One of the basic acts of worship in the Christian church, as in the synagogue, is the public systematic reading and preaching of the Holy Scriptures. Moses set the example in the worship at the foot of Mount Sinai (Exod. 24:1–11). Ezra recovered the practice when he reconstituted the worship of the sacred nation in the square before the water gate (Neh. 8:1–18), and Jesus himself honoured the tradition when he preached in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30). This chapter will review how this fundamental act of worship was practised from the age of the Reformation to the age of Pietism.

The Middle Ages had known much good preaching. The Franciscans and Dominicans particularly had devoted themselves to popular preaching. For the most part this took two forms, the preaching of the Gospels and Epistles of the lectionary and the preaching of the annual Advent and Lenten missions. There was a great deal of this preaching. It was carefully cultivated and generously supported. The problem was that in time it had become conventionalised. Its methods had been used to the point of tedium and its message was familiar. Preachers such as Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444) had written out both his lectionary sermons and his mission sermons, so that other preachers could use them all over Europe. His sermons conveyed much biblical material as he called people to emulate the repentance of Mary Magdalene, the prodigal son or the thief on the cross. His sermons were true classics, their only fault being that they were over-used by preachers who lacked the spiritual intensity and oratorical gifts of their original preacher.

At the end of the Middle Ages there was no greater master of the homiletical art than Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445–1510), preacher at the cathedral of Strasbourg. He used all the techniques of oratory. He was a passionate defender of the Nominalist piety in which he had been reared. Skilled in the art of pulpit oratory, he was a most popular preacher. The biblical materials that his sermons did contain were overshadowed by all kinds of exempla and illustrative material, so that too often one lost the sense that the sermon was an exposition of Scripture.