Kroppen i skandinavisk forkynnelse om oppstandelsen på 1500-tallet

Abstract

This article describes changes that took place in Scandinavian preaching with the introduction of the Reformation. It does so by an analysis of influential postils in use in Sweden and Denmark before and after the introduction of Lutheran teaching. Sermons for Easter treated themes central to the Reformation, such as penance and the hope for eternal life. This article investigates changing mediations of these themes by the way sermons describe the resurrection body. By tracing how this motif develops and enters changing contexts in Easter sermons by Johan Herolt, by an unknown Swedish vicar, and by Christiern Pedersen, Martin Luther, Olavus Petri and Niels Hemmingsen, the article describes how preaching changed and observes how the change affected three aspects of preaching. On the level of sermon motifs, it observes a change from very visual descriptions of the body as tied to a certain place in time, to a bodiless voice collapsing time and space, before the body returns as a container for knowledge. On the level of genre, it observes how preaching developed from a demonstrative genre with a strong emotional appeal, via an anti-sermon within a similar genre in Martin Luther’s sermon, to a cooler and more intellectual form of preaching designed to secure the highest knowledge. The article argues that these changes in form and content are connected with a development in how the Easter sermon encouraged penance. From an encouragement directed at body and action, via an argument which attacks the impulse to do penance, the sermon comes to encourage a penance that targets the inner self, namely knowledge, faith and will.