Tom Lynch
The liturgy refers to ‘the whole body and practice of corporate worship’ of the Christian tradition.1 The liturgy was focused on clerics and religious, with the laity left as observers or minor participants. In medieval England, some form of liturgical commemoration was a common aspect of the cult of the saints. Communities in possession of a saint’s relics were particularly likely to work their saint into the yearly round of feasts and to invoke them in other parts of the liturgy. The liturgy was not necessarily about making miracles, but it could be seen as a part of thanksgiving for previous miracles or as a means to help secure future miracles. The saints cared how they were treated by their community, and they could stop interceding altogether if they were not appeased. They could even punish people for a lack of proper observance.2 Incorporating a saint into the Mass and divine office was a way to honour the saint and also a means of ‘assuring the successful prosecution of the vital activities of the group’.3 Liturgical elements could be used in translations, corporate petitions, corporate thanksgiving and ad hoc processions to lend those occasions a sense of ceremony and to authenticate them as official acts of the custodians of the saints.4 The liturgy was one of the most important tasks of the religious, and placing a local saint at the centre of the work of God showed how highly the custodians of the saints held their patrons.
The liturgy can be broadly divided into the divine office, the Mass and the celebration of less regular occasions such as church consecration, ordination and processions. Although most of the Mass and office was sung from memory, liturgical books were used to help. The parts of the Mass and office which varied through the year, known as the Proper, featured prominently in liturgical books.5 Included in the Proper were those sections specially selected or composed for the feast days of the saints. One of the major features required for the celebration of a saint’s feast was the Mass dedicated to them. A full Mass-set for a saint would include a series of specified prayers: the collect, secret, preface and post-communion.6 These could be new compositions, though sometimes they were copied from another saint. If a saint was not locally significant, the religious may have used the common of the saints, a series of prayers based on the type of saint. These categories were generally confessor, martyr and virgin, occasionally including further subcategories.7 There was a conscious grading of feast days, often with more elaboration for those saints who had a shrine nearby or who had a special association for a community.8
There are several Mass-books surviving from our period and containing Proper material for English saints. Kenelm receives a full Mass-set in the Winchcombe Sacramentary, with the addition of a prayer for vespers.9 This Mass-set is copied, including the vespers prayer – although it is marked as alia – in the Missal of Robert of Jumièges. It accompanies five other Masses for English saints, one each for Guthlac, Botulf and Alban and two for Edward the Martyr, found at the beginning of the text.10 Masses for the following feasts of English saints are found in the sanctorale of the Missal of Robert of Jumièges: Eormenhild, Cuthbert, Dunstan, Augustine of Canterbury, Æthelthryth, the translation of Swithun, Æthelwold of Winchester, Oswald of Northumbria, the translation of Æthelwold, Edmund the Martyr and Birinus.11 The eleventh-century Giso Sacramentary, another bishop’s book traditionally linked to Bishop Giso of Wells (1060–1088), contains Masses for the feasts of the English saints: Patrick, Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Guthlac, Ælfheah, Dunstan, Aldhelm, Augustine of Canterbury, Eadburh, Alban, Æthelthryth, Swithun, Grimbald, the translation of Swithun, the deposition of Alban, the translation of Cuthbert, the translation of Birinus, translation of Æthelwold, the feast of Æthelwold and Oswald of Northumbria.12
The late-eleventh-century Missal of the New Minster is a remarkably thorough though fragmentary Mass-book. It contains Masses for the translation of Judoc, Eormenhild, Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Ælfheah, Dunstan, Æthelberht the Martyr, Augustine of Canterbury, Eadburh, Alban, Æthelthryth, the vigil of the feast of Swithun, the feast of Swithun, Seaxburh, Grimbald, the translation of Swithun, Æthelwold, Oswald of Northumbria, the translation of Cuthbert, the translation of Birinus, the translation of Æthelwold, Edmund the Martyr, the second translation of Birinus, the feast of Birinus and two Masses for the feast of Judoc.13 The Missal of St Augustine’s Abbey dates from the late eleventh century and must have been composed later than the 1091 corporate translation at St Augustine’s as it contains a Mass to honour the occasion.14 The other English saints honoured with Masses in this book are Hadrian (Mass erased from manuscript), Laurence of Canterbury, Cuthbert, Mellitus, Liudhard, the translation of Mildrith, Dunstan, in vigil of the feast of Augustine, the feast of Augustine, Alban, Mildrith, Deusdedit, Theodore, Justus, the consecration of Augustine (added in the margin), Edmund the Martyr and Ælfheah.15 An early-twelfth-century missal from Bury contains Masses for the translation of Jurmin, Eormenhild, Oswald of Worcester, Cuthbert, Dunstan, Augustine of Canterbury, Botulf, Alban, Æthelthryth, Kenelm, Æthelwold, Oswald of Northumbria, Osyth, Edmund of East Anglia and Birinus.16 The fragmentary sacramentary of St Albans – dated to c. 1160, making it our latest Mass-book – includes Mas-sets for Cuthbert, Ælfheah, Dunstan, Swithun, the invention of Alban, Oswald, the octave of Alban, Augustine of Canterbury and Edmund of East Anglia.17
Patterns emerge from the saints honoured with feast day Masses in these texts. Cuthbert and Alban receive Masses in six out of seven Mass-books. Augustine of Canterbury has a Mass in all of the six later Mass-books, as do Dunstan and Oswald of Northumbria.18 Edmund of East Anglia has a Mass in five of the books whilst Ælfheah, Æthelthryth, Æthelwold, Birinus and Swithun feature in four. There are also a number of saints unique to certain books. Patrick is found only in the Giso Sacramentary, perhaps linking it to Glastonbury.19 Judoc receives three Masses for two occasions in the Missal of the New Minster but does not have a dedicated Mass in any of the other Mass-books. Similarly the locally important figures of Canterbury, Hadrian, Laurence, Mellitus, Liudhard, Mildrith, Deusdedit, Theodore and Justus, are unique to the Missal of St Augustine’s Abbey. The twelfth-century missal from Bury also contains saints of more local interest in Osyth and Jurmin. Greater elaboration was afforded to patrons and local saints. The New Minster apparently celebrated Masses to Swithun in vigil of his feast, on the day of his feast and on the day of his translation. Not to be outdone, St Augustine’s celebrated their founder on four occasions including a Mass marking his consecration as bishop. The inclusion of English saints within the sanctorale seems to have been established by the tenth century, but real incorporation became standard in the eleventh century. The liturgical sources do not show any concerted effort to exclude English saints following the Norman Conquest, although there was perhaps an increased localism.
Other forms of Mass also included mention of or dedication to English saints. Masses for the relics of the church at St Augustine’s and Winchcombe include their respective patrons, Augustine and Kenelm.20 The Red Book of Darley does not contain a feast day Mass for an English saint, but it does include a daily votive Mass in honour of Swithun.21 An individual Mass text was not required, however, to mark the feast of a saint as one could use a Mass-set from the common of the saints. The seven Mass-books discussed previously, as well as the Red Book of Darley, all contain common material for saints. English saints were also included in the text of the canon of the mass in a few cases.22 The beginning of the canon does not survive in the late tenth-century Winchcombe Sacramentary, but it does contain the text from the end of the first intercession. The saints clearly listed there are Augustine, Gregory, Jerome, Benedict and Florentius. Additions to the second intercession consist of Kenelm, Genevieve and Eulalia. All of these unorthodox entries have been struck out, perhaps as a result of the movement of the book from England, probably Winchcombe, to Fleury in the eleventh century.23 The canon is similarly added to in the Missal of Robert of Jumièges, with the first intercession ending with the additional names of George, Benedict, Martin and Gregory. Æthelthryth and Gertrude are also appended to the list in the second intercession.24 This early eleventh-century Mass-book appears to have been either written at or for one of the great houses of East Anglia, Pfaff suggests Ely or Peter-borough.25 The eleventh-century Red Book of Darley also contains an unusual list of saints in the first intercession, adding Hilary, Martin, Benedict, Gregory, Augustine, Amand and an otherwise unknown Caurentius.26 Some of these additions may be explained by the use of exemplars which included them, especially the more unusual ones. There is a clear case, however, for the deliberate inclusion of certain saints in the canon where they reflect local patrons, as with Kenelm and Æthelthryth, or are important figures in English Christianity, such as Augustine, Benedict, Gregory and perhaps Martin.
The office consisted of the corporate prayer sung at eight points throughout the day and night: the hours of matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline. The liturgy of the hours was ‘dominated by the recitation of the psalms’, but on a feast day, short collects could be interspersed.27 These collects were often borrowed from the Mass-sets in use and a total of four were usually required for a feast day.28 There are fewer surviving texts from medieval England for the office than the Mass. We have four pre-Conquest and two post-Conquest collectars. The Durham Collectar, Ælfwine’s Prayerbook, the Wulfstan Portiforium and the Leofric Collectar make up the pre-Conquest examples and have all been edited. Of these only the Wulfstan Portiforium contains offices for English saints, and these are mostly entries of a single prayer. One prayer is provided for Wærburh, Eormenhild, Oswald of Worcester, Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Dun-stan, Æthelberht the Martyr, Augustine of Canterbury, Aldhelm and Bede, Botulf, Seaxburh, Oswald of Northumbria, Cuthburh, Wilfrid and Edmund the Martyr. Two prayers are provided for Eadburh and Headda and three for Alban, Grimbald, Kenelm, Beornstan and Judoc. A functionally full set of prayers was provided for Æthelthryth, the translation of Swithun, Æthelwold and Justus. On his feast, Swithun is provided with six prayers whilst Birinus has five for his feast as well as one for his octave.29 All four books contain a common of the saints which could be used to fill any gaps. The post-Conquest books are the Winchcombe Breviary and the Sherborne Cartulary. The Sherborne Cartulary dates to c. 1146 and combines forty-one charter items relating to Sherborne Abbey, with liturgical material including Gospel readings and collects. The collect and reading for fifteen feasts survive, one of which is for Wulfsige.30 The Winchcombe Breviary, dating to the 1170s, contains office material for Kenelm, Cuthbert and Oswald of Northumbria.31 The material for Kenelm is a full twelve lessons to be read at matins, which have here been drawn from the eleventh-century Vita of Kenelm, as well as the collects, chapters, psalms and other chant required to celebrate the office on the saint’s feast day.32
The calendar of a church facilitated not only the tracking of the feasts of the year but also provided help in deciding what form the celebration of those feasts took. Feast days could be ranked by importance to the religious foundation. The most basic division was whether a feast was simple or double – that is, whether they celebrated the vespers before the feast or both the vespers before and the vespers on the day itself. Various other degrees of elaboration could differentiate the feasts, including the wearing of copes or albs and the number of lections read at matins.33 A feast could be marked as important in the calendar through the use of colour, majuscule, crosses and other indicative marks or additional annotation. Importance could also be indicated through the inclusion of a vigil or octave for a feast.34
For example, the feast of Oswald of Northumbria (5 August), recorded in the mid-twelfth-century calendar from Durham, Cambridge, Jesus College MS. Q B 6, is written in green ink and marked cappis, meaning it was to be celebrated by the choir wearing copes as was appropriate for a solemn feast. This calendar includes an octave of the feast, this time written in normal ink but marked as xii. lc. – that is, twelve lessons to be read at matins.35 The connection between Oswald and Durham was one of locality and relics. The feast of a church’s patron could likewise be marked, as found in the St Peter’s, Gloucester calendar in Oxford, Jesus College, MS., 10. Here the feast of Peter and Paul (29 June) is written in blue capitals and is to be celebrated in copes with a vigil the day before and an octave celebrated in copes as well.36 As long as a foundation had a calendar and a common of the saints, any feast could feasibly be observed. For instance, the apparent fading of Guthlac’s popularity when looking at Mass-sets is countered somewhat by his presence in the calendars from our period. An eleventh-century calendar from Crowland includes a unique pre-1100 witness for the feast of Pega, Guthlac’s sister, as well as including Guthlac in blue capitals to emphasise his importance.37 Guthlac’s feast day is recorded in both of the later calendars mentioned previously, as well as in twenty of the twenty-four early-English calendars which contain an entry for April, as tabulated by Rushforth.38
For English saints the most commonly observed feasts were the death of the saint. Occasions such as inventions, consecrations or translations could also be commemorated, usually at a saint’s main shrine or at a church particularly associated with them.39 However, the feasts of the translation of ten English saints were often recorded in calendars beyond their main shrine: the feasts of Ælfheah, Æthelthryth, Æthelwold, Edith, Edmund the Martyr, Edward the Confessor, Edward the Martyr, Swithun, Cuthbert and Oswald of Worcester.40 It is impossible to know which of these recorded feasts were actually kept as represented in the English calendars. It seems plausible that feasts added in later hands were observed at least for a time following their notation and that the feasts of patrons and saints with local relics were kept. Calendars were not only products of the moment of their creation but were also cumulative documents that were sometimes used for centuries and which shed light on the ‘current of devotion’ at specific religious foundations.41
The calendar was not the only place where saints were listed en masse. The litany of the saints was both a written repository of potential intercessors and a propitiatory element deployed in various parts of the liturgy and elsewhere. The litany of the saints was a list of saints which most often began with the threefold Kyrie Eleison, ‘Lord, have mercy’, followed by an invocation of the Trinity and each of the individual persons of the Trinity. What followed was an invocation of the saints by category beginning with the Virgin Mary and then the archangels, patriarchs, apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins with a petition to ‘pray for us’ (ora pro nobis) after each name. The invocations were followed by supplications to God to be delivered from evil and to aid the Church and its people. Then followed invocations of Agnus Dei and the litany was closed with a repetition of the threefold Kyrie.42
The litany was not something performed in isolation but was generally a part of a ceremonial occasion or a response to a specific event. Bede records that the Augustinian missionaries chanted litanies and said prayers, in procession to the meeting with Æthelberht of Kent.43 Litanies were also chanted in the procession of Oswald’s relics against plague in Worcester.44 From the manuscript context, Lapidge has deduced that litanies were used in the dedication of a church, as a part of the office, as a part of the visitation of the sick or dying and in the service for Holy Saturday or potentially as a part of the ordination of a monk.45 Litanies formed a part of most processions, including those in Lent and on the Rogation Days, the dedication of cemeteries and the consecration of bishops.46 The litany generally had a propitiatory tone, deployed as it was to secure the success of an occasion or to avert or overcome a crisis.47
As with the calendar, the saints in the litany could be marked out for distinction. For example, the mid-eleventh-century litany in the Bury Psalter calls for the petitions to Peter, Edmund of East Anglia, Benedict, Botulf and Jurmin to be repeated.48 This would emphasise two foundational figures of the Church as well as the saints whose bodies rested at Bury whenever a litany was called for. An early-twelfth-century litany from Ely also marks Peter out for repetition as the patron of the abbey church, but Æthelthryth is marked in capitals, and the English saints Alban, Edmund of East Anglia, Ælfheah, Birinus, Swithun, Æthelwold, Wilfrid, Cuthbert, Botulf, Neot, Seaxburh, Wihtburh and Eormenhild were included.49
Similar in form to the litany though different in tone is the hymn referred to as the Laudes Regiae. This hymn of praise, originally from Francia, invokes the conquering God in ‘jubilant acclamations’ in praise of a ruler or rulers.50 As a form, it was unknown to pre-Conquest England, but the Normans in England wrote their own and developed a unique style.51 There are two Laudes Regiae texts which survive from our period in British Library, Cotton, Vitellius, E.XII and in the Cosin Gradual, both of which are late eleventh century. The Vitellius, E.XII text has become associated with the coronation of Queen Matilda at Pentecost, 1068.52 The structure of the Vitellius, E.XII text is similar to a litany, with help being asked for specifically for Pope Alexander II (1061–1073), King William I, Queen Matilda and Ealdred, Archbishop of York. These named benefactors were followed by more general requests for aid for the bishops, for the abbots and for the English leaders and their armies.53 The Cosin Gradual text is similar in structure, although it does not include names for the individuals, places the Archbishop between the King and Queen and does not include the bishops and abbots at all. Also, the Cosin text introduces the king-saints Edmund of East Anglia and Oswald of Northumbria to the king’s section and the Archbishops Augustine, Dunstan (in capitals) and Ælfheah to the archbishop’s section.54
Notes
1 Harper, p. 12.
2 On punishment for lack of proper observance see Goscelin, Miracula S. Yuonis, pp. lxiv–lxvi; Liber Eliensis, pp. 208–9; Goscelin, Miracula S. Mildrethe, pp. 179–81. On miracles being stopped see Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 292–7.
3 William Christian, Person and God in a Spanish Valley (New York, NY: Seminar, 1972), p. 44.
4 See chapters II and V.
5 Harper, pp. 58–64.
6 Nicholas Orchard, ‘An Anglo-Saxon Mass for St Willibrord and Its Later Liturgical Use’, Anglo-Saxon England, 24 (1995), 1–10 (p. 1).
7 Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, p. 117.
8 Ibid., pp. 120–8.
9 Davril, p. 170.
10 H. A. Wilson, ed., The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, Henry Bradshaw Society, 11 (London: Harrison, 1896), pp. 3–7.
11 Ibid., p. xxviii.
12 F. E. Warren, ed., The Leofric Missal, as Used in the Cathedral of Exeter during the Episcopate of Its First Bishop, A.D. 1050–1072 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1883), pp. 303–7.
13 D. H. Turner, ed., The Missal of the New Minster, Winchester: Le Havre, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS.330, Henry Bradshaw Society, 93 (Leighton Buzzard: Faith, 1962).
14 Pfaff, Liturgy, p. 113; Martin Rule, ed., The Missal of St Augustine’s Abbey: With Excerpts from the Antiphonary and Lectionary of the Same Monastery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), p. 110.
15 Rule, pp. 72–157.
16 Victor Leroquais, Les Sacramentaires et les Missels Manuscrits des Bibliothèques Publiques de France, 4 vols (Paris: Leroquais, 1925), I, pp. 219–22.
17 Rodney M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, 1066–1235, 2 vols (Wood-bridge: Brewer, 1982), I, p. 110.
18 Presuming the Oswald from the St Albans sacramentary is in fact Oswald of Northumbria, as Thomson does not indicate.
19 Pfaff, Liturgy, pp. 124–6.
20 Rule, pp. 139–40; Pfaff, Liturgy, p. 175.
21 Pfaff, Liturgy, p. 95.
22 That is the intercessory prayers asking the listed saints – as well as Christ, the Virgin Mary and Joseph – to aid those taking part in the Mass. The list is usually made up of universal saints from the early Christian period.
23 Davril, pp. 9, 33–36.
24 Wilson, Jumièges, pp. 45–7.
25 Pfaff, Liturgy, pp. 88–91.
26 Ibid., pp. 94–6.
27 Harper, pp. 74–7.
28 Alice Corrêa, ed., The Durham Collectar, Henry Bradshaw Society, 107 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), pp. 3–4.
29 Anselm Hughes, ed., The Portiforium of Saint Wulstan: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS.391, Henry Bradshaw Society, 89–90, 2 vols (Leighton Buzzard: Faith, 1958), I, pp. 93–151.
30 Pfaff, Liturgy, pp. 176–9.
31 Leroquais, Les Bréviaires, IV, pp. 283–5.
32 Love, Eleventh-Century, pp. 130–4.
33 Harper, pp. 53–7; Lapidge, Swithun, pp. 104–5.
34 Rebecca Rushforth, ed., Saints in English Kalendars Before A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 117 (London: Boydell, 2008), p. 3.
35 Francis Wormald, ed., English Benedictine Kalendars After A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 77 & 82, 2 vols (London: Harrison, 1939 & 1946), I, p. 175.
36 Ibid., II, pp. 49–50.
37 Francis Wormald, ed., English Kalendars Before A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 72 (London: Harrison, 1934), pp. 254–65.
38 Rushforth, Table IV.
39 Rule, pp. 90, 110, 121.
40 Richard W. Pfaff, ‘Telling Liturgical Times in the Middle Ages’, in Procession, Performance, Liturgy, and Ritual: Essays in Honour of Bryan R. Gillingham, ed. by Nancy van Deusen, Musicological Studies, 62/8 (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2007), pp. 43–64 (pp. 53–7).
41 Richard W. Pfaff, ‘The Calendar’, in The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury, ed. by Margaret Gibson, and others, Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 14 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), pp. 53–87 (p. 62).
42 Michael Lapidge, ed., Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, Henry Bradshaw Society, 106 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), p. 1.
43 Bede, HE, I.25, pp. 74–7.
44 Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 318–19. For other uses of the litany in miracle petitions, see Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 58–9, 142–5.
45 Lapidge, Litanies, pp. 43–9.
46 For processions, see Lapidge, Litanies, pp. 48–9. On the dedication of cemeteries, see Gittos, pp. 46–48. For an example of a litany used in the consecration of a bishop, see H. A. Wilson, ed., The Pontifical of Magdalen College: With an Appendix of Extracts from Other English MSS. of the Twelfth Century, Henry Bradshaw Society, 39 (London: Harrison, 1910), pp. 97–8.
47 Michael McCormick, ‘The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator, 15 (1984), 1–24 (pp. 7–8).
48 Lapidge, Litanies, pp. 296–9.
49 Nigel J. Morgan, ed., English Monastic Litanies of the Saints After 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 119–120, 2 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012–2013), I, pp. 30, 104–7.
50 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship, University of California Publications in History, 33 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958), pp. 13–14.
51 Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, ‘The Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae’, Viator, 12 (1981), 37–78 (p. 67).
52 Kantorowicz, p. 171.
53 Cowdrey, pp. 70–1.
54 Ibid., pp. 72–3.