Ars praedicandi populo

The Ars praedicandi populo, usually rendered in English as Manual for Preaching to the People, is a work written in Latin by Francesc Eiximenis before 1379. It belongs to the genre of preaching manuals, which was widely cultivated in the Middle Ages by scholastic authors and intended to help clergy compose sermons that ordinary people could follow. Eiximenis, a Catalan Franciscan born around 1330 and educated at Oxford and Paris, was one of the most widely read and copied medieval Catalan writers, and his work was influential in both literary and political life.

The work offers a simple scheme for structuring the preacher's discourse. It begins with a general introduction to the theme drawn from a passage of Scripture, continues with a direct introduction to the subject, and concludes with the division of the theme, organized according to logical guidelines and mnemonic devices that help the audience retain the main ideas.

The manuscript was found in Kraków by the Capuchin friar Martí de Barcelona, who transcribed and published it in 1936, making it available for modern study. According to the scholar Manuel Sanchis Guarner, the division scheme of sermons proposed in this manual was one that the great Valencian preacher Saint Vincent Ferrer, a contemporary of Eiximenis, followed in his own preaching, which shows how his ideas circulated in the practice of preaching in his time. The work belongs to the body of Eiximenis' Latin writings, alongside theological, pastoral and other treatises, and it can today be consulted in a digital edition within his complete works online.