Commemorative function of the "divisiones thematis" as a key to orientation in late scholastic preaching texts (on the example of sermons of Henry of Wildenstein)
Abstract
The so-called "divisio thematis" is the basic element of the structure of late scholastic sermons. Latin term "divisio thematis" represents a medieval way to distinctively divide a quotation of Bible with the help of verses, and on this basis layout the whole text of a preaching.
This method of structuring of preacherʼs speech was usually used in the Latin-language thematic sermons in the high and late Middle Ages. It is likely that this type of division of a text helped the contemporary recipients (listeners or readers) to focus on the message of preaching, because the whole sermon was through this way linked with the references to the initial biblical quote.
The "divisio thematis" probably worked as a type of a commemorative code for the orientation in a structure of exegetical argumentation. The aim of this paper is to show some examples of this scholastic form of division (selected mainly from a sermon-collection of Henry of Wildenstein from the 1370s-1380s preserved in a single manuscript: Munich, BSB, Clm 14256, ff. 2r-66v) and to scrutinize their reference function within the structure of the whole text of preaching.
These examples should depict the memory-stimulating function of this rhetorical method in the late medieval preaching practice.