The Virgin as Olive Tree: A Marian Sermon of Richard Fishacre and Science at Oxford

The manuscript catalogued as Cambridge, Trinity College B.15.38, contains among other things a collection of sermons by Oxford masters of the mid-thirteenth century. The first sermon in the codex¹ is attributed to Richard Fishacre, the earliest Dominican at Oxford from whom we have any substantial body of writings.² The Fishacre sermon is in the form of asimilitudo(Mary is like an olive tree), a common device of the medieval preacher.3 Common also was the theme the Mother of God. The subject seems to have been a particular favorite with Richard Fishacre. Of the twenty-five sermons attributed to him by