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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
Of all the services held in a saint's honour in the course of his or her feast-day, mass was the most important: and central to the mass were the prayers invoking the saint's intercession said by the celebrant. Together with the canon, these ‘proper’ prayers – by the ninth century normally a collect (collecta), secret (super oblata or secreta), preface (prefatio) and postcommunion (ad complendum or postcommunio) – formed the backbone around which chant and readings were arranged, and they were gathered together in the sacramentary, the book used by the celebrant alone. Further forms might be provided as ‘alternatives’ (aliae orationes); for the conclusion of mass (super populum); and occasionally, for vespers of the day before the feast and of the feast itself (ad vesperas), but generally speaking, these are rare. As ‘informal’ cults became formal, or prize relics came to hand, so the need for new suites of prayers arose. These could be composed afresh, ‘borrowed’ from existing saints' masses (an easy option, necessitating little more than the insertion of the new saint's name in the relevant prayers); or if the precentor's creative powers failed him completely, they could be taken from the ‘commons’, that is, from the series of ready-made masses contained in almost every medieval sacramentary or missal for a ‘confessor’, a ‘martyr’ or a ‘virgin’, and so on. Some houses attracted the services of gifted writers; other seem not to have been so fortunate. It is my intention to analyse here the genesis and dissemination of a mass from a house of the former class which throws interesting light on the liturgical links between England and the Continent in the eighth century.
1 Jungmann, J. A., The Mass of the Roman Rite trans. Brunner, F. A., 2 vols. (New York, 1955)Google Scholar, though outdated in some respects, still remains the best general work on the development of the mass and its individual elements. The terms super oblata and ad complendum occur in sacramentaries that are strongly ‘Roman’ or Gregorian, secreta and postcommunio in those that belong in the main to the Gelasian tradition. In Gelasian sacramentaries, ‘Roman’ features, often of a non-Gregorian kind, are mixed in varying degree with northern European. See Deshusses, J., Le sacramentaire grégorien, 3 vols., Spicilegium Friburgense 16, 24 and 25, 2nd ed. (Fribourg, 1979–1988)Google Scholar, who edits the most important ninth-century Gregorian sacramentaries, and Wilson, H. A., The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), who edits the oldest member of the Gelasian family, and gives a useful synopsis of the contents of two later books.Google Scholar
2 For Paris, BN lat. 9433, see Hen, Y., The Sacramentary of Echternach, HBS 109 (London, forthcoming)Google Scholar. See also Nordenfalk, C., ‘Ein karolingisches Sakramentar aus Echternach und seine Vorlaufer’, Acta Archaeologia 2 (1931), 207–44, with platesGoogle Scholar. The Darmstadt book has been published in facsimile: Echternacher Sakramentar und Antiphoner, ed. Staub, K. H., Ulveling, P. and Unterkircher, F., 2 vols., Codices selecti phototypice impressi 74 (Graz, 1982).Google Scholar
3 BN lat. 9433, fols. 161–2; Darmstadt 1946, 230r–1v. The text is printed from the former. Ad Vesperas O Almighty Everlasting Lord, who hast gathered us in this most holy sanctuary in loving devotion to thy confessor and shepherd Willibrord, grant, we beseech, that with this shepherd, we may be worthy to reach the joys of heavenly life.
4 Unless otherwise indicated, copies of early printed books referred to below are held by the British Library. Missale Coloniense (1494), 368v; and Missale Freisingense (1487), fol. 266.
5 Missale Trevense (1487), 239v.
6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. liturg. b. 9, 221v, a late-fourteenth-century missal; and Missale Traiectense completissimum (1514–5), 68v.
7 Missale Strigoniense (1501), 189v.
8 Missale Moguntinum (1482), fol. 305; and Missale Pragense (1998), fol. 115.
9 Missale Wormatiense (1490), quire bb, fol. 5; and Missale Leodiense (1540), quire K, 3v.
10 Missale Mindense (1513), fol. 323.
11 At the abbey of St Mary, Parc Louvain (dioc. Cologne), the Utrecht mass was taken over in part for Hubert, bishop of Troyes, whose feast (6 Nov.) falls on the day before Willibrord's. See London, British Library, Add. 11862, fol. 257, a late-eleventh-century missal from Cologne with a supplement (in which the mass for St Hubert appears) for Parc Louvain. St Hubert is assigned the secret and super populum.
12 Rouen, , Bibliothèque Municipale, 274, 166r, ed. Wilson, H. A., The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, HBS 11 (London, 1896), 229–30Google Scholar. The book is datable on the following grounds. An invocation of St Florentius, whose relics were brought to Peterborough from Bonneval in 1014 by Abbot Ælfsige (1007–42), appears in the litany of the service for the Visitation of the Sick and Dying; and the calendar does not commemorate the translation of St Ælfheah's remains to London (8 June), which took place in 1023. See Hohler, C., ‘Les saints insulaires dans le missel de l'archevêque Robert’, Rouen: Congrès scientifique du XIIIe centenaire, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1955) I, 293–303Google Scholar; and for the litany, Lapidge, M., Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, HBS 106 (1991), 82 and 270–2Google Scholar. Dumville, D. N., ‘On the Dating of some late Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Manuscripts’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 10 (1991), 40–57, at 52Google Scholar, has unsuccessfully attempted to undermine the quite obvious implications of the presence of the invocation of St Florentius; and one must treat with extreme caution his suggestion that the manuscript was produced for Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury (1013–20): idem, Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 92Google Scholar. The sacramentary underlying the mid-twelfth-century missal from Bury St Edmunds, now Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, 238, descends in large part from Rouen 274. From a liturgical standpoint, there is nothing to connect either book with Canterbury. By the late eleventh century a number of masses for English saints had been copied from Robert's sacramentary and sent to Saint-Evroult (founded from Jumièges in 1050), where they were adapted for ‘local’ saints. I have an edition of these masses (which are preserved in Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, 273) in hand.
13 Le Havre, Bibliothèque Municipale, 330, fol. 164, ed. Turner, D. H., The Missal of the New Minster, Winchester, HBS 93 (London, 1963), 188–9.Google Scholar
14 Hughes, A., The Portiforium of St Wulfstan, 2 vols., HBS 89–90 (London, 1956–1957) I, 150 (no. 1982)Google Scholar. The prayer for second vespers also appears there for St Birinus (no. 1983). For Ely, see the early-fourteenth-century breviary-cum-missal now in Cambridge, University Library, li. 4. 20, 290v; and for Peterborough, the fifteenth-century diurnal, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, Gough liturg. 17, 203r.
15 See Legg, J. W., Missale ad usum ecclesiae Westmonasteriensis, 3vols, HBS 1, 5 and 12 (London, 1891–1897) III, 1551Google Scholar, who prints the mass from London, British Library, Harley 5289, a late-fourteenth-century missal from Durham; and Rule, M., The Missal of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (Cambridge, 1896), p. 90Google Scholar, who prints the mass – a late-twelfth-century addition – from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 270, a sacramentary of c. 1091 × 1100 from St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. Both books embody the sacramentary prepared by Lanfranc soon after the Conquest for Christ Church, Canterbury. The prayers were known at the abbey by the early twelfth century: they figure in the skeletal office for St Augustine in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 312, p. 297. At some point the mass was dispatched to Bec: see Hughes, A., The Bec Missal; HBS 64 (London, 1964), 150Google Scholar. For Barking, see Tolhurst, J. B. L. and McLachlan, L., The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey, 2 vols., HBS 65–6 (London, 1927–1928) II, 232Google Scholar; and for Sherborne, Legg, J. W., ‘Liturgical Notes on the Sherborne Missal’, Trans. of the St Paul's Ecclesiological Soc. 4 (1896), 1–31, at 26.Google Scholar
16 See Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 843, 6v, where the mass is found as a fifteenth-century addition to a twelfth-century missal from Saint-Amand; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 9436, 82v, a mid-eleventh-century sacramentary from Saint-Denis, in Legg, Missale ad usum ecclesiae Westmonasteriensis, III 1542; London, British Library, Add. 34662, 145v–146r, a late-fourteenth-century missal from Saint-Valéry; the copy of the Missale Redonense of 1523 in Cambridge University Library (unfoliated); Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 12052, 41r, where it is found as an early-eleventh-century addition to the sacramentary of Abbot Ratoldus of Corbie (d. 986); Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 819, 101v–102r, a mid-eleventh-century sacramentary from Bergues-Saint-Winoc, and Bourges, Bibliothèque Municipale, 37, 56r, an early-twelfth-century sacramentary from Saint-Bertin. The secret and postcommunion in this last are transferred to the feast of St Bertin's elevation (9 May).
17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. liturg. d. 4, 36v, where the mass is a thirteenth-century addition to an eleventh-century sacramentary.
18 Deshusses, , Sacramentaire grégorien II, 25–8Google Scholar, and nos. 3511–15, 3517–21 and 3532–6. The prayers first occur in a ninth-century sacramentary from Tours, now divided between Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale, 184, and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 9430, on which see Deshusses, J., ‘Les anciens sacramentaires de Tours’, RB 89 (1979), 281–302.Google Scholar
19 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien II, no. 3201; BN lat. 9433, 240r, for which, see The Sacramentary of Echternach, ed. Hen. For the prayer in Alcuin's mass for St Martin, see Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien II, no. 3536.
20 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien II, no. 3519.
21 Mohlberg, L. C., Liber Sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ordinis anni circuli, Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta, Series Maior, Fontes 4 (Rome, 1960), no. 1075Google Scholar; and Deshusses, , Sacramentaire grégorien II, no. 3520.Google Scholar
22 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien II, no. 3521.
23 Ibid. no. 3199.
24 The vita is addressed to Beornræd, archbishop (785–97). Bk 1 (in prose) is ed. Levison, W., MGH, SS rer. Merov. 7 (1920), 81–141Google Scholar; and bk 2, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, PLAC 1, 207–20.Google Scholar (The two books are printed integrally in PL 101, cols. 694–724.) See also Deug-Su, I., L'opera agiografica di Alcuino (Spoleto, 1983), pp. 31–71.Google Scholar
25 The 1495 edition of the breviary of Utrecht takes parts of the life for the readings at matins, and others for the chant (quire gg, fols. 5–6). All the responses in the first nocturn come from ch. 3 of the vita. See also the early-fourteenth-century ordinal from Trier, ed. Kurzeja, A., Der älteste Liber ordinarius der Trierer Domkirche, Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen 52 (Munster, 1972), 553.Google Scholar
26 The life is ed. Krusch, B., MGH, SS rer. Merov. 4 (1903), 381–401Google Scholar. For the chant and hymns, see Hariulf of Aldenburg's Chronicon Centulense (PL 174, col. 1251); and for Charlemagne's part in the reconstruction of Saint-Riquier, Angilberti abbatis de ecclesia Centulensi libellus, ed. Waitz, G., MGH, SS 15.1 (1887), 173–81Google Scholar, and Chronicon Centulense (PL 174, cols. 1239–41).
27 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien I, nos. 59*–63* and II, 25–8; the vita of St Vedastus is ed. Krusch, B., MGH, SS rer. Metov. 3 (1896), 399–427.Google Scholar
28 See above, p. 2, for the preface; MGH SS rer. Merov. 4, 392. Note also line 268 of Alcuin's poem on the saints of York: quae modo per mundum chartis inscripta leguntur (Alcuin: The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, ed. Godman, P. (Oxford, 1982), p. 28).Google Scholar
29 MGH, SS rer. Merov. 4, 389.
30 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien I, no. 593; and see also the mass at Echternach itself, in Sacramentary of Echternach, ed. Hen. The collect of the Willibrord mass may carry the allusion further. The words pastor and ovile recall Christ's charge to St Peter, ‘Pasce oves meas’ (John XXI.16).
31 The ninth-century mass-lectionary (‘comes’) of Saint-Riquier, which derives in part from one drawn up by Alcuin, provides proper readings for the feast of St Richarius (PL 30, cols. 487–532, at 506). See also Cabrol, F. et Leclercq, H., Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 15 vols. in 30 (Paris, 1907–1953) V.1, cols. 322–3.Google Scholar
32 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien I, no. 63*; Wilson, , Missal of Robert of jumièges, p. 167Google Scholar; and Richter, G. and Schönfelder, A., Sacramentarium Fuldense saeculi X (Fulda, 1912), repr. HBS 101 (London, 1977), no. 250Google Scholar. See also Orchard, N. A., ‘A Note on the Masses for St Cuthbert’, RB 105 (1995), 79–98.Google Scholar
33 On Fridugis, see Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 163–6Google Scholar. For the mass at Saint-Bertin and Bergues-Saint-Winoc, see above, p. 6, n. 16. The earliest surviving mass for St Audomarus (Omer) is the one originally composed by Alcuin for St Vedastus: Wilson, , Missal of Robert of Jumièges, pp. 210–11Google Scholar. The exemplar of Robert's book evidently came from Flanders. The next earliest mass for St Omer occurs in BN lat. 819, 102v: but its form there is different.
34 On Grimbald's career, see Grierson, P., ‘Grimbald of Saint-Bertin's’, EHR 45 (1940), 528–59.Google Scholar
35 The benedictional, now London, British Library, Add. 45958, has a blessing each for SS Vedastus, Æthelthryth and Swithun, but makes no further provision for ‘local’ saints. See Warner, G. F. and Wilson, H. A., The Benedictional of St Æthelwold, Roxburghe Club (Oxford, 1910), pp. 12, 37 and 39Google Scholar. Also see Prescott, A., ‘The Text of the Benedictional of St Æthelwold’, Bishop Æthelwold: his Career and Influence, ed. Yorke, B. (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 119–47Google Scholar; and for Æthelwold and St Vedastus, see Lapidge, M. and Winterbottom, M., Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of St Æthelwold (Oxford, 1991), pp. lxvi and lxxxiv.Google Scholar
36 The mass does not appear in the sanctorale of Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, 444, the contents of which are summarized in Brou, L., The Monastic Ordinals of St Vedast's Abbey, Arras, 2 vols., HBS 86–7 (London, 1957) I, 80–7.Google Scholar
37 For Canterbury, Durham, Barking and Sherborne, see above, p. 5, n. 15. Barking adopted the liturgical use of St Paul's for mass, said the psalms according to the Roman manner, but retained the Benedictine breviary. See King, A. A., Liturgies of the past (London, 1959), pp. 297–8Google Scholar. For Hereford and Whitby, see Legg, Missale ad usum Westmonasteriensis III, 1598–9.
38 For Ely and Peterborough, see above, p. 5, n. 14. For Bury, see Laon, 238,138r, with Hohler, ‘Les saintes insulaires dans le missel de l'archevêque Robert’, pp. 302–3.Google Scholar