Abstract
John Waldeby was an important figure among the Augustinian Friars in England, an active preacher and teacher in their York convent in the fourteenth century. The present article focuses on the concept of ʻsignʼ (signum) to which Waldeby pays particular attention in his model sermon collection. Two different contexts can be identified in which the word occurs.
The first is concerned with a mental framework or viewpoint through which the Bible and the world are interpreted. In the Novum opus dominicale there are three sermons in particular which demonstrate his clear interest in this concept and his understanding of it: the sermons for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, for the Second Sunday in Advent, and for the Third Sunday in Lent. Each of these sermons has a thema which includes the words signa or signum, and expounds it. These sermons reveal his theory of sign or signification theory, which echoes Augustineʼs De doctrina christiana, although Waldeby does not explicitly refer to it. It provides the basic strategy for reading the Bible, but as the system of exempla which Waldeby developed illustrates, the concept of sign amounts to a mental framework or a world view.
The second context in which the concept of sign is crucial is that of memory. In a sermon for the Sunday within the octave of Ascension Day, Waldeby uses the art of memory, which is akin to the ancient architectural mnemonics described by Quintilian in the classical period. This investigation reveals the way in which a medieval audience would have understood the sermon in cognitive psychological terms̶the method of information processing which was expected to take place in the minds of sermon hearers.
Each context having been discussed, this article examines the relationship between these two in which the concept of sign is central. It will be argued that there is a significant overlap between the use of signs in the context of memory and that in the framework for viewing the world, and that the latter provided a platform which allowed architectural mnemonics to function.
Both signification theory and architectural mnemonics had the concept of sign as their pivot, and both were often in operation at the same time for different purposes: the method of interpreting the Bible and the world and that of communication converged in the same literary structure of Waldebyʼs sermon. At its core lay the concept of sign.
