304 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
dramatic spirit. The preacher often unconsciously threw his dis- 
course into the present tense, speaking as though Christ and the 
Apostles were still living and teaching upon earth. Augustine, for 
example, began a homily with the words, “I am reminded to speak 
to you, beloved, on that exhortation which the Lord hath just now 
uttered out of the gospel.”! The one to feel this relationship most 
intimately was probably Saint Bernard, who customarily spoke of 
the saints as his contemporaries. In retelling the story of the 
Annunciation as given in the Gospel of Luke, he imagines himself 
standing with the angel before Mary, and addresses her directly; 
in the sermon on the Purification, he discusses with her the need 
for her compliance with the law.? The freedom betokens, it seems, 
not rhetorical artifice, but the closest sympathy with sacred. story. 
It was inevitable that preachers who read the Scriptures with 
this personal intimacy should reproduce in direct discourse many 
of the effective dialogues found in the Bible. Bede, in the simplest 
way, without thought of narrative effect, would read the verses one 
by one, and give each full explanation. Thus, for example, Gabriel’s 
speeches to Mary at the Annunciation lose all their dramatic value 
in the accompanying discussion. Gradually, though, a more dra- 
matic style came to prevail. Aé#lfric and the Blickling homilist of 
the tenth century accorded the Biblical dialogue greater prominence, 
keeping the speeches more closely together by restricting the inter- 
polated expository matter. In these homilies, and in later sermons 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the impression of rapid, 
realistic dialogue is thereby gained. Wherever the Scriptural 
passage that he was handling made it possible, as was the case 
throughout the sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard conducted 
the dialogue in this dramatic style, interspersing between the 
speeches found in the text his own comments, but connecting by 
phrases of his own the dissevered parts. In such simple Scriptural 
dialogue, the Annunciation scene, the miracles, the stories of the 
saints, and other vivid episodes from sacred history, were trans- 
planted to the literature of these four centuries without emotional 
and spiritual loss. 
If the living presence of Gospel narrative in the hearts of the 
higher clergy thus inspired the frequent use of simple dialogue in 
the pulpit, so on their part the exempla that we have discussed 
prompted the inferior preachers, and, in their less serious moods, 

1 Sermon 3, p. 48. 2 (uvres Complétes, 3. 355; Jbid., 327. 
5 5. 360-68. 
