An Anonymous Sermon from Eleventh-Century Fleury: <i>Sermo in laude patris Benedicti (Ad illuminandum)</i>

In this article I offer the first edition and translation of an anonymous sermon for the feast of the translation of St. Benedict, the Sermo in laude patris Benedicti (Ad illuminandum). Based on textual and manuscript evidence I propose an eleventh-century date and demonstrate that the sermon was written at the abbey of Fleury. I then consider the sermon’s textual sources and explore how the sermon’s author reworked Caesarius of Arles’s Sermo 214 on St. Honoratus to create a sermon on St. Benedict. I elucidate the sermon’s textual transmission and provide a commentary on the text which reveals the sermon’s debts to a range of late antique and early medieval literary sources.