Vigils, an important and eventually troublesome component of the cult of the saints, are attested to in the fourth century by Sts Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. In Gregorian regions nearly all these penitential observances were prohibited by a synod in Rouen in 1231, and have been virtually ignored in the scholarly literature. In the Ambrosian orbit, Vigils remained an extraordinarily important part of the public liturgy until the end of the Middle Ages; however, the treatment of these offices in the Milanese service books presents a confused picture that can only be pieced together with some difficulty. In clarifying the practices of Vigils, certain details are brought to light concerning the two other examples of the external episcopal liturgy of Milan (the three-day Litany in the week following Ascension, and the daily stations at both the ancient baptistries of the city), and even important details about the practices in the cathedrals themselves, practices concerning which the ordinal is silent, ambiguous or even misleading.

Exeter Cathedral Library and Archives MS 3515 (hereafter EXcl 3515), a notated missal located in Exeter Cathedral, has to date received very little scholarly attention. This neglect may be due to the absence of a liturgical kalendar and evidence of local saints in the Sanctorale. Its assignment to the thirteenth century with a generic English origin suggests that critical questions concerning provenance and dating have been overlooked. The source itself comprises four disparate sections assembled so as to create a complete liturgical cycle. Yet the parts are not as separate as hitherto believed. A comparative investigation reveals not only an Exeter provenance and a twelfth-century dating, but also a new witness to the St Denis/Corbie tradition. Research also reveals unexpected threads of liturgical continuity with the Anglo-Saxon past. As a complete pre-Sarum source of Mass prayers, chants and readings, EXcl 3515 offers a useful lens with which to view a transitional period in the development of a medieval secular liturgy in England. (By contrast, the three dominant cathedrals – Salisbury, York and Hereford – all lack notated chant sources from this period.) EXcl 3515 adds not only significant new data to the current information on secular liturgies, but also challenges accepted theories on the shaping of a distinctive English Use in southwest England.

The present article seeks to further recent discussion of the diversity of the motet in the long thirteenth century by considering a specific, rather unusual example of motet-related materials in a songbook. It examines a two-stanza pastourelle in the songbook that forms part of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308, and its connection to a network of related materials in various thirteenth-century motet sources. In so doing, it proposes the ostensibly unlikely scenario that this monophonic song derives from two separate motets that may already have been linked through their shared tenor and possibly also performed together in some way. This article brings the important conclusions of Fred Büttner in regard to these materials to Anglophone scholarship, while nuancing his reasoning in light of more recent scholarly work on thirteenth-century motets copied in songbooks.