[michaelsbradley]

Sermon manuals were popular among Catholic priests from the time the printing press started to spread in Europe, and remained so into the middle of the 20th Century.

A parish priest might not deliver a “canned sermon” verbatim, but still rely on one/more sermon manuals heavily when preparing his words for Sunday.

The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent), published by the Vatican and ordered for use in seminaries for core formation of candidates for the priesthood, included a list of specific topics to address for each Sunday of the year. While not a sermon manual as such, those “bullet points” informed Catholic sermons around the world for 300+ years.