the
middle ages.

[Sidenote: Prose Sermons. St. Bernard.]

[Sidenote: Maurice de Sully.]

[Sidenote: Later Preachers. Gerson.]

It has already been pointed out in the first chapter that documentary
evidence exists to prove the custom of preaching in French (or at least
in _lingua romana_) at a very early date. It is not, however, till many
centuries after the date of Mummolinus, that there is any trace of
regularly written vernacular discourses. When these appear in the
twelfth century the Provencal dialects appear to have the start of
French proper. Whether the forty-four prose sermons of St. Bernard which
exist were written by him in French, or were written in Latin and
translated, is a disputed point. The most reasonable opinion seems to be
that they were translated, but it is uncertain whether at the beginning
of the thirteenth or the middle of the twelfth century. However this may
be, the question of written French sermons in the twelfth century does
not depend on that of St. Bernard's authorship. Maurice de Sully, who
presided over the See of Paris from 1160 to 1195, has left a
considerable number of sermons which exist in manuscripts of very
different dialects. Perhaps it may not be illegitimate to conclude from
this, that at the time such written sermons were not very common, and
that preachers of different districts were glad to borrow them for their
own use. These also are thought to have been first written in Latin and
then translated. But whether Maurice de Sully was a pioneer or not, he
was very quickly followed by others. In the following century the number
of preachers whose vernacular work has been preserved is very large; the
increase being, beyond all doubt, partially due to the foundation of the
two great preaching orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The existing
literature of this class, dating from the thirteenth, the fourteenth,
and the early fifteenth centuries, is enormous, but the remarks made at
the beginning of this chapter apply to it fully. Its interest is almost
wholly antiquarian, and not in any sense literary. Distinguished names
indeed occur in the catalogue of preachers, but, until we come to the
extreme verge of the mediaeval period proper, hardly one of what may be
called the first importance. The struggle between the Burgundian and
Orleanist, or Armagnac parties, and the ecclesiastical squabbles of the
Great Schism, produced some figures of greater interest. Such are Jean
Pet