The place of honour next to the sermon in any survey of x mediaeval pulpit literature should go by right to the great Latin sermon “encyclopedias,” which, though comparatively few in this country, can yet boast of the Summa Predicantium among their number, as an English chef d'œuvre. In the present case, however, it is proposed to deal first with the more complicated question of the ordinary religious treatises, leaving the Summa and its kind to be viewed as the final culmination of all types and tendencies in contemporary homiletic composition. The student who gets to work in the later mediaeval library finds before long that he has exhausted all the more concentrated and independent sermon collections of his period. He has then to fall back upon odd specimens and little isolated groups scattered about among the pages of various volumes of devotional tracts and commentaries. Sooner or later the question arises—should he include in his examination these tracts too? The prospect is sufficiently unattractive to compel some preliminary taking of thought: “Ther beth so manye bokes and tretees of vyces and vertues and of dyvers doctrynes, that this schort lyfe schalle rathere have an endeof anyemanne,thanne he maye owthere studye hem or rede hem.” That, indeed, was a contemporary opinion; but it seems almost as true to-day among the Harleian Manuscripts at the British Museum, or the several mediaeval Bodleian collections at Oxford. Many of these works are in English, and would seem intended for devotional reading by the lay-folk.