The Cleansing of the Temple: the Uses of a Biblical Episode in Mendicant Sermons, from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe (13th-15th Centuries)

• Grant number: 24/13489-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Cândido da Silva
• Grantee: Aléssio Alonso Alves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/02912-3 - A connected history of the Middle Ages: communication and circulation from the Mediterranean Sea, AP.TEM

Abstract

The goal of this research is to analyze how the sermons of mendicant preachers, produced from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe between the 13th and 15th centuries, when dealing with the moral disciplining of Christians, addressed issues relating to commerce, to the injustice of merchants, to avarice, to usury, to simony etc. This research is based on the hypothesis that the liturgical dates of Tuesday of the First Week of Lent and Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent offered opportune occasions for this. By respectively predicting the readings of the evangelical pericopes of Matthew 21, 10-17 and John 2, 13-25, which cover the episode in which Christ expels the merchants from Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, on these dates it was customary to approach these matters through a tropological and/or allegorical interpretation of these texts. Thus, based on a previous selection of 93 sermons dedicated to these liturgical dates, I intend to identify the most frequent (topoi) and the most exceptional topics and to establish their temporal and spatial distributions in order to verify recognizable patterns. In doing so, I expect to ensure the validity and range of the hypothesis based on the identification of the functions to which this episode served in mendicant sermons; to recognize analogies, parallelisms, and historical connections that show the circulation of economic ideals between these different spaces and times; and to verify the influences of the exegetical tradition and specific social environments on the messages conveyed by them. Thus, this research will contribute to a deeper knowledge on the circulation of these ideals on a broad spacetime scale; on the dynamics of sermons production and its relationship with certain discursive and social contexts; and on how mendicant friars operated on the social construction of the communities in which they acted as preachers.