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An Anglo-Saxon mass for St Willibrord and its later liturgical uses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
Extract
Of all the services held in a saint's honour in the course of his or her feast-day, mass was the most important: and central to the mass were the prayers invoking the saint's intercession said by the celebrant. Together with the canon, these ‘proper’ prayers – by the ninth century normally a collect (collecta), secret (super oblata or secreta), preface (prefatio) and postcommunion (ad complendum or postcommunio) – formed the backbone around which chant and readings were arranged, and they were gathered together in the sacramentary, the book used by the celebrant alone. Further forms might be provided as ‘alternatives’ (aliae orationes); for the conclusion of mass (super populum); and occasionally, for vespers of the day before the feast and of the feast itself (ad vesperas), but generally speaking, these are rare. As ‘informal’ cults became formal, or prize relics came to hand, so the need for new suites of prayers arose. These could be composed afresh, ‘borrowed’ from existing saints' masses (an easy option, necessitating little more than the insertion of the new saint's name in the relevant prayers); or if the precentor's creative powers failed him completely, they could be taken from the ‘commons’, that is, from the series of ready-made masses contained in almost every medieval sacramentary or missal for a ‘confessor’, a ‘martyr’ or a ‘virgin’, and so on. Some houses attracted the services of gifted writers; other seem not to have been so fortunate. It is my intention to analyse here the genesis and dissemination of a mass from a house of the former class which throws interesting light on the liturgical links between England and the Continent in the eighth century.
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References
1 Jungmann, J. A., The Mass of the Roman Rite trans. Brunner, F. A., 2 vols. (New York, 1955)Google Scholar, though outdated in some respects, still remains the best general work on the development of the mass and its individual elements. The terms super oblata and ad complendum occur in sacramentaries that are strongly ‘Roman’ or Gregorian, secreta and postcommunio in those that belong in the main to the Gelasian tradition. In Gelasian sacramentaries, ‘Roman’ features, often of a non-Gregorian kind, are mixed in varying degree with northern European. See Deshusses, J., Le sacramentaire grégorien, 3 vols., Spicilegium Friburgense 16, 24 and 25, 2nd ed. (Fribourg, 1979–1988)Google Scholar, who edits the most important ninth-century Gregorian sacramentaries, and Wilson, H. A., The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), who edits the oldest member of the Gelasian family, and gives a useful synopsis of the contents of two later books.Google Scholar
2 For Paris, BN lat. 9433, see Hen, Y., The Sacramentary of Echternach, HBS 109 (London, forthcoming)Google Scholar. See also Nordenfalk, C., ‘Ein karolingisches Sakramentar aus Echternach und seine Vorlaufer’, Acta Archaeologia 2 (1931), 207–44, with platesGoogle Scholar. The Darmstadt book has been published in facsimile: Echternacher Sakramentar und Antiphoner, ed. Staub, K. H., Ulveling, P. and Unterkircher, F., 2 vols., Codices selecti phototypice impressi 74 (Graz, 1982).Google Scholar
3 BN lat. 9433, fols. 161–2; Darmstadt 1946, 230r–1v. The text is printed from the former. Ad Vesperas O Almighty Everlasting Lord, who hast gathered us in this most holy sanctuary in loving devotion to thy confessor and shepherd Willibrord, grant, we beseech, that with this shepherd, we may be worthy to reach the joys of heavenly life.
4 Unless otherwise indicated, copies of early printed books referred to below are held by the British Library. Missale Coloniense (1494), 368v; and Missale Freisingense (1487), fol. 266.
5 Missale Trevense (1487), 239v.
6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. liturg. b. 9, 221v, a late-fourteenth-century missal; and Missale Traiectense completissimum (1514–5), 68v.
7 Missale Strigoniense (1501), 189v.
8 Missale Moguntinum (1482), fol. 305; and Missale Pragense (1998), fol. 115.
9 Missale Wormatiense (1490), quire bb, fol. 5; and Missale Leodiense (1540), quire K, 3v.
10 Missale Mindense (1513), fol. 323.
11 At the abbey of St Mary, Parc Louvain (dioc. Cologne), the Utrecht mass was taken over in part for Hubert, bishop of Troyes, whose feast (6 Nov.) falls on the day before Willibrord's. See London, British Library, Add. 11862, fol. 257, a late-eleventh-century missal from Cologne with a supplement (in which the mass for St Hubert appears) for Parc Louvain. St Hubert is assigned the secret and super populum.
12 Rouen, , Bibliothèque Municipale, 274, 166r, ed. Wilson, H. A., The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, HBS 11 (London, 1896), 229–30Google Scholar. The book is datable on the following grounds. An invocation of St Florentius, whose relics were brought to Peterborough from Bonneval in 1014 by Abbot Ælfsige (1007–42), appears in the litany of the service for the Visitation of the Sick and Dying; and the calendar does not commemorate the translation of St Ælfheah's remains to London (8 June), which took place in 1023. See Hohler, C., ‘Les saints insulaires dans le missel de l'archevêque Robert’, Rouen: Congrès scientifique du XIIIe centenaire, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1955) I, 293–303Google Scholar; and for the litany, Lapidge, M., Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, HBS 106 (1991), 82 and 270–2Google Scholar. Dumville, D. N., ‘On the Dating of some late Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Manuscripts’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 10 (1991), 40–57, at 52Google Scholar, has unsuccessfully attempted to undermine the quite obvious implications of the presence of the invocation of St Florentius; and one must treat with extreme caution his suggestion that the manuscript was produced for Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury (1013–20): idem, Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 92Google Scholar. The sacramentary underlying the mid-twelfth-century missal from Bury St Edmunds, now Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, 238, descends in large part from Rouen 274. From a liturgical standpoint, there is nothing to connect either book with Canterbury. By the late eleventh century a number of masses for English saints had been copied from Robert's sacramentary and sent to Saint-Evroult (founded from Jumièges in 1050), where they were adapted for ‘local’ saints. I have an edition of these masses (which are preserved in Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, 273) in hand.
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29 MGH, SS rer. Merov. 4, 389.
30 Deshusses, Sacramentaire grégorien I, no. 593; and see also the mass at Echternach itself, in Sacramentary of Echternach, ed. Hen. The collect of the Willibrord mass may carry the allusion further. The words pastor and ovile recall Christ's charge to St Peter, ‘Pasce oves meas’ (John XXI.16).
31 The ninth-century mass-lectionary (‘comes’) of Saint-Riquier, which derives in part from one drawn up by Alcuin, provides proper readings for the feast of St Richarius (PL 30, cols. 487–532, at 506). See also Cabrol, F. et Leclercq, H., Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 15 vols. in 30 (Paris, 1907–1953) V.1, cols. 322–3.Google Scholar
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