A number of individual manuscripts which show unique or singular arrangements of ordines romani are discussed, located to Worms under Bishop Bernharius, and the instigation of a circle of bishops around Arn of Salzburg, who shared ordines with each other and with monasteries under their patronage. The chapter discusses the relation of these texts to pilgrim travel literature, from clergy who had been to Rome and observed and questioned the Roman clergy.

Themanuscripts discussed above are analysed as examples of the diverse practices of using and reading liturgical texts in the Early Middle Ages. Accompanying text and apparatus are noted and studied, showing that none of the manuscripts fully agree with the conception of ‘purely’ liturgical or non-liturgical texts erected by scholarly analysis and cataloguing. Education co-existed with narrative and prescription of ritual. All the texts led towards deeper understanding, the precondition for correct performance. Manuscripts in which the ordines appear alongside canon law, papal history, and within liturgical books of other genres, are all discussed.

A second group of manuscripts are examined, the witnesses of the ‘Frankish’ Collection. Here, a connection to the royal chapel of the kings of Italy and the monastery of Reichenau are advanced to explain the collection. The spread of the collection to diverse centres such as Verona, Regensburg, Nonantola and Corbie is discussed. The presentation of the individual manuscripts as ‘embroynic’ forms of the pontifical, a later genre of liturgical book for episcopal functions, is questioned.

The early fourteenth-century pontifical owned by Anian, bishop of Bangor, is an important source of late medieval chant and rituals. The activities of Welsh bishops as suffragans in English dioceses explain some of the unexpected contents and details, with two rites of the dead – one for a religious community using Romano-Franciscan chant, the other of the Use of Salisbury. Written c. 1315–20 as a coherent manuscript with one main scribe in the time of Anian II of Bangor, it was probably copied from a composite anthology compiled principally during the time of Anian I in the late thirteenth century. The ‘more-than-local’ pontifical is placed in the context of recently discovered fragments ‘local’ to the diocese of Salisbury, as well as certain Welsh and Irish adoptions and adaptations of Salisbury Use.

A tradition and practice dating back centuries by which a monarch was welcomed into a loyal city by its dignitaries, clerics, and citizenry, the typical entrée in the hands of the last Valois kings was a spectacular festival, calling on all the creative resources of a city – artists, poets, architects, set designers, composers, and musicians – to produce a visual and aural feast that is generally considered to have given expression to the king’s power. Yet the concluding ceremony that took place in the city’s cathedral, in which a Te Deum was sung, has received almost no attention from scholars. This chapter identifies the liturgy used at this event and considers the role of the psalm central to the ceremony, typically Psalm 19, Exaudiat te Dominus. At the same time, a corollary ceremony, the ‘Te Deum’ was also frequently performed in Paris, it too placing frequently placing Psalm 19 at its center. In contrast to Fogel’s reading of these events, both were as much prayers for the safekeeping of the king in a time of profound national turmoil as they were celebrations of his victories.