ABSTRACT
Where preaching in the vernacular is concerned, the Council of Trent’s decree of 1546, which established a close link between prayer and Biblical exegesis, was reworked and adapted by the decree of 1563: the latter emphasized moral and catechistic instruction and connected the role of secular clergy in ordinary diocesan preaching to that of the regular clergy in itinerant preaching. In the second half of the sixteenth century the quest to establish this connection is particularly visible in the promotions of the famous Franciscan preachers Cornelio Musso and Francesco Panigarola to the level of bishop in 1544 and 1586 respectively.1 At the same time, linked with the growth of printing and the assertion of the vernacular as a language of culture and literature, the Italian sermon gradually established itself as an entirely separate literary genre, as men of letters such as Giambattista Marino would soon go on to demonstrate.2 As a result, research on sixteenth-century preaching in Italy has simultaneously attracted both religious and literary historians. Taking these two approaches into account, this chapter focuses on printed sermons, which are revealed to be useful for the production of sociocultural as much as literary histories, in so far as they shed light on a set of religious practices that fall between oral and written cultures.
