Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/46

 34 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE following passage : ' Know, Christian fathers, that if you yourselves do not gladly hear sermons and listen to the exposition of your faith, you cannot give your children and households the instruction which your duty requires of you. See, then, that you hear God's Word diligently every Sunday ; go to church morning and evening. Eeceive the Word with reverence, and treasure it in your hearts. Seek explanation of that which you do not understand, and then teach your children and households. Let the Word of God be the light to your path. It is good and profitable both to hear sermons and to buy good religious books, and read in them frequently for instruction in the faith, the commandments, sin, virtue, and all true Christian doctrine.' Thus, then, the education of the home and the school were to co-operate with the preaching of God's Word, and other religious instruction imparted by the Church : the Church, the home, and the school mutually to support and further each other's ends. The high value that was set in the Middle Ages on the oral exposition of the Word of God is shown both by the acts of the synods and by the collections of manuals of popular religious instruction compiled for the use of the clergy. 1 For example, the Diocesan 1 Schmidt, in a treatise on preaching, contained in his Theological Studies, was the first Protestant authority to defend the style of preaching in vogue in Germany before the Reformation (1846). J. Geffcken, in his Illustrated Catechism of the Fifteenth Century (1855), thus states the result of his researches : ' Preaching was quite as frequent in those days as in ours, and serious attention to it was considered as of great impor- tance and obligation.' ' Furthermore,' adds Cruel, ' in cloisters, cathe- drals, institutions, and other places where dwelt renowned preachers, sermons were given several times dady in Advent, the quarter tenses, Lent, and Easter' (pp. 647-651). The best authorities from a Catholic