Illuminated manuscripts in classical and mediaeval times, their art and their technique

by J. H. Middleton

The Mass.3. The Mass, which we call the Communion Service, was contained in the Missale, so far as the text was concerned. The Epistles and Gospels, being read at separate lecterns, would often be written in separate books, called Epistolaria and Evangeliaria. The musical portions of the Altar Service were latterly all contained in the Graduale or Grayle, so called from one of the principal elements being the Responsorium Graduale or Respond to the Lectio Epistolae. In earlier times, these musical portions of the Missal Service were commonly contained in two separate books, the Graduale and the Troparium. The Graduale, being in fact the Antiphonarium of the Altar Service (as indeed it was called in the earliest times), contained all the passages of Scripture, varying according to the season and day, which served as Introits (Antiphonae et Psalmi ad Introitum) before the Collects, as Gradual Responds or Graduals to the Epistle, as Alleluia versicles before the Gospel, as Offertoria at the time of the first oblation, and as Communiones at the time of the reception of the consecrated elements. The Troparium contained the Tropi, or preliminary tags to the Introits; the Kyries; the Gloria in excelsis; the Sequences or Prosae ad Sequentiam before the Gospel; the Credo in unum; the Sanctus and Benedictus; and the Agnus Dei; all, in early times, liable to have insertions or farsuræ of their own, according to the season or day, which, however, were almost wholly swept away (except those of the Kyrie) by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Even in Lyndewode's time (A.D. 1433), the Troparium was explained to be a book containing merely the Sequences before the Gospel at Mass, so completely had the other elements then disappeared or become incorporated in the Graduale. This definition of the Troparium is the more necessary, because so many old church inventories yet remain, which contain books, even at the time of writing the inventory long since disused, so that the lists would be unintelligible without some such explanation.

Occasional Services.

Occasional Services.4. The Occasional Services, so far as they concerned a priest, were of course more numerous in old days than now, and included the ceremonies for Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, &c., besides what were formerly known as the Sacramental Services. The book which contained these was in England called the Manuale, while on the Continent the name Rituale is more common. No church could well be without one of these. The purely episcopal offices were contained in the Liber pontificalis or Pontifical, for which an ordinary church would have no need.

The Ordinale.

The Ordinale.5. Besides these books of actual Services there was another, absolutely necessary for the right understanding and definite use of those already mentioned. This was the Ordinale, or book containing the general rules relating to the Ordo divini servitii. It is the Ordinarius or Breviarius of many Continental churches. Its method was to go through the year and show what was to be done; what days were to take precedence of others; and how, under such circumstances, the details of the conflicting Services were to be dealt with. The basis of such a book would be either the well-known Sarum Consuetudinarium, called after St. Osmund, but really drawn up in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the Lincoln Consuetudinarium belonging to the middle of the same century, or other such book. By the end of the fifteenth century Clement Maydeston's Directorium Sacerdotum, or Priests' Guide, had superseded all such books, and came itself to be called the Sarum Ordinale, until, about 1508, the shorter Ordinal, under the name of Pica Sarum, "the rules called the Pie," having been cut up and re-distributed according to the seasons, came to be incorporated in the text of all the editions of the Sarum Breviary.

H. B.

Cambridge,

March 17, 1881.

Mr Micklethwaite has kindly pointed out to me the following passage from the Cistercian Consuetudines (Guignard, Documents inédits, Dijon, 1878, p. 174), cap. LXXII, "Nullus ingrediatur coquinam excepto cantore et scriptoribus ad planandam tabulam, ad liquefaciendum incaustum, ad exsiccandum pergamenum...." That is, the kitchen fire might be used for melting the wax on the tablets, so that a fresh list of names could be written (see above, p. [8]), for liquefying frozen ink, and for drying the vellum skins ready for writing on.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.