Abstract
In this article I underline the outstanding importance given by medieval preaching arts to plastic resources, specifically to exemplum, simile, metaphor and facies. I give an historical framework better to distinguish in these between what is traditional and new. Thereby it is easier to recognize that, though these arts continue to look back at classical rhetoric, the new cultural environment makes them different, as in the incorporation of a new resource into the catalogue of rhetorical figures, facies. To demonstrate this, I take Latin texts from the as yet unedited Corpus Artium Praedicandi.