THOMAS DE CHOBHAM, — Summa de arte praedicandi. Cura et studio Fr. Morenzoni.

Brepols, Turnhout, 1988. LXXXIII,380p. Original gilt stamped terra-cotta cloth. Upper edge publisher's stained. Upper edge with small moist stain. Small sticker glued to paste-down end paper. Nice copy. Series: Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, LXXXII. ‘This is an extremely valuable edition, both for students of medieval preaching and for those interested in cultural developments at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Thomas Cobham is clearly a product pf the humanistic schools of late-twelfth-century France. For him Horace, Plato, Peter Lombard, Cicero, and Aristotle were as familiar as Paul or Augustine. (…) He was clearly familiar with the twelfth-century debate about the ‘classification of sciences’, but instead of producing arid sets of schemata he applied his knowledge to the practical understanding of preaching. The availability of this text will now make possible the serious research into the origins of the genre of the ‘art praedicandi’ that will surely illuminate many aspects of medieval culture.’ This is not just the edition of one more summa, but the presentation of a text which was truly seminal.’ (JAMES J. MURPHY in Speculum, 1991, p.486).