[1] Historically such sermons were very often prepared for publication, and played a significant part in Lutheran, and later in Puritan, presbyterian, and nonconformist literary cultures, in Europe and New England.
For women, in England at least, "exemplary eulogies" would be constructed from female Biblical figures, sometimes displacing the subject's agency outside domestic life.
[9] The model for Protestant funeral sermons was outlined in De formandis concionibus sacris by Andreas Hyperius (English translation 1577).
[16] Exemplified by Samuel Clarke, Puritan writers created a genre that can be described as hagiographic that drew on funeral sermons and short biographies.
[18] For the British Particular Baptist tradition in the 18th century, Cook in looking at funeral sermons of John Brine and Benjamin Wallin (1711–1782)[19] argues first for the continuing importance of the plain style scheme of the Puritan William Perkins published in his The Arte of Prophesying (1607).
[20] Wolffe argues, for British funeral sermons of the Victorian period, there was a transition in the decades 1860 to 1880, from the model of giving priority to exegesis of scripture, to an emphasis on life writing.
[24] The French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet owed much of his reputation as an orator to a series of funeral addresses on prominent persons of the reign of Louis XIV.
He built on existing structures for such sermons, innovated and spoke at length, and included accessible religious instruction alongside laudatory comments.