The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1–100
1 work
c. 90–125; survives in fragments
Greek
Kerygma Petrou
Attributed to Peter
A missionary sermon in Peter's name, preserved in a handful of quotations by Clement of Alexandria. It sets Christians apart as a third people who worship neither as the Greeks, who serve wood and stone, nor as the Jews, who serve angels and months and moons.
201–300
2 works
c. 239–242
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty sermons taken down by shorthand writers as Origen preached at Caesarea, wrestling with a God who says he repents, who deceives the prophet, and who hands his own people over — and refusing every easy way out of the difficulty.
c. 245–250; recovered in Munich in 2012
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
Twenty-nine sermons on the Psalms, preached at Caesarea and read for centuries as the work of someone else. On Psalm 36 he tells his congregation that the man who is angry and does not sin is rarer than the man who does not become angry at all.
301–400
6 works
386–387
Greek
John Chrysostom · c. 347 – 407
Twelve sermons preached at Antioch against Eunomians who claimed to know God's essence. Chrysostom points at the seraphim, who cover their faces, and asks what a man is doing measuring what angels will not look at directly — then closes each sermon by begging his congregation not to leave before the prayers.
c. 386
Greek
De Sacerdotio
John Chrysostom · c. 347–407
A dialogue defending the author's own flight from ordination, which turns into an unsparing account of what pastoral office demands and how easily preaching curdles into performance.
387
Greek
John Chrysostom · c. 347–407
Twenty-one sermons preached to a terrified Antioch after a riot toppled the imperial statues and the city awaited punishment, holding the congregation together week by week.
c. 386–389
Greek
John Chrysostom · c. 347 – 407
Sixty-seven sermons working through Genesis at Antioch, reading it as history rather than allegory and returning constantly to the idea of condescension — that scripture speaks of God walking in the garden the way an adult speaks to a child, stooping to be understood.
c. 386–390
Latin
Ambrose of Milan · c. 339 – 397
Nine sermons on the six days, preached in Holy Week and following Basil closely while filling the natural history with Ambrose's own enthusiasms — the habits of bees, the cunning of the crab that drops a pebble into the oyster's shell, the pelican, and the phoenix as a figure of the resurrection.
c. 391–393
Greek
John Chrysostom · c. 347 – 407
Thirty-two sermons on Romans, insisting throughout that grace does not remove the will but frees it, and that Paul's hardest chapters are about God's dealings with two peoples rather than about the fate of individuals.
401–500
5 works
c. 407
Latin
In Epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Ten sermons preached in Easter week on a letter about love, to a congregation split by the Donatist schism. The seventh contains the sentence everything else in Augustine has to be read against: love, and do what you will.
c. 391–430
Latin
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
Some nine hundred surviving sermons taken down by stenographers as he preached, ranging from great feasts to ordinary weekdays, and often interrupted by the congregation.
397–426
Latin
De Doctrina Christiana
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
How to read the Bible and how to preach it: signs and things, the rule of love as the test of any interpretation, and a final book on using classical rhetoric without being used by it.
429
Greek
Proclus of Constantinople · d. 446
Preached in the Great Church with Nestorius sitting in the congregation, and deliberately: a cascade of titles for Mary as Theotokos, the loom on which the robe of union was woven, the bridge from God to men. Nestorius rose and answered it from the same pulpit.
c. 400–500
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
Thirty-seven homiletic units on Leviticus, each built outward from a verse elsewhere in scripture and arriving at the reading by a long route. It is preaching rather than commentary, and much of it is about poverty, charity, and the body.
501–600
5 works
c. 572
Latin
De Correctione Rusticorum
Martin of Braga · c. 520–580
A sermon for country people explaining, in simple terms, why the days of the week are named after demons and why charms and auguries should be abandoned.
c. 560–599
Greek
Anastasius I of Antioch · d. 599
Homilies and short treatises by a patriarch deposed by one emperor for resisting Justinian's late Christology and restored by another at Gregory the Great's request, including a sermon on the transfiguration and a defence of the impassibility of the Word.
590
Latin
Regula Pastoralis
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Who should take pastoral charge, how he should live, and — in the long third part — how the same truth must be spoken differently to the poor and the rich, the joyful and the grieving, the reticent and the talkative.
590–592
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Forty sermons on the gospel readings of the Roman year, preached during plague and siege, several of them dictated when he was too ill to speak.
593
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540 – 604
Twenty-two sermons on the throne vision and the temple, broken off unfinished when the Lombards reached the walls of Rome. Gregory stops mid-book and tells the congregation he can no longer take pleasure in exposition, because everywhere he looks the city is a ruin and the people gone.
601–700
1 work
25 December 634
Greek
Sophronius of Jerusalem · c. 560 – 638
The patriarch of Jerusalem explains to his congregation why they cannot go the five miles to Bethlehem this year: the Saracens are on the road, and the sword of the godless is at the throat of the city. He tells them their sins are the cause and that repentance is the defence.
701–800
1 work
c. 730
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
Fifty sermons for the monastic year at Jarrow, each taking the day's gospel line by line and turning it to the life the monks were actually living — short, plain, and built to be read aloud rather than studied.
801–900
3 works
c. 800–826
Greek
Theodore the Studite · 759 – 826
Short addresses given to the Stoudios community three times a week, mostly about the ordinary difficulty of the life: the brother who resents the kitchen, the temptation to think one's own work more important, and what to do with a superior's decision you believe to be wrong.
c. 860–867
Greek
Photius of Constantinople · c. 815 – c. 893
Includes the two sermons preached while a Rus fleet lay off the city in 860 — an obscure nation, unreckoned, become famous, he says, and the whole city expecting to die — and the homily at the unveiling of the apse mosaic in Hagia Sophia after iconoclasm.
c. 865–870
Latin
Vox Spiritualis Aquilae
John Scotus Eriugena · c. 815 – c. 877
The voice of the spiritual eagle sounds in the ears of the church. Eriugena reads the prologue as the whole of theology in fourteen verses, with creation as God's self-utterance and the incarnation as the same Word said again in flesh.
901–1000
2 works
c. 894–906
Old Church Slavonic
Constantine of Preslav
An acrostic prayer whose lines begin with the letters of the Slavonic alphabet in order, and a cycle of fifty-one sermons on the Sunday gospels — the first original preaching composed in a Slavic language rather than translated.
c. 990–995
Old English
Ælfric of Eynsham · c. 955–c. 1010
Two series of sermons for the church year in clear rhythmic English, written because the author had seen much error in English books read by unlearned men.
1101–1200
3 works
1135–1153
Latin
Sermones super Cantica Canticorum
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Eighty-six sermons that never get past the second chapter, reading the Song as the soul's courtship by the Word and building from it a full account of humility, desire, and the degrees of love.
c. 1170–1180
Old French
Maurice de Sully · c. 1120–1196
Short model sermons in French for parish priests to deliver, explaining the gospel of the day in the plainest possible terms.
c. 1199
Latin
Ars Praedicandi
Alan of Lille · c. 1128–1202
How to construct a sermon: take a text, divide it, support each part with authorities and examples, and adapt the whole to soldiers, married people, judges, or the poor.
1201–1300
2 works
c. 1250–1261
Latin
Stephen of Bourbon · c. 1180–c. 1261
Illustrative stories for preachers gathered by an inquisitor, including his account of peasants venerating a greyhound as a saint and healer of children.
c. 1263–1277
Latin
Humbert of Romans · c. 1200–1277
How to preach to every conceivable audience — sailors, students, lepers, the recently bereaved, women of ill repute, people at a funeral — with material for each.
1301–1400
4 works
c. 1334–1336
Latin
Robert Holcot · c. 1290–1349
A commentary crammed with classical anecdote, moral tales, and cheerful digression, and unusually generous about what pagans could know of God.
c. 1354
Italian
Specchio di vera penitenza
Jacopo Passavanti · c. 1302–1357
Lenten sermons on confession and penance, illustrated with vivid cautionary tales of the damned appearing to the living.
c. 1367–1374
Latin
Libellus de Antichristo
Jan Milíč of Kroměříž · c. 1325–1374
A Prague preacher identifies antichrist not with a future figure but with the corruption present in the church of his own day, and calls for reform beginning with the clergy.
c. 1399–1419
Catalan
Vincent Ferrer · c. 1350–1419
Apocalyptic preaching delivered across Spain, France, and Italy to enormous crowds, announcing that the end was near and calling for repentance and reform.
1401–1500
4 works
c. 1425–1444
Italian
Bernardino of Siena · 1380–1444
Sermons preached in town squares for hours at a stretch and taken down verbatim by listeners — on usury, on gossip, on family life, on the holy name of Jesus.
c. 1440–1456
Latin
John of Capistrano · 1386–1456
The preaching of a friar who crossed central Europe drawing enormous crowds, campaigned against Hussites and Jews, and helped raise the army that relieved Belgrade in 1456.
1494
Italian
Girolamo Savonarola · 1452–1498
Advent sermons preached as the French army entered Italy, reading the prophet's call to rebuild the temple as a summons to remake Florence as a Christian republic.
c. 1478–1510
German
Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg · 1445–1510
Cathedral preaching in Strasbourg full of homely images and blunt criticism of clergy, magistrates, and congregation alike — including a whole sermon cycle on the Ship of Fools.
1501–1600
3 works
1539
French
Marie Dentière · c. 1495–1561
A former abbess turned reformer defends women's right to read and expound scripture, and criticises the Geneva ministers by name for their treatment of her.
1–40 of 47 matching · 1780 in the Library