Andrew Reeves

As Father Boyle noted, shortly after its founding, the Order of Preachers became an order of confessors. As part of their preaching mission, the Friars Preachers also conducted confessions and administered penances throughout the English province. Serving as confessors meant that they would end up serving as catechists. An impromptu education would be necessary to make sure a lay penitent understood the basic principles of mortal and venial sins. But in many instances an education would go further: summas of confession like Raymond of Pennafort’s counseled the confessor to make sure that the penitent at least have a basic command of such foundational Christian prayers as the Apostles’ Creed. Summas like Simon of Hinton’s Summa iuniorum outlined basic principles of the Christian religion such as the Articles of Faith.

Much of the historiography on Dominican texts of religious education has concentrated on the role these texts played in the religious education of friars. The doctrines present in many of these texts, however, are somewhat basic, especially given that in the Order’s first century in the English province, most recruits were drawn from the ranks of men who already had a formidable education. Moreover, many of these texts appear in the same sort of portable vademecum codices as the model sermons of prominent friars. Both of these facts suggest Dominicans catechizing laypeople. We thus have these and other pieces of evidence to suggest that not only were the Friars Preachers assisting parochial clergy by instructing laypeople from the pulpit, but also that they were providing other more personal forms of catechesis to English laypeople.

In the European Middle Ages, the area in which the majority of lay Christians came into contact with the so-called institutional Church was pastoral care. Three principle areas of this care were preaching, confession, and catechesis. All three provide a window into popular religious practice, and thus, the study of pastoral care benefitted from the social-historical turn of the 1960s and 1970s and an increased emphasis on “the people.” One of the key aspects of this study of pastoral care has been in investigation of pastoralia, those works of literature meant to help clergy with the cure of souls carry out their tasks. The study of pastoralia begins with the manuscripts, but then aids several different approaches: history of sexuality, feminism, social and cultural history, and history of universities all make abundant use of pastoral literature.

As part of their mission to preach faith and morals, the medieval Dominicans often served as allies of parochial clergy and the episcopate. Scholars such as M. Michèle Mulchahey have shown that on the Continent, the Order of Preachers often helped to educate parish priests. We have evidence that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Dominicans were allowing parochial clergy to attend their schools in England as well.

Much of this evidence is codicological. Two English codices of William Peraldus's sermons provide evidence of a provenance relating to a parish church: London Gray's Inn 20, a collection of his sermons on the Gospels, was owned by a parish priest, and Cambridge Peterhouse 211, a manuscript of his sermons on the Epistles, contains an act issued by the rector of a parish church. Another manuscript of Peraldus's sermons contains synodal statutes. As the Order of Preachers was outside of the diocesan chain of command, these statutes point to the use of these sermons by those who were subject to the episcopate.

Since the Dominicans were normally forbidden from sharing their model sermon literature with secular clergy, these codices suggest a program on the part of the English province of the Order of Preachers to make sure that diocesan clergy could attend Dominican schools in order to gain the skills necessary to preach the basic doctrines and morals of the Christian faith to England's laity.