The Assumption Sermon with no known author, place or date: Larramendi’s unknown new text [Loiola 14.08.1740]

Abstract

We have prepared an edition of a Sermon with no known author, date or source. An analysis of its form (both the rhetoric and lexicon therein) leads us immediately to the
hypothesis that Manuel Larramendi was the author: employing figures and sketches that were rare at the time, and several words from the Northern Basque Country first witnessed in the Southern B. C. in his Trilingual Dictionary, which we were aware of from a small group of L’s own short B.-language texts, those borrowings that he ‘baptised’ and took as deriving from inherited words from the old tradition– that were normalised or he sought to normalise, as well as those –some dating from before the Trilingual Dictionary– that he invented and used (sometimes extended soon after, sometimes much later), and those created by L and only witnessed in this text or in others or a few more by L. According to the History Book on the College of Loiola, on 14 August 1740, the eve of the Assumption, L gave the Sermon there. The fact it was given in Loiola and made up of very particular grammatical and rhetorical audiences– could explain the various peculiarities of this Sermon, both in terms of ornamentation and lexical development (cf. Lakarra 1985b on the Sermon of Azkoitia [1737]). This discovery and its associated research show that the treasure of L’s texts in Basque is not as short as we thought and it leads us to confirm that we could still come across some more new ones.