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Liturgy and chant in a twelfth-century Exeter missal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2019
Abstract
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.
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References
1 The Leofric Missal (GB-Ob Bodley 579) is the earliest complete Anglo-Saxon missal used at Exeter by Leofric, the city's first bishop (1050–72). Produced in Lotharingia for English use, it contains a select few chants notated in adiastematic neumes; most are marginal incipits. See Orchard, Nicholas, The Leofric Missal, 2 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society, 113, 114 (London, 2002), 1: 125–31Google Scholar. Hartzell, Karl Drew, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge, 2006)Google Scholar, notes the existence of fifty-nine fragmentary insular missals (many comprising merely one or two leaves), setting EXcl 3515 apart as a unique complete source.
2 Perhaps the absence of distinctive initials or images may explain the lack of attention amongst palaeographers and art historians.
3 Hiley, David, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford and New York, 1993), 583–4Google Scholar, and Pfaff, Richard, The Liturgy in Medieval England (Cambridge and New York, 2009), 350–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discuss the spread of the Use of Salisbury (or Sarum).
4 See Ker, Neil R., Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1969–2002), 2: 826Google Scholar; and Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 192–3.
5 Hartzell includes EXcl 3515 in his Catalogue of Manuscripts, 184–93, indicating its pre-1200 date. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 2: 825–7, however, proposes an early thirteenth-century date for the older sections of the manuscript.
6 Frere, Walter Howard, ‘The Connexion between English and Norman Rites’, Journal of Theological Studies, 4 (1903), 205–14Google Scholar, reprinted in Walter Howard Frere: A Collection of his Papers on Liturgical and Historical Subjects, ed. John Henry Arnold and Edward G. Wyatt, Alcuin Club Collections 35 (London, 1940), 54–71; Underwood, Peter J., ‘Melodic Traditions in Medieval English Antiphoners’, Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, 5 (1982), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hiley, David, ‘The Norman Chant Traditions in Normandy, Britain, Sicily’, Proceedings of the Royal Music Association, 107 (1981), 1–33Google Scholar.
7 Hiley, Western Plainchant, 148.
8 Frere, Walter Howard, ‘Use of Exeter’, Alcuin Club Collections, 35 (1940), 54–71Google Scholar.
9 Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England, 388.
10 Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 184. An inscription inserted by a chantry priest on fol.169r allows us to trace the manuscript's fifteenth-century location. It identifies Johannes Hyotte (Annuellar) as the donor of the missal to St Anne's chapel (a building which still exists today), located in the parish of St Sidwell, Exeter: Dominus Iohannes Hyotte Anniuellarius in Ecclesia Cath’ Exon’ contulit hunc librum Missale deo et capelle sancta Anne in paroch’ sancta Satiuole situat’ ob honore sancta anne et beati Johannis Euang’ ibidem pro celebrant’ quamdiu durauerit remansurum. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 2: 826. Nicholas Orme, The Minor Clergy of Exeter Cathedral (Exeter, 1980), includes registers of bishops and clerics at Exeter Cathedral, allowing us to trace Hyotte's attachments to various chantries between 1445 and 1499.
11 Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 2: 826.
12 ‘Spike’ and ‘finial’ are terms used in Haines, John, ‘From Point to Square: Graphic Changes in Medieval Music Script’, Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation, 3/2 (2008), 30–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Marginal additions, however, of prayers and chant texts for St Thomas of Canterbury were inserted by Sarum redactors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
14 It should be noted that these folios contain prayers and blessings of ashes, psalms, and new fire for Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter Saturday (see Table 1).
15 The odd placement of St Blaise's feast between that of St George (23 April) and St Mark (25 April) inclined Christopher Hohler to suspect a defective exemplar (Exeter Cathedral Library, C 17851, 1970, unpublished notes). We may however possibly be witnessing an example of local variation: an eleventh-century calendar associated with Exeter, GB-Lbl Vitellius A xii gives another alternate date for St Blaise (June 14).
16 Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 2: 826.
17 See Barlow, Frank, ed., Exeter, 1086–1257, English Episcopal Acta 12 (Oxford, 1996), 170Google Scholar.
18 Holher, unpublished notes (see note 15).
19 Hiley, Western Plainchant, 583.
20 Harrison, Frank Ll., Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958), 3Google Scholar.
21 Legg, J. Wickham, The Sarum Missal Edited from Three Early Manuscripts (Oxford, 1916)Google Scholar, forms the basis of the non-musical material presented in this article. Legg based his edition on three manuscripts from the mid-thirteenth to the early fourteenth century, namely F-Pa 135, I-Bu 2565 and GB-Mr Crawford MS Lat. 24 (the ‘Crawford Missal’), the latter probably being the earliest, dated by Hiley to c.1260. See also relevant entries in Nicholas Sandon, The Use of Salisbury, 6 vols. (Lustleigh, 1984–99).
22 There is an acknowledged lack of sources representing the secular tradition in medieval England. In fact, the three dominant traditions, Sarum, York and Hereford, all lack early notated sources prior to the thirteenth century. Exeter alone provides us not only with unique sources from the pre-Conquest era, but also with a seemingly complete notated missal, dating to the later twelfth century. We must depend here on single readings and evaluate their significance in representing a local tradition.
23 Orchard, The Leofric Missal, 1: 1. Digital images of the Leofric Missal are accessible online at: http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=bodleian&manuscript=msbodl579 (accessed 22 April 2019).
24 Warren, Frederick Edward, ed., The Leofric missal as used in the Cathedral of Exeter during the episcopate of its first bishop, A.D. 1050–1072… (Oxford, 1883)Google Scholar. https://archive.org/details/theleofricmissal00unknuoft (accessed 22 April 2019).
25 Orchard, The Leofric Missal, 1: 8.
26 See Frere, Walter Howard, The Use of Sarum: The Sarum Customs as Set Forth in the Consuetudinary and Customary, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898–1901)Google Scholar; Diana Lynne Droste, ‘The Musical Notation and Transmission of the Music of the Sarum Use 1225–1500’, Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto (1983); Sandon, Nicholas, ‘Salisbury, Use of’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley and Tyrrell, John, 2nd edn (London, 2001), 22: 158–62Google Scholar; Hiley, Western Plainchant, 583–4.
27 Sandon, ‘Salisbury, Use of’, 22: 161.
28 Salisbury, Matthew Cheung, ‘Stability and Variation in Office Chants of the Sarum Sanctorale’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 27/1 (April, 2018): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Nigel Morgan, ‘The Sanctorals of Early English Sarum Missals and Breviaries, c.1250–c. 1350’, in The Study of Medieval Manuscripts of England, ed. George Brown and Linda Voight (Tempe, AZ, 2010), 143–62.
29 For example, Sandon remarks that ‘melodies concur to a remarkably high degree’, but when differences arise ‘the notation was susceptible to considerable variation’. ‘Use of Salisbury’, 2: iii and 3: ii, respectively.
30 Frere, Howard, Graduale Sarisburiense: a reproduction in facsimile… (London, 1894)Google Scholar, accessible online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293009360953;view=1up;seq=7 (accessed 22 April 2019). The earliest extant notated sources of the Sarum chant, which like GB-Lbl Add. 12194 date from the first part of the thirteenth century, are GB-Ob Rawl. lit. d. 3, a gradual, and GB-Cu Mm. 2. 9, an Office antiphoner. See Hiley, Western Plainchant, 584.
31 Legg, The Sarum Missal Edited from Three Early Manuscripts, xiv–xv.
32 In 1319 this feast was transferred to the Sunday after the Translation of St Thomas Beckett (7 July).
33 Oliver, George, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter (Exeter, 1861), 219–30Google Scholar. Though dated, this source remains relevant for its comprehensive introduction to the lives of Exeter's bishops and history of its cathedral, with additional material relating to inventories, charters and vestments. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002007667455;view=1up;seq=17 (accessed 2 May 2019).
34 Frere, ‘Use of Exeter’, 56, who further notes that ‘this slender information is all that can be gleaned so far as to the Use of the Cathedral’.
35 On the history of Gregorian and earlier Gelasian sacramentaries, see Vogel, Cyrille, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, trans. revised, and by William Storey and Niels Rasmussen (Washington, 1986), 64–105Google Scholar. In addition, unpublished studies by Christopher Hohler and Frank Edward Brightman, based on collated texts from the liturgies of York, Westminster and Sarum will also be drawn upon to highlight the liturgical idiosyncrasies of EXcl 3515.
36 For coverage of the entire liturgical calendar, see Anne Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus: Liturgy, Palaeography and Repertories in the Notated Missal EXcl 3515’, Ph.D. diss., University of Limerick (2012), 215–23, tables 5.1a–k. https://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/6767/Mannion_2012_Missale.pdf?sequence=6 (accessed 24 April 2019).
37 For this purpose, I have drawn on the previous comparative research by Frere, Walter Howard, The Use of Sarum, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898–1901; reprint, Farnborough, 1969)Google Scholar; McKinnon, James, The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Karl Drew Hartzell, ‘The Musical Repertoire at St. Albans, England in the Twelfth Century’, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester (1971).
38 Karl-Heinz Schlager, Thematischer Katalog der ältesten Alleluia-Melodien aus Handschriften des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts: ausgenommen des ambrosianische, alt-römische und alt-spanische Repertoire, Erlanger Arbeiten zur Musikwissenschaft 2 (Munich, 1965), hereafter abbreviated ThK. See also idem, ed., Alleluia-Melodien II, ab 1100, Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi 8 (Kassel, 1987).
39 Hiley, ‘The Norman Chant Traditions’; idem, ‘The Liturgical Music of Norman Sicily: A Study centered on Manuscripts 288, 289, 19421 and Vitrina 20–4 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.’, Ph.D. diss., King's College, University of London (1981); idem, ‘Thurstan of Caen and Plainchant at Glastonbury: Musicological Reflections on the Norman Conquest’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 12 (1986), 57–90.
40 Hughes, David, ‘The Paschal Alleluia in Medieval France’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 14 (2005), 11–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 René-Jean Hesbert, Antiphonale missarum sextuplex (Brussels, 1935). See also Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 217–18, tables 5.1d–e.
42 The select sources are presented in Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 252–3, table 5.17. Liturgical books from England, Ireland and France are included in the comparative investigation, based on the variant readings of the respective sources as given in Le graduel romain 4: Le texte neumatique, Vol. I: Le groupement des manuscripts (Solesmes, 1960), 33–85. Hiley draws attention to the omission of significant English sources in the Solesmes survey, including the two English tropers GB-Ob Bodley 775 and GB-Ccc 473 (Hiley, ‘Thurstan of Caen’, 65, and note 1). I have added the York gradual GB-Ob lat.lit.b.5 to my comparative investigation. Furthermore, the select group also incorporates service books from the Loire region, in particular, the twelfth-century Fleury missal, F-H 187 and the Tours missal, Orleans F-O 117, since both traditions bear witness to possible liturgical influence in EXcl 3515, as observed in the post-Pentecost alleluia series and the liturgical assignment of chants.
43 McKinnon, The Advent Project, 198.
44 For abbreviations of the sigla of the six Sextuplex sources, see Hesbert, AMS; and Hiley, Western Plainchant, 298.
45 Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 310, 564.
46 Ibid., 431, 483. For a comprehensive study of the Lismore gradual, see Frank Lawrence, ‘An Irish Gradual of the Twelfth Century in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawl. C 892: A Palaeographical, Liturgical and Repertorial Study’, Ph.D. diss., 2 vols., University College Dublin (2008).
47 Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts, 186. Outside of this particular liturgical allocation, Acceptabis is frequently assigned to other calendar days, including the post-Pentecost season.
48 Emma Hornby has drawn attention to Breton influence at Canterbury in the tenth century, noting the presence of Breton notation in sources from southwest England including Horton and Sherbourne. The results of her examination of the Linenthal fragment (London, Mr. R.A. Linenthal) suggest that not only was notational influence introduced from Brittany but also repertorial and melodic influences, albeit for a brief time. See Hornby, ‘Interactions between Brittany and Christ Church, Canterbury in the Tenth Century: The Linenthal Leaf’, in Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell: Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography, ed. Emma Hornby and David Maw (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2010), 47–65, at 58–65 (a list of pre-Conquest insular manuscripts with Breton notation).
49 The feast of the Ascension occurs twice in EXcl 3515, in both sections one (Temporale) and three (main Sanctorale). The assignment of Ascendit Deus to Ascension in section three aligns with most other sources, but disagrees with EXcl 3515, section one. An explanation for the conflict may lie in the fact that section three was probably intended for use in a parish church, possibly at Welesford. Because Ascension is one of only six Temporal feasts in this section of the book, the traditional offertory Ascendit Deus would be the expected choice. One could argue, however, that section three incorporates the liturgical assignment of the Leofric Missal (Ascendit Deus) and may reflect an earlier phase in the liturgical development at Exeter Cathedral. It should also be noted that further concordance with EXcl 3515 is found in the Tours Missal (F-O 117) for both assignments. The older AMS sources (B and R) assign Viri Galilee to the feast of the Ascension, but this is not the case with the later ones.
50 The classic editions of these two English missals are Henderson, William George, ed., Missale ad usum percelebris ecclesiæ Herfordensis (Leeds, 1874)Google Scholar; and Legg, John Wickham, ed., Missale ad usum ecclesiae Westmonasteriensis, 3 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 1, 5 and 12 (London, 1891, 1893, 1897)Google Scholar.
51 Hiley, David, ‘Post-Pentecostal Alleluias in Medieval British Liturgies’, in Music in the Medieval English Liturgy: Plainsong and Medieval Music Society Centennial Essays, ed. Rankin, Susan and Hiley, David (Oxford, 1993), 145–74Google Scholar, at 165. The Fleury alleluia series is identical to that of EXcl 3515 with the exception of the final psalm verse, Lauda Jerusalem (ThK 14712) given in the twelfth-century Fleury missal D-TRb H 187 and the thirteenth-century ordinal F-O 129. EXcl 3515 has Qui posuit (ThK 14714).
52 Hiley, ‘Thurstan of Caen’, 63.
53 Ibid., 60–1. See also Orchard, The Leofric Missal, 1: 127–30.
54 Hiley, ‘Post-Pentecost Alleluias’, 151.
55 Hiley, ‘Thurston of Caen’, 63.
56 The presence of a Fleury alleluia series in EXcl 3515 also challenges existing theories concerning continental liturgical influences in eleventh- and twelfth-century England. For example, in the introduction to his Catalogue of Manuscripts, xxiv, Hartzell argues that all contact with Fleury ceased in the tenth century, following the contribution of the Fleury monks to the monastic reform in tenth-century England.
57 See Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 236, table 5.15.
58 F-CHU 44 (Auberive, 13th cent.) and F-Lm 26 (Lille, 14th cent.). See Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 264, table 6.4.
59 See Hiley, ‘The Norman Chant Traditions; idem, ‘Thurston of Caen’, 57–90; and Underwood, ‘Melodic Traditions, 1–12. Hartzell, K.D., ‘An Unknown English Benedictine Gradual of the Eleventh Century’, Anglo-Saxon England, 4 (1975), 131–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halmo, Joan, ‘A Sarum Antiphoner and Other Medieval Office Manuscripts from England and France: Some Musical Relationships’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11/2 (2002), 113–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 See Hiley, ‘The Norman Chant Traditions’, 9–11; and idem, ‘Thurston of Caen’, 65–6.
61 It is outside the scope of this article to present the complete results. See Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 237–51, table 5.16.
62 See Hiley, ‘Thurston of Caen’, 65.
63 The author gives a summary of the melodic variants in Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 252–3, table 5.17.
64 Le graduel romain 4: Le texte neumatique, Vol. I: Le groupement des manuscripts, 33–85.
65 Steiner, Ruth, ‘The Liturgical and Musical Tradition of Bec’, reprinted in Studies in Gregorian Chant (Aldershot, 1999), 5Google Scholar.
66 See Bomm, Urbanus, Der Wechsel der Modalitatsbestimmung in der Tradition der Messgesange im IX bis XIII Jahrhundert (Einsiedeln, 1929), 38–9Google Scholar; and Karp, Theodore, Aspects of Orality and Formularity in Gregorian Chant (Evanston, IL, 1998), 135–80Google Scholar, 245–6.
67 A peculiar trait of these communions is that they appear in both simple syllabic and ornate melismatic styles. McKinnon (Advent Project, 338) argues that their origins can be traced to Office antiphons. For his part, Hiley (Western Plainchant, 117) asserts that they may be indicative of the various chronological layers of the communion chant repertory with syllabic versions pointing to early roots.
68 Steiner, Ruth, ‘Epulari autem et gaudere oportebat’, in Western Plainchant in the First Millennium: Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and its Music Written in Honor of James McKinnon, ed. Gallagher, Sean, James Haar, John Nádas and Timothy Striplin (Aldershot, 2003), 331–50Google Scholar.
69 Graduale Triplex (Solesmes, 1979), 95.
70 Steiner, ‘Epulari autem et gaudere oportebat’, 334–5. Within Steiner's melody A category there are seven variants, identified as A 1–7.
71 Steiner, ‘Epulari autem et gaudere oportebat’, 345–6.
72 This discussion draws on David Hughes criteria for distinguishing between trivial and substantive variants. See his ‘Evidence for the Traditional View of the Transmission of Gregorian Chant’, Journal of the American Musicology Society, 40/3 (Autumn, 1987), 377–404, at 381.
73 We have already considered the Easter week and post-Pentecostal alleluia series in EXcl 3515; the former implies links with insular secular practice (Hereford) while the latter points to influence from Fleury. Based on Schlager's work (Thematischer Katalog der altesten Alleluia-melodien, 2: 21–226; see also Hiley, Western Plainchant, 131) it should be noted that the earliest sources had a limited repertoire of some sixty melodies, increasing to around 410 by the end of the twelfth century. The replacement of psalmodic alleluias with New Testament-texted alleluias in the tenth century has been observed by David Hughes, ‘The Paschal Alleluia in Medieval France’, 16. Frere's index to Graduale Sarisburiense can often be helpful in tracing a source and/or its liturgical assignment, as well as distinguishing Sarum from non-Sarum chants. Hartzell's Catalogue is invaluable in tracing alleluia repertories in English sources up to 1200.
74 Regarding the latter see Hartzell, K.D., ‘An Eleventh-Century English Missal Fragment in the British Library’, Anglo-Saxon England, 18, (1989), 45–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 See Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 264, table 6.4.
76 For both these sources, however, Hartzell quotes Schlager's catalogue number ThK 97, which distinguishes it from the Exeter melody, cited as ThK 97*. A comparison of the melodies reveals closer agreement between Cosin V.v 6 and EXcl 3515 than between F. 160 and EXcl 3515.
77 See Mannion, ‘Missale Vetus’, 264, table 6.4.
78 Ibid.