Did suffering move a Catholic? Emotional experience as a purpose of preaching narration in Berndardin tales of the Saxon era.

Abstract

In the works analysing preaching discourse a lot of time was devoted to describing attempts to trigger an emotional response in the reader. The research was related to the whole spectrum of emotions from fear and terror to amusement, joy or even the feeling of happiness. When pointing to the source of these feelings researchers emphasised the role played in achieving them and the methods suggested by homiletics and the context created by cultural tradition of the sermons’ authors and recipients. The main analysed source of a preacher’s persuasion was Passion paintings which were extremely important for Catholic religiousness in the post- Trident Church and taken from holiday sermons. An analysis of their content revealed a choice of universal toposes applied in Old Polish sermons combining their message with old European tradition from which many drew inspiration in the Rzeczpospolita. It is worth stressing that plasticity of a created message, evocatively impacting illiterate listeners who were also not aware of the theological issues or even did not have the basis knowledge about the credo, determined the strength of a preacher’s persuasion. It may seem that this plasticity and emotional impact of a preacher’s message decided upon its effectiveness.