The Sermons of William of Newburgh

This volume offers a first edition of three homiletic works by the twelfth-century canon regular William of Newburgh: a homily on Luke 11.27 that explores in two successive sections the literal and typological exegesis of the passage, respectively; a sermon on the Trinity, structured as an extended exegesis of the Gloria Patri and the Benedicamus, and owing much to Augustinian notions of the Trinitarian structure of the human soul as an image of God; and a sermon on the martyrdom of St Alban which extrapolates from relatively brief references to the details of the narrative in order to explore the nature of martyrdom and the union of the martyr’s soul with Christ. Together they constitute a significant witness to the development of meditative theology as a vehicle of spirituality in England in the generations after Anselm. In keeping with the principles of the Toronto Medieval Latin Texts series, the texts are edited from a single MS witness, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C. 31 in the case of the first two works and that of London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 73 in the case of the third, with judicious appeal to the other two MSS for variant readings only where the reading of the base MS is clearly defective. The volume concludes with an index of biblical citations.