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ConvenorsMarjorie Burghart (CNRS) and Lucie Doležalov&#225; (Charles University Prague) invite submission of papers for an upcoming conference on&#160;distinctiones&#160;in the context of preaching, to be held in Prague between 23-25 April 2020.ThemeThe study of medieval preaching &#8211; and its main source, the sermon &#8211; offers a privileged insight into intellectual work and its techniques. Through this source, we can approach the persuasion strategies, and also the tools used by the preachers in their intellectual work. Among those tools was the distinctio. This technique, extremely widespread in the Middle Ages from the late 12th c. onwards, consisted of considering a word according to its various senses, properties or characteristics,&#160; and supporting them with biblical citations.&#160;Distinctiones&#160;were&#160; a key&#160; ingredient&#160; of sermons from the early 13th c. onwards, just like exempla (short narratives used for persuasion), but contrary to the latter,&#160;distinctiones&#160;have never been studied in depth or even surveyed properly. They did not benefit from an authoritative study tracing the origins and developments of the technique, its relationship with rhetoric or dialectics, the actual use of distinctions in preaching and beyond, etc. It is probably the sheer immensity of the task ahead and the paucity of reference works and finding aids that discouraged new research so far.The aim of this conference is to stimulate the study of&#160;distinctiones, bringing new light on the strategies of communication at work in medieval preaching and the intellectual tools and techniques supporting it.Suggested topicsWe invite submission of papers on the following topics:the origins and development of the technique: the links between&#160;distinctio&#160;and exegesis; which words, notions or lexical fields were privileged when creating distinctiones? Can we see&#160;topoi&#160;emerging in their treatment, or on the contrary was there a great versatility? What was the place of the&#160;distinctio&#160;as a dialectical device in scholastic argumentation? Could it shed new light on the intrusion of the&#160;disputatio&#160;into&#160;predicatio? etc.The actual use of&#160;distinctiones&#160;outside of the collections: to what extent did preachers and theologians use them for their sermons, treatises or&#160;summae? When they did, how did they transform the material to merge them into their own creations? What was their relationship to other &#8216;ingredients&#8217; of a sermon (exempla, authorities,&#160;similitudines, interpretation of biblical names, etc.) What was the function of&#160;distinctiones&#160;in those sermons: a mere backbone, a didactical device, or a tool to captivate the audience and drive a point home? Finally, did the actual use of&#160;distinctiones&#160;conform to the recommendations of the&#160;artes praedicandi, those &#8216;arts of preaching&#8217; which provided preachers with a means to taught preachers how to make sermons? etc.;The link between&#160;distinctiones&#160;and mnemotechnics. Their riming structure or logical patterns were certainly an important element when committing a sermon to memory &#8211; a point that did not escape many users of medieval sermon manuscripts.We also welcome submission of papers on any relevant topic not listed above, as well as studies of individual collections of&#160;dictinctiones.Submission guidelinesPlease send abstracts of max 300 words to&#160;medieval.distinctiones@gmail.com&#160;by January 1st 2020 23:59 GMT.Selected contributors will be notified after January 15th 2020.&#160;