About Sermones.hu
This homepage is temporarily used between 2020-23 for the TEI XML digitalization project of the sermon collection Sermones de sanctis Biga salutis intitulati written by Osvaldus de Lasko. At the end of the working period these texts are going to be moved and integrated into the research group's main homepage: sermones.elte.hu that is considered as the common site of sermon publications and related research of primary importance.
About the project
Background, problems to be solved. The antecedents of the project
Osvaldus de Lasko and Pelbartus Temesvári were the most outstanding personalities of the Franciscan sermon literature in medieval Hungary. Beside this Laskai was also a key leader of the observant Franciscan vicariate whose activity essentially contributed to the later formation of the observant province. Their works – published many times from the late 15th century – were required all over Europe in that time, but their modern, critical edition has only partially been published yet. However, in the last decades an increasing number of projects were initiated to publish and do research on medieval sermon literature, based on complete oeuvres of different preachers.
Parallel to this the research of medieval exempla came into the focus of interest and the French-based research group GAHOM started to build the database Thesaurus Exemplorum Medii Aevi (ThEMA), supported between 2006 and 2011 by the Agence National de Recherche. Despite the special working method of the late medieval sermon writers, the compilation, their literary achievement can be studied and evaluated only on the basis of the complete oeuvre. Furthermore, quantitative methods – gaining ground in humanities, too – cannot lead to valid results if used on excerpts. Therefore, the long-term aim is to publish the complete work of both preachers.
The initiator of the modern publication was the late Ildikó Bárczi at Eötvös Loránd University who elaborated the principles of the edition and started the online publication of the sermons of Temesvári, before the online edition of texts was wide-spread and standardised. From 2009 on, the research group hosted at Károli Gáspár University, with members from the Széchényi National Library, joined this publication project to publish Laskai’s sermons according to the same principles, on the same online surface, supported by OTKA (K 77915 and K 104716). The task of these projects started in 2009 and 2012 has been completed. Seventy-two sermons have been published on the homepage sermones.elte.hu run by the Department of Old Hungarian Literature of ELTE. Together with the fourteen sermons prepared by Ildikó Bárczi and Edit Madas in other research projects more than 75% of the texts have already been published.
Description of the present research project (OTKA K 131866)
One of the main aims of the running project – in continuation of the earlier ones – is to complete the online publication of the work Sermones de sanctis of Osvaldus de Lasko. The remaining 25 sermons together with the finalised edition of Temesvári’s Quadragesimale are planned to be published. As for the online appearance of the sermons the translation of the texts into the standard TEI XML coding has to be done before archiving.
The importance of the sermons
Osvaldus de Lasko and Pelbartus Temesvári were the most outstanding personalities of the Franciscan sermon literature in medieval Hungary. The publication of their works is one of the old debts of Hungarian medievalists. The modern, critical edition on internet of their sermons and the publication of the exempla in them give access to very important elements of medieval sermon literature for both, Hungarian and international research. The importance of the two authors goes far beyond ecclesiastical or literature history. The Observant branch of the Franciscans represented the largest monastic community in medieval Hungary, roughly every third of all monks and friars belonged to them, and their number was also the highest within the Observant Franciscans living outside Italy; according to Jenő Szűcs their proportion was about one third. This fact alone would justify scholarly interest concerning their spiritual attitudes documented in the sermons. But there are further factors, too, to be considered. The strong presence of Observant Franciscans in Hungary was even more strengthened by the intensive support of the political elite, including the king and practically all the magnates between 1445 and 1526. The political alliance between the elite and the friars primarily focused on the wars against the Ottoman Empire, but not exclusively; the Hussites were, for instance, also on the agenda. Furthermore, the friars themselves were devoted reformers targeting not only their own religious community, but also the contemporary society. Due to the multiple printed publication and the European circulation of their works, their influence did not vanish at the end of the Middle Ages, nor stopped at the Hungarian borders. One of the reasons for what it is worth to publish the entire oeuvre of the two famous Franciscan preachers – personally devoted reformers of their age –, is their long-term impact, mainly on Catholic preaching practices, in a period when religious diversity unfolded, and the reform of the Church got multiple meanings. Since earlier projects were driven by personal research interest or aimed to publish the sermons following the order within Laskai’s work, important texts of the book remained unpublished up to the present. Ildikó Bárczi started the publication of Temesvári’s sermons, but her sudden death hindered its completion. With the current project we would like to finish both the edition of Laskai’s Sermones de sanctis and Temesvári’s Quadragesimale.
Further plans and collaboration with other research teams
The different parts of our work fit into the long-term project of publishing all the sermons of the two authors (the remaining parts of De tempore by Temesvári and the other volumes of Biga salutis). Further related researches, done by other scholars in different research projects, are the analysis of the Érdy Codex (Dóra Bakonyi) and the database of Hungarian exempla (Zsófia Bartók), both hosted at ELTE and being accessible at sermones.elte.hu. The databases will be connected not only by the fact of being published at the same website, but also by cross references. Further research related to the present proposal is done at ELTE, namely the analysis of Early Modern sermons, partly Protestant, partly Catholic, representing a new possible research direction.