Image verbale et prédication écrite. Transmission de la foi et enseignement des pratiques religieuses dans les sermons eucharistiques d'Engelberg

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Verbal Image and Written Sermon. The Transmission of Faith and the Teaching of Religious Practices in the Engelberg Eucharistic Sermons This article analyzes the role of imagery in a corpus of sermons constituted during the second half of the 14th Century at the Engelberg monastery in central Switzerland. The Engelberg Sermons are marked by an intensive use of mental images, aimed at facilitating the acquisition by those for whom the sermons were intended – mainly Benedictine nuns – of knowledge essential to the salvation of their soul. The sermons also provide many examples, described as “good images,” illustrating the rules of monastic life and the practices of proper devoutness. Because of their highly mystical character, the sermons in this corpus repeatedly emphasize the ways of attaining the Unio Mystica, the union of the individual being with God. The mental images used mine collective iconographic knowledge and make it possible to observe in the sermons the actual, practical use of images, revealing the teaching and spiritual enlightenment methods used in monastic circles during the 14th Century.