This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at

Tamistic Institute.org. So it's a real pleasure to be giving this talk tonight here in Trinity College.

I'm not sure if you all know that this current University of Dublin is not actually the first university

of Dublin, but the third. There were two attempts in the Middle Ages to establish a university

here and in both of them the friars of Dublin were major players. They both fizzled out for various

reasons but I think the friars would be glad to know that the third time was indeed the charm.

And they'd be glad to know, I think, that nearly 800 years after the friars first arrived in Dublin, that were still around and we're being welcomed so hospitably at this university.

So I'm speaking tonight on stories, the stories told by friars in the Middle Ages. It's a topic that has interested me more and more in the last few years

as I came to realize how vivid and varied these stories are

and with what deliberate skill they were used by friars.

And we often associate the friars with the world of universities

and we think of the really sophisticated works of theology and philosophy by Dominicans like Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great and Franciscans like Bonaventure and Dun Scotas.

But these university friars were a tiny minority of friars in the Middle Ages. The vast majority were popular preachers. And it's the

stories they told in their preaching that we'll be considering this evening. They're a fascinating

topic of study. And thankfully, there's been a good deal of excellent research on these stories

in recent decades. And I've given some of the main works to you in the bibliography on your handout.

But before we turn to friars tales, we should probably say a word about friars.

So what are friars?

One of the most common questions I'm asked on the street when I'm walking around like this, along with,

are you the Pope, are you an assassin, are you a Jedi? Is, are you a monk? And you could think of

friars as modified monks, but the modifications are pretty major. So broadly speaking, monks live in

the countryside. They support themselves by agriculture, and their principal purpose is the worship of God in the liturgy. While friars live in the countryside, they support themselves by agriculture, and their principal purpose is the worship

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