The sermon subdivides until it snaps

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

The scholastic 'thematic' sermon worked by division: split the thema verse into members, subdivide the members, rhyme the joints. The conjecture is that division count followed a full boom-and-bust curve, not a plateau: mean divisions and subdivisions per sermon inflate steadily through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — because in a competitive preaching market subdivision was the visible unit of skill, and each generation had to out-divide the last — then collapse in the fifteenth century as plain-style reform movements repriced elaborateness as vanity. Preachers were caught in an arms race that ended in revulsion. If it holds, a purely formal statistic traces the rise and rupture of an entire homiletic economy, and the 'medieval sermon' of the handbooks is really the peak of a measurable bubble.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Primary clause: mean division-plus-subdivision counts per model sermon, sampled from dated collections, rise from roughly three in the early thirteenth century to a maximum in the late fourteenth, then fall significantly in fifteenth-century collections — the inverted-U shape, with peak located 1350-1420, is the verdict. Secondary: the fifteenth-century fall is steepest in collections tied to observant and devotio moderna milieus.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Dated sermon collections catalogued in Schneyer's Repertorium with the edited sermon corpora in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis.

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

This packet was produced in a single blind Write from model-internal knowledge only, with no repository reads, web access, database queries, or any tool call other than this Write.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

The division/subdivision machinery of the thematic sermon and late-medieval complaints about elaborateness are standard sermon-studies fare, but the boom-and-bust curve — mean division counts rising to a 1350-1420 peak then collapsing with observant plain-style reform — has never been sampled from dated collections.

'The Form of Preaching' (Robert of Basevorn; divided thematic sermon structure)

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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