Funeral sermon

A Christian funeral sermon is a formal religious oration or address given at a funeral ceremony, or sometimes a short time after, which may combine elements of eulogy with biographical comments and expository preaching. To qualify as a sermon, it should be based on a scriptural text.^[1] Historically such sermons were very often prepared for publication, and played a significant part in Lutheran, and later in Puritan, presbyterian, and nonconformist literary cultures, in Europe and New England. They also were and are common in Christian denominations generally.

A trend in funeral sermons of the Renaissance and Reformation was a move away from the thematic sermon closely allied to scholasticism, towards an approach based on Renaissance humanism.^[2] In Spain, for example, the two were combined, the analytical and verbal style joined to humanist epideictic.^[3] While the contemporary assumption may be that a funeral sermon contains a significant element of life writing on the subject, in the past the inclusion of life writing was in tension with religious messages. The funeral sermon is a mixed genre.^[4] Patrick Collinson used a "cuckoo in the nest" metaphor to describe the Protestant reformer's predicament when funeral sermons were given: classical rhetoric of exemplars was used, while radical evangelicals could not accept the sermon form as suited to the lives of the godly.^[5]

That said, the early modern funeral sermon was structured around and began with explication of a biblical text.^[6] It in that way was distinguished as a genre from the eulogy and other types of funeral orations and obituary addresses. For women, in England at least, "exemplary eulogies" would be constructed from female Biblical figures, sometimes displacing the subject's agency outside domestic life.^[7]

Protestant denominational traditions

Martin Luther preached on the death in 1525 of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, and in 1532 for the death of John, Elector of Saxony. These sermons are extant. The subsequent Lutheran tradition of the Leichenpredigt was said to stem from Luther's example, and has been given scholarly attention, in the period of mid-16th century to mid-18th century.^[8] The printing of funeral sermons had become normal by around 1550, and over 200,000 German funeral homilies survive.^[9]

The model for Protestant funeral sermons was outlined in De formandis concionibus sacris by Andreas Hyperius (English translation 1577).^[10] In his schematic, praise in preaching was only for the godly dead; it needed to serve exhortation and exegesis, the former having two audiences, "godly" and "the multitude".^[11]

The initial Calvinist attitude was different from the Lutheran. An early Protestant hurdle for Calvinists was Pierre Caroli's advocacy of prayers for the dead.^[12] Amy Nelson Burnett has argued that, mid-16th century, the Reformed churches of Basel and the Palatinate were exceptional in the sermons at funerals.^[13] In the Church of Scotland, the Book of Discipline made a general rejection of funeral sermons. In practice there were some exceptions.^[14]

Under Elizabeth I some English Puritan ministers opposed funeral sermons. By the beginning of the 17th century, however, views had changed and funeral sermons had become standard in the Reformed tradition.^[15] Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that Puritans "came to abandon their dislike of the panegyric funeral sermon".^[16] Exemplified by Samuel Clarke, Puritan writers created a genre that can be described as hagiographic that drew on funeral sermons and short biographies.^[17]

In New England at the middle of the 17th century funeral rituals were still sparse. The funeral sermon then came in as a vehicle for jeremiad.^[18]

For the British Particular Baptist tradition in the 18th century, Cook in looking at funeral sermons of John Brine and Benjamin Wallin (1711–1782)^[19] argues first for the continuing importance of the plain style scheme of the Puritan William Perkins published in his The Arte of Prophesying (1607). It assumes scripture exposition, followed by a "uses" section applying the points made, and a brief "memorial section" of life writing. Brine applies it, but with scant attention to the "uses". Wallin adheres to the "asymmetric structure" of exposition outweighing life writing, employs "uses" sections, but might make the "memorial section" up to a third of the whole.^[20]

Wolffe argues, for British funeral sermons of the Victorian period, there was a transition in the decades 1860 to 1880, from the model of giving priority to exegesis of scripture, to an emphasis on life writing.^[21]

The Catholic tradition

In 1615 the German theological writer Matthäus Tympius (de:Matthäus Tympius)) published a collection of funeral sermons to help Catholic parish priests.^[22] He promoted Tridentine reform from Münster.^[23] Systematic indexing of funeral sermons at this period could lead to easy correlation with the daily pericope, so that the expository part of the sermon could come from an existing source.^[24]

The French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet owed much of his reputation as an orator to a series of funeral addresses on prominent persons of the reign of Louis XIV. He built on existing structures for such sermons, innovated and spoke at length, and included accessible religious instruction alongside laudatory comments. Research has recovered many other early modern Catholic funeral sermons.^[25]

Notes

1. Winslow, Donald J. (1 January 1995). Life-Writing: A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms. University of Hawaii Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8248-1713-8.
2. McCullough, Peter; Adlington, Hugh; Rhatigan, Emma (4 August 2011). The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon. OUP Oxford. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-19-923753-1.
3. McManus, Stuart M. (8 April 2021). Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World. Cambridge University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-108-83016-4.
4. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer (8 March 2015). Donne's Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise: The Creation of a Symbolic Mode. Princeton University Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-4008-7005-9.
5. Peters, Christine (15 May 2003). Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England. Cambridge University Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-521-58062-5.
6. Goodland, Katharine (2006). Female Mourning in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-7546-5101-7.
7. McCullough, Peter; Adlington, Hugh; Rhatigan, Emma (4 August 2011). The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon. OUP Oxford. pp. 171–172. ISBN 978-0-19-923753-1.
8. LeRoux, Neil R. (2007). Martin Luther As Comforter: Writings on Death. Brill. p. 134. ISBN 978-90-04-15880-1.
9. Kolb, Robert (31 August 2008). Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550-1675. Brill. p. 131. ISBN 978-90-474-4216-5.
10. Breitwieser, Mitchell Robert (1990). American Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-299-12654-4.
11. Martin, Jessica (2001). Walton's Lives: Conformist Commemorations and the Rise of Biography. Oxford University Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-0-19-827015-7.
12. Holder, R. Ward (9 June 2022). Calvin and the Christian Tradition. Cambridge University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-316-51294-4.
13. Tingle, Elizabeth C.; Willis, Jonathan (9 March 2016). Dying, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Reformation Europe. Routledge. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-317-14749-7.
14. Booth, Philip; Tingle, Elizabeth (23 November 2020). A Companion to Death, Burial, and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, c. 1300–1700. Brill. pp. 310–311. ISBN 978-90-04-44343-3.
15. McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston (6 June 2002). A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower 1500-1620. Cambridge University Press. p. 85 note 235. ISBN 978-0-521-89328-2.
16. MacCulloch, Diarmaid (1990). The Later Reformation in England 1547-1603. Macmillan. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-333-41928-1.
17. Wallace, Dewey D. (1987). The Spirituality of the Later English Puritans: An Anthology. Mercer University Press. p. xxvi. ISBN 978-0-86554-275-4.
18. Hammond, Jeffrey A. (1 June 2000). The American Puritan Elegy: A Literary and Cultural Study. Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–89. ISBN 978-1-139-42977-1.
19. John Julian (1907). A Dictionary of Hymnology. Vol. 2. John Murray. p. 921.
20. Cook, Joshua (6 April 2023). Benjamin Wallin: A Respectable Minister's Proclamation of the Gospel in Eighteenth-Century London. Wipf and Stock Publishers. pp. 109–110. ISBN 978-1-6667-5445-2.
21. Francis, Keith A.; Gibson, William (4 October 2012). The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689-1901. OUP Oxford. p. 342. ISBN 978-0-19-161208-4.
22. Karant-Nunn, Susan C. (18 October 2012). The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany. Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-19-996401-7.
23. Killy, Walther; Vierhaus, Rudolf (30 November 2011). Thibaut - Zycha. Walter de Gruyter. p. 125. ISBN 978-3-11-096116-4.
24. Frymire, John M. (23 December 2009). The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany. Brill. p. 447. ISBN 978-90-04-18360-5.
25. Eijnatten, Joris van (31 January 2009). Preaching, Sermon and Cultural Change in the Long Eighteenth Century. Brill. pp. 28–29. ISBN 978-90-474-2487-1.