This is the first comprehensive historical treatment of the Latin liturgy in medieval England. Richard Pfaff constructs a history of the worship carried out in churches - cathedral, monastic, or parish - primarily through the surviving manuscripts of service books, and sets this within the context of the wider political, ecclesiastical, and cultural history of the period. The main focus is on the mass and daily office, treated both chronologically and by type, the liturgies of each religious order and each secular 'use' being studied individually. Furthermore, hagiographical and historiographical themes - respectively, which saints are prominent in a given witness and how the labors of scholars over the last century and a half have both furthered and, in some cases, impeded our understandings - are explored throughout. The book thus provides both a narrative account and a reference tool of permanent value.
• An essential work of reference for historians of medieval England, music, liturgy and religion • Extensive coverage of the saints in each liturgy • Comprehensive index of manuscripts allows for easy cross-reference with scholarly surveys
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Early Anglo-Saxon England: a partly traceable story; 3. Later Anglo-Saxon: liturgy for England; 4. The Norman conquest: cross fertilizations; 5. Monastic liturgy, 1100-1215; 6. Benedictine liturgy after 1215; 7. Other monastic orders; 8. The non-monastic religious orders: canons regular; 9. The non-monastic religious orders: friars; 10. Old Sarum: the beginnings of Sarum use; 11. New Sarum and the spread of Sarum use; 12. Exeter: the fullness of secular liturgy; 13. Southern England: final Sarum use; 14. Regional uses and local variety; 15. Towards the end of the story.
Reviews
'This is a very impressive achievement. It is the product of decades of work: reading liturgical manuscripts, discussing them, teaching them. Its strength is not only in many historical insights into the religious culture of medieval England, but in its assured usefulness as an essential reference book for medieval historians of religion, Anglo-Saxonists, historians of music and liturgy. Early Reformation scholars will also find it a necessary tool in evaluating English religious life on the eve of Reformation.' Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London
'… this book is a valuable and important work … it is commendable in presenting church history as not only led from the top by bishops and cathedrals, but shaped at the bottom by those who used the books.' Church Times
'Pfaff's prose is clear, frequently humorous, and free of academic jargon.' Times Literary Supplement
Printer friendly version
Email a colleague