermons form part of a complete sermon cycle preserved in part or as a whole in the thirty-one manuscripts described in Volume I. The tracts are also preserved, mainly - but not exclusively - in these same thirty-one manuscripts.

The two-part introduction to this volume contains an account of five additional manuscripts, and also a discussion of the textual history of the sermons in the Sanctorale and of the tracts. The latter complements the material on the Sunday Epistles and Gospels already published, and when the edition is complete, it will set the history of the Sanctorale in the context of the whole cycle. The sermons are of great interest not only in their handling of Lollard ideas but also in their utilization of theological and scientific ideas; they indicate the level of sophistication expected of their readers.