In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, preachers in England were by Church law required to preach a number of basic catechetical pieces, the pastoralia, including the Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father, seven deadly sins, and other sets, which every priest was to know well and to explain to his parishioners regularly. These catechetical pieces did not merely represent theoretical knowledge but had a very practical application, for at least several of them furnished patterns in which one might examine one's conscience before going to confession, as is evident from penitential handbooks as well as from Lenten sermons. What light can the Latin sermon collections throw on the relation between preaching these pastoralia and preaching the “word of God”?

Archbishop Thomas Arundel's Constitutions of 1407 established – or perhaps better, consolidated and updated – laws about who could officially preach, with or without examination and special license, and then determined that priests and temporal vicars who were not regular incumbents or privileged to preach (as were Franciscans and Dominicans) could preach only the pastoralia as decreed by John Pecham. A regular parish priest, therefore, was quite free to preach anything, though he was still required to deal with the pastoralia at regular times.