Spiritual Calculations

Medieval sermonists promoted numeracy as a way for audiences to appreciate divine truth. Their sermons educated audiences in a hybrid form of numerate practice—one that relied on individuals’ pragmatic quantitative reasoning, which, when combined with spiritual interpretations of numbers provided by the preacher, created a deep and rich sense in which number was the best way to approach the sacred mysteries of the world as well as to learn how one could best live as a Christian. Analyzing both published and previously unpublished sermons and sermon cycles, Christine Cooper-Rompato explores the use of numbers, arithmetic, and other mathematical operations to better understand how medieval laypeople used math as a means to connect with God.

Spiritual Calculations enhances our understanding of medieval sermons and sheds new light on how receptive audiences were to this sophisticated rhetorical form. It will be welcomed by scholars of Middle English literature, medieval sermon studies, religious experience, and the history of mathematics.

“An engaging, well-researched study.”—A. L. Kaufman, Choice

“[T]his book, with its focus on medieval numeracy, as an overlooked counterpart to medieval literacy, fills a significant gap within scholarship. It adds to our understanding of the complexity and ingenuity of medieval sermons, and it sheds new light on the multivalent understandings of number possessed by audiences.”—Sandy Gale, Medieval Sermon Studies

“[T]his study can be accessed by experts and novices alike, and it effectively illuminates how sermons used numbers and arithmetic to make a spiritual point.”—Justin S. Kirkland, Religious Studies Review

“Spiritual Calculations adds greatly to our appreciation and understanding of medieval sermons and sheds light on how receptive audiences must have been to what was a highly sophisticated rhetorical form. Numbers are pervasive in sermons, and preachers employed them in a variety of ways, but they are in some ways so pervasive that their potential rhetorical effectiveness goes unnoticed. Cooper-Rompato’s study therefore makes an original and rich contribution to our greater understanding of how preachers ‘educated audiences’ in a ‘hybrid form of numerate practice’ and why they sought to do so.”—Holly Johnson, author of The Grammar of Good Friday: Macaronic Sermons of Late Medieval England

Christine Cooper-Rompato is Professor of English and an affiliated member of Religious Studies at Utah State University. She is the author of The Gift of Tongues: Women's Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages, also published by Penn State University Press.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Spiritual Calculations

1. Encountering the Divine Through Number in Middle English Sermons: An Overview

2. Numbers in Dives and Pauper and the Sermons of Warminster, Longleat House MS 4: Models for Spiritual Understanding and Practice

3. “Knowing Thyself” and God Through Number in Jacob’s Well

4. Quantitative Reasoning in the Latin Sermons of Robert Rypon in London, British Library, MS Harley 4894

Conclusion: Practical and Spiritual Numeracy in The Book of Margery Kempe

Appendix: Methods of Counting and Calculation in the Later Middle Ages

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

History

           European

           Medieval

Literary Studies

           English

           Medieval

Religious Studies & Religion

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Medieval History

           Medieval Religion