Randall B. Smith is the Scanlon Foundation Endowed Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He is the author of How to Read a Sermon by Thomas Aquinas.

I. Preliminaries: 1. Preaching and Principia at the University of Paris; 2. The basic elements of the thirteenth century "modern sermon"; 3. Principia and Sermo Modernus; II. Thomas Aquinas: The Logician Who Learned to Preach: 4. Rigans montes: Thomas's inception principium; 5. Hi est liber: Thomas's Resumptio; 6. Thomas's student prologues; 7. After inception: early and late prologues; 8. I have seen the Lord: Thomas's prototreptic prologue to his commentary on the Gospel of John; 9. Aquinas, Sermo Modern-style preaching, and biblical commentary; III. Bonaventure: The Scholastic with the Soul of a Poet: 10. Bonaventure's inception Principium: Omnium artifex; 11. Bonaventure's Resumptio: an early attempt to think through the hierarchy of the sciences; 12. Searching the depths of the Lombard: the prologue to Bonaventure's Sentences commentary; 13. Exalting our understanding: the prologue to Bonaventure's Commentary on the Gospel of John; 14. The spirit of the Lord is upon me: the prologue to Bonaventure's Commentary on the Gospel of Luke; 15. Bonaventure, Sermo Modernus-style preaching, and biblical commentary; 16. A master's praise of scripture: the prologue to Bonaventure's Breviloquium; 17. The union of Paris and Assisi: the prologues to Bonaventure's later Collations; 18. The Reduction of the Arts to Theology redux: the prologue to the Collations on the Six Days of Creation; 19: Summary and concluding remarks.