Preacher and His Audience ─ Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics

13 studies on Greek-speaking preachers and audiences in a period from the beginning of the second century A.D. to the beginning of the tenth century cover themes including the identity of Greek-speaking preachers, the circumstances of delivery, the different genres of homiletic, the adaptation of the tropes of Classical rhetoric by Christian preachers, the subject matter of sermons, exegetical approaches, the preparation, redaction and transmission of sermons, the audiences for sermons and their composition, the location and circumstances of preaching, and the interaction between preacher and audience. Each chapter is accompanied by a summary biblography of the most important primary source and secondary literature.

Mary B. Cunningham, Ph.D. (1984) in Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, England, is Honorary Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Research in the Humanities at the University of Birmingham. She has published papers on Byzantine preaching, edited homiletic and hagiographical texts and is currently working on a book on Andrew of Crete.Pauline Allen, D.Phil. (1977) in Litterae Humaniores, University of Oxford, is Director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies at Australian Catholic University. She has published on Christian preaching and ecclesiastical history, and has edited and translated early Byzantine texts.