A Resolution

I haven’t been writing much over here. That’s primarily due to several major work projects which have given me no time to work on the dissertation. As these pressures are easing, I’m hoping to do something constructive with this space.

I was trying to figure out what I could do that would be helpful for me, interesting for readers, and that would add to the volume of useful material freely and easily accessible. After giving it a little thought, I’ve decided to try looking at the sermon collections of patristic and later thinkers who tended to be anthologized in the Western homiliary tradition.

My plan, therefore, is each month to take a collection—like Gregory’s 40 Gospel Homilies or Leo’s sermons—to give an overview and sketch the bounds of the collection and its later use at the head of the month. Then, I’ll try and look at a representative sermon fro it each week and then, at the end of the month, make some reflections on exegetical technique and practice and anything else that’s caught my eye while reading through them.

I’m hoping this will give me a vehicle for disciplined reflection on the corpus of patristic and early medieval preaching and an opportunity to give folks a sense of who the preachers were, a sense of their personality beyond just a name in a source list.