Many Sarum breviaries and related office manuscripts include hagiographical texts that are ‘extra’ in the sense that they go above and beyond the normal saint-related contents of the Sarum Temporale and Sanctorale – that is, beyond the yearly round of texts and instructions for the celebration of saints’ feasts in the daily Office. In order to recognize these extra texts, of course, we need a working definition of the normal or standard contents. We cannot rely on the edition by Procter and Wordsworth, since it includes a number of texts for strictly regional feasts (including, most obviously, the Translation of Chad, patron saint of Lichfield, and the two feasts of Erkenwald, patron of London) and some very late additions to Sarum Use that one practically never encounters in a manuscript. The norm I have found most useful instead is the version that is shared by the four self-standing Sarum ordinals from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the most carefully corrected breviaries from this period (including but not limited to the London Group manuscripts).1 With later manuscripts, of course, it is also normal to find Sarum breviaries that supplement these expected contents with at least rubrics and prayers, and sometimes more extensive texts as well, for the new saints’ feasts that were added to the Sarum calendar during the fifteenth century: first David, Chad, the two feasts of John of Beverley, and Winefride; later in the century also the Visitation. Proper texts for such new feasts will be mentioned in this chapter and the following lists only if their appearance in a manuscript is unexpectedly early (that is, preceding the date at which the feast was officially added to Sarum Use) or extremely rare.

The lists that follow this chapter identify the most conspicuous and substantial additions I have found in the Sarum office manuscripts examined in the course of my research: saints’ days for which some manuscripts supply a set of proper (individualized) lessons to be read at Matins, the principal service in the daily round, and sometimes also a full liturgical office (an extensive set of proper chant texts for Vespers, Matins, and Lauds), despite the fact that normal Sarum Use either omits these feasts entirely or limits them to a few special texts, taking most of the service from the Common of Saints.