In the thirteenth century, it is commonly related that the theologians at the University of Paris, mostly members of the newly-formed mendicant orders, were allowing philosophical speculation and disputation to replace their original commitment to the study of Sacred Scripture. However, each Chair of Theology at the thirteenth-century university was required to give an inaugural sermon whose form and content rebut this idea quite thoroughly. Each sermon began with a commendation of scripture, and followed with a delineation of scripture’s organization – consistently using scriptural analogies and imagery to do so. One inaugural sermon in particular, Fons sapientiae verbum Dei in excelsis, further undoes the narrative of Paris’ “addiction to speculative theology” by insisting that theology is more than speculation: it must also bring about change in the theologian. Such a bold claim highlights a thirteenth-century Franciscan-Dominican debate about the nature of theology, and clearly demonstrates the author’s determination to encourage his academic brethren to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” What follows is a new English translation of Fons sapientiae, a source which can provide new perspective into the often-neglected inaugural sermon genre. It is accompanied by an introduction which seeks to frame Fons sapientiae in such a way that the authorship of Master John Pecham, which Joshua Benson argued for in his edition, is further evidenced by the sermon’s content.
