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An eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon missal fragment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Nicholas Orchard
Affiliation:
Courtauld Institute of Art

Extract

At first sight, fragments of Anglo-Saxon missals may seem unprepossessing. They are often badly worn, difficult to read and rarely have any decoration to speak of. But their texts are normally of considerable interest. One such fragment which has so far escaped notice is preserved in London, British Library, Harley 271.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Turner, D. H., The Missal of the New Minster, Winchester, HBS 93 (London, 1962), 43–5.Google Scholar

2 Harley 271 is first recorded in the collection of Henry Savile in the late sixteenth century. It was subsequently sold by Savile to Symons D'Ewes, by the grandson and namesake of D'Ewes to Robert Harley in 1705, and by Harley to the British Museum in 1754, after which date it was rebound. See Watson, A., The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London, 1969), p. 58Google Scholar; Watson, A., The Library of Sir Symons D'Ewes (London, 1966), p. 204;Google Scholar and Wright, C. E., Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972), p. 131.Google Scholar

3 On Style IV Anglo-Caroline minuscule, see Dumville, D. N., English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950–1030 (Woodbridge, 1993), ch. iv, esp. pp. 132–8 and 154–6Google Scholar, and Ker, N. R., English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pp. 2232Google Scholar for English and Norman scribes in the late eleventh century.

4 Clemoes, P., Liturgical Influence on Punctuation in Late Old English and Early English Manuscripts, Dept. of Anglo-Saxon Occasional Papers (Cambridge, 1952)Google Scholar; and see now Parkes, M. B., Pause and Effect (Aldershot, 1992), esp. pp. 76–8.Google Scholar

5 The OE form trabt is also given for tract (us) in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41, p. 139, select services added in the margins of an early-eleventh-century copy of the OE translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum; cf. Grant, R. J. S., Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41: the Loricas and the Missal (Amsterdam, 1979), p. 99.Google Scholar

6 See Lindsay, W. M., Notae Latinae (Cambridge, 1915), pp. 207–13Google Scholar,. The abbreviation q: for quae is also used in the late eleventh-century fragment of an English sacramentary (from Salisbury?) preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 120, fols. ii–iv.

7 This version of the preface first appears in the so-called Supplement to the Hadrianic Gregorian Sacramentary: Deshusses, J., Le sacramentaire grégorien, 2nd ed., 3 vols., Spicilegium Friburgense 16, 24 and 28 (Fribourg, 19791988) I, no. 1673.Google Scholar See also Moeller, E., Corpus Prefationum, 3 vols., CCSL 161, 161A and 161B (Turnhout, 19801981), no. 1046, who edits the text from a wider selection of books — but only from those already published.Google Scholar

8 Moeller, E., & Clement, J. M. and Wallant, B. C. 'T, Corpus Orationum, CCSL 160 (Turnhout, 1992), no. 31.Google Scholar For further literature on these books, see Gamber, K., Codices Latini Liturgici Antiquiores, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Spicilegii Friburgensis Subsidia 1 (Fribourg, 1968), nos. 741, 901 and 941.Google Scholar

9 The origins of the Paris Missal (which differs markedly from that of Saint-Denis) are at present obscure. However, in the third decade of the thirteenth century it was taken up by the Dominican order as the basis of their missal.

10 The Saturday Ember day services were available in missal format in central Italy from the mid-eighth century on: Camber, K., ‘Fragment eines mittelitalienischen Plenarmissale aus dem 8. Jahrhundert’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 76 (1962), 335–41.Google Scholar The epistle for Saturday in this fragment has a variant reading that I can only otherwise parallel (from a photograph of the same passage) in the mid-twelfth-century missal from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, now Laon, Bibliothéque municipale, 238 (105r): servitutem for servientem (Hebr. IX.9).