It has been argued in the first part of this book that the Benedictine reformers of the tenth century were probably familiar with an existing liturgical tradition of the Divine Office sung by both ‘monks’ and secular clerics in cathedrals and minster churches. A lack of Office chant books surviving from earlier than the end of the tenth century – and the earliest are mere fragments – makes it very difficult to determine the actual content of this tradition, or the Continental traditions that may have influenced it. Important sources of this kind of information are, however, preserved in two manuscripts in which lists of Office chants were copied as additions to the original contents. These are the ‘Durham Collectar’ and the Parker Old English Bede. The similarity of their contents makes it appropriate that they should be evaluated side by side.

Codicological setting and liturgical contents

The place of origin of the original layer of the Durham Collectar (Durham, Cathedral Library, A. IV. 19, s. ix/x) is unknown. By c.970 at the latest, the manuscript was owned by the community of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street, where the original text received a vernacular gloss. Around the same time, three new quires were added, and these received, apparently within a short time, several liturgical and educational texts, including some of the earliest evidence for the chants of the Divine Office in any English manuscript.