In the early-eleventh-century Canons of Edgar, Archbishop Wulfstan informed his diocesan clergy that they should never celebrate mass without a mass-book and that the open book should be in front of the priest during the service so that he could avoid making mistakes. This text indeed provides a great deal of direction to the secular clergy on the “dos and don’ts” of the celebration of mass: no animals are to be allowed in the church, correct vestments are to be worn, and the chalice for the Eucharistic wine is to be made of metal rather than wood or bone. Wulfstan's concern here is for the proper celebration of mass, but the archbishop clearly believed that the priests under his authority had access to mass-books and that they should use them rather than relying on memory. Liturgical books are most frequently mentioned in prescriptive lists of books for priests, but some scholars have been cautious in accepting that these books were actually available to the early medieval clergy. This is in large part due to the loss of untold numbers of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but the evidence that does survive and the centrality of mass to a priest's duties and to pastoral care suggest that the books for the performance of the mass, and potentially the Divine Office, were accessible. Evidence further suggests that secular minsters in particular celebrated the Divine Office, which played a more prominent role in lay religious life than has previously been recognized. Furthermore, the form of the mass-books available from the end of the tenth century and later can inform us of the changing way in which pastoral care was delivered. The shift away from the sacramentary and towards the missal, this chapter argues, reflects the change from the minster to the local church as the primary provider of pastoral care in late Anglo-Saxon England.

However, the records of liturgical books for priests present a number of challenges. Foremost among these is the overwhelming number of liturgical manuscripts that have been assigned to monastic or episcopal use. The few manuscripts that are thought to have been used by Anglo-Saxon secular priests have received some scholarly attention, but the small size of this group contributes to the difficulty of a study of priests’ books in this period.