Emotions, Theology, and Society in a Blockbuster: The Good Friday Sermon by Gritsch/Grütsch

The contribution deals with one of the most representative fifteenth-century Good Friday sermons, published in the Quadragesimale printed under the name of Johannes Gritsch, a real bestseller of the time. This Passion sermon, therefore, provides us with an idea of the type of text that hundreds of preachers had at hand when preparing for their own preaching. The chapter investigates how an emotional retelling of the Passion served both to foster compassion (and the ‘obligation’ to feel it) in listeners and to provide them with a framework to interpret society. As many devotional texts of the time, this Franciscan preacher stirred up the audience’s emotional involvement by dramatizing the role of the Virgin Mary. Adopting a polarizing strategy, he emphasized her sorrows in combination with harsh accusations against the Jews. Yet, beside the invitation to personal conversion, Gritsch/Grütsch also outlined the links between the Passion narrative and social issues (from unfair judgements to usury, from fasting to gambling and swearing). The Passion was presented as a hermeneutical key to interpret the whole society and ideally to transform it.