Consider the Stars, the Atom, the Host: Measure Without Measure in Synodal Preaching

This paper maps Albertson’s “measure without measure” onto synodal preaching at the Council of Basel (1431–1449). Feast-day sermons to the general assembly used geometric, proportional, and formal analogies as more than rhetorical flourish: they served as disciplined structures of mind and imagination, mediating encounters with divine transcendence. Three Basel case studies extend Albertson’s argument. Two sermons by a Cistercian present a macro-scale pedagogy in which ordered time and cosmology trained cognition through the intelligibility of creation, while an anonymous sermon on the Conversion of Paul supplies a micro-scale hinge, describing the inexhaustible complexity of an atom. Lastly, a Corpus Christi sermon treats the Eucharist as a “surface” where finite elements meet infinite realities.