Homiliaria

Word coming from a traditionalist Roman Catholic site is that the Henry Bradshaw Society is going to make all of their past works available as reprints!

If you’re not familiar with this society, its chief purpose is reprinting rare medieval liturgical manuscripts. Because of its location, these are primarily though not exclusively English. But not in English—or at least not modern English. The grand majority appear only in Latin and the series does not include translations.

The other issue here is price—these volumes normally come in around the $80-$100 range.

They’re taking requests now for items with which to begin. The most important to my mind for Anglo-Saxonists are these:

VIII. The Winchester Troper, from MSS. of the Xth and XIth Centuries,
with other Documents illustrating the History of Tropes in England and
France. Edited by Walter Howard Frere, 1894 (though available here for free…)

LVI. The Leofric Collectar compared with the Collectar of St. Wulfstan,
Together with Kindred Documents of Exeter and Worcester, Vol. II,
Edited and Completed from the Papers of E. S. Dewick, by W.H. Frere,
1921

LXXII. English Benedictine Kalendars before A.D. 1100. Edited by Francis Wormald [...] Vol. I, Texts, 1934

LXXXIII. The Psalter Collects from V-VIth Century Sources (Three
Series), Edited with an Introduction, Apparatus criticus and Index by
Dom Louis Brou, O.S.B. from the papers of the late Dom André Wilmart,
1949

LXXXIX. The Portiforium of Saint Wulfstan (Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, Ms 391), Edited by Dom Anselm Hughes [...] Volume I, 1958 [issued for 1956]

XC.
The Portiforium of Saint Wulfstan (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
MS 391), Edited by Dom Anselm Hughes [...] Volume II, 1960 [issued for 1957]

CIII. A Pre-Conquest English Prayer-Book (BL, MSS Cotton Galba A.xiv
and Nero A.ii, (ff. 3-13)), Edited by Bernard James Muir, 1988 [issued for 1983 and 1984]

CV. The Monastic Ritual of Fleury (Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 123 [101]), Edited by Anselme Davril, 1990 [issued for 1988]

CVI. Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, Edited by Michael Lapidge, 1991 [issued for 1989 and 1990]

CVII. The Durham Collectar (Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A.IV.19), Edited by Alicia Corrêa, 1992 [issued for 1991]

Although the last three items are fairly recent, they too are out of print.The last in particular is a wonderful study of collectars in general and ought to be on the shelf of any Anglo-Saxonist with an interest in liturgy—and a book allowance.

A bit after the Anglo-Saxon period but still quite worth having are these:

LXIX. The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, MSS.
Rawlinson Liturg. e. 1*, and Gough Liturg. 8, in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, Edited with Liturgical Introduction, Notes and Indices by
J.B.L. Tolhurst [...] Volume I, Temporale (Advent to Easter), 1932 [issued for 1930]

LXX.
The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, MSS. Rawlinson Liturg.
e. 1*, and Gough Liturg. 8, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Edited
with Liturgical Introduction, Notes and Indices by J.B.L. Tolhurst
[...] Volume II, Temporale (Easter to Advent), 1933 [issued for 1931]

LXXI.
The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, MSS. Rawlinson Liturg.
e. 1*, and Gough Liturg. 8, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Edited
with Liturgical Introduction, Notes and Indices by J.B.L. Tolhurst
[...] Volume V, Commune Sanctorum, Kalendarium, Letania, Officium
Defunctorum, 1934

LXXVI. The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, MSS.
Rawlinson Liturg. e. 1*, and Gough Liturg. 8, in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, Edited with Liturgical Introduction, Notes and Indices by
J.B.L. Tolhurst [...] Volume III, Sanctorale (January to June), 1938 [issued for 1937]

LXXVIII.
The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, MSS. Rawlinson Liturg.
e. 1*, and Gough Liturg. 8, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Edited
with Liturgical Introduction, Notes and Indices by J.B.L. Tolhurst
[...] Volume IV, Sanctorale (July to December), 1939 [issued for 1939]

Having a complete liturgical *anything* from the medieval period is a big deal, and this is the earliest complete Benedictine breviary that survived Henry the VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Dating from right around 1300, it’s worth noting that Hyde Abbey used to be New Minster Abbey of Winchester. This collection is rounded out by a sixth volume which has already been reprinted. Needless to say, it’s one of my great dreams to have the complete set adorning my library shelves.

In light of The post below on early medieval liturgy as the chief locus for innovative Scripture interpretation, I’ll post here in a slightly modified form something I’ve had up elsewhere:

The most comprehensive resource I know for getting a quick handle on the variety of early medieval liturgical texts is a 1985 article printed in a festschrift for Peter Clemoes: Helmut Gneuss, “Liturgical books in Anglo‑Saxon England and their Old English terminology,” pages 91-141 in Learning and literature in Anglo-Saxon England : studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, edited by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

What makes this article invaluable is that Dr. Gneuss has laid out
the major types of books according to liturgical use, then categorized
every surviving A-S liturgical sources known to him within his
typology. Here are his headings from page 99:

This set of typologies is incredibly helpful for thinking through
different kinds of liturgical materials. The danger in seeing a
typology like this, however, is assuming that since these categories
exist epistemologically that they exist in reality—that each section
represents a kind of book one might find in a monastic library. This is
not the case… Inevitably, certain kinds of material travel together.
For instance, it is quite common for a “Psalter” to be much more than
Gnuess’s category H. Indeed, most physical psalters contain H (the Book
of Psalms) but this is preceded by X (a liturgical kalendar) and
followed by K (a hymnal).

Nevertheless, Gneuss’s categories are a great place to begin for
learning about the range of early medieval liturgical materials.

Students of biblical interpretation often look in vain for new and exciting scriptural interpretation happening in the early medieval period. What they find are copies of patristic commentaries, florilegia of patristic passages, and sermons built out of quotations from patristic authors. Thus, they safely write-off the period, satisfied that no significant interpretation occurred from the end of the patristic age to the beginning of the Scholastic period.

The truth of the matter is that much new interpretation was being done—just not in the way that modern academics do it. Rather, the new interpretation was being produced for and through the liturgy. The early medieval liturgy—especially as embodied in places like Cluny and its daughter-houses—was an enormous body of work that varied from place to place and time to time requiring a mastery of complicated rules and interconnections. All of it was built around cycles of Scripture.

Speaking broadly, the interpretation found within the liturgy is deliberately underdetermined. That is, the liturgy makes and provides interpretive connections but rarely spells them out or attempts to tease out the full implications. Rather, those participating in the liturgies and living their way through the cycles were able to find and create meaning within the suggestions.

Because of the underdetermination, it is not a simple matter for a modern scholar to simply ask how a certain text or theme was interpreted in the early medieval eccelesial world. At the root we face the core problem that medievalists always have—sources. Liturgical practices were dependent on manuscripts, and while there are distinctive varieties of sacramentaries, antiphoners, missals, etc., the practices of any given church, cathedral, or monastery depended on the available books. Even when we can identify a book at a given place, the full set of materials for liturgies were spread across several books; it’s not just a matter of finding one book but many to attempt to reconstruct a full liturgy. Even if a set of representative or likely texts can be assembled, it takes a while to figure out the intricacies of how these sources actually fit together in practice. Only once these initial tasks have been completed can the recovery of the interpretation begin.

The fundamental mode of interpretation found within early medieval liturgy is juxtaposition. That is, bits are placed next to other bits. Meaning is found through figuring out how the bits connect. The most basic way this occurs is the case of a Scriptural antiphon. The psalms and Gospel canticles of the monastic offices were often bracketed or interspersed with a one-line passage from some other place in Scripture. The function of the antiphon was to give the set text—that is, the psalm or canticle—a certain spin, to highlight or foreground certain aspects of the text over others. The most complex and determined forms are found in the responsaries and hymns which tend to connect a particular biblical text with a liturgical season or event and to other biblical texts and themes. In between these two ends of the interpretive spectrum are other elements of the liturgy.

There’s much more to be said on this topic; these are just some initial reflections. I hope to say a bit more about how the liturgy interprets Scripture and to provide some concrete examples—but that will come later.