Sermon-Notes and Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Communities

Any reader of manuscript catalogues knows how common the unhelpfully vague entry “sermon-notes, seventeenth-century” can be. In this essay, Mary Morrissey explores whether sermon-notes provide evidence for the kinds of textual communities that have been found through the reconstruction of other routes of manuscript circulation. She explains what those laconic catalogue entries hide, and she distinguishes the different kinds of sermon-notes found in archival collections (some derived from the original preacher, some from hearers, some from readers of manuscript and printed copies). The physical forms of sermon-notes alert us to the different types of authors who created these manuscripts and the different purposes involved in preserving an oration in textual form.