II.6. Public Worship

The act of transubstantiation was, after all, among the central mysteries of the faith. Such mysteries were presented to the faithful in the context of liturgy and song. To suit the needs of both priest and singer, Masses were recorded in two main types of books: missals, for the use of the celebrant, and graduals, for the use of the choir.

A missal contains the prayers, readings, antiphonal psalms, and verses that together, in the hands of the priest, consecrate the bread and wine, transforming them into the body and blood of Christ. The standard arrangement of a medieval missal is: perpetual calendar (with Christ’s birthday fixed at December 25, but with Easter, his resurrection, typically not shown in these calendars, ranging between March 21 and April 25); temporale (the movable feasts whose dates are set relative to Easter, beginning with Advent [four weeks before Christmas]); the canon of the missal, i.e., the consecration prayers and actions (the ordo missae)-, the sanctorale (Masses in honor of the saints, in calendrical order, from the feast of Andrew [November 30] through, usually, the feast of Catherine of Alexandria [November 25]). As with a liturgical calendar, the sanctorale section of a missal or gradual can tell us much about the saints of interest to the original user of the book, hints which can in turn point us toward the place and date of origin of the manuscript. For example, cat. no. 145 is a leaf of a missal made for the use of Augsburg, while the liturgy is preserved in cat. no. 74 (a fragmentary missal) points toward an origin in Beauvais.

Graduals preserve the sung portions of the Mass (introits, psalms, responsories, versicles, offertories, and communions), also divided into the temporale and sanctorale. As public worship in grand churches and cathedrals became more common toward the end of the Middle Ages, graduals grew in size to meet the demands of a larger choir singing in a larger space; these giant books (such as cat. no. 225, used at the great church of San Sisto in Piacenza) can be read by a large group of singers all at once and from some distance. Missals, for the use of one person at a time, retain their smaller format.

Also in small format are breviaries (cat. nos. 160-62), that contain similar materials to those in a missal, but that lack references to sacraments (such as the consecration of the bread and wine); the breviaries, instead, offer liturgical complexity in their arrangement of services for the eight canonical hours of the day: matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline (as opposed to a missal’s single service per day, with the striking exception of Christmas Day that offers three Masses). In all breviaries, the goal is to recite the book of psalms during the course of the week, although arranged differently in different religious communities; the sung portions of the Divine Office are contained in antiphonals (or antiphonaries; cat. nos. 153-56).

Because of their size and visibility, choir books (psalters as well as graduals) were often heavily and ornately illuminated and could be the result of expensive commissions by wealthy patrons, churches, or abbeys. The size and quality of their histo- riated initials made them prime targets for early modern “book-tearers,” who cut out the initials for individual sale (cat. nos. 157-58) or to make decorative collages (such as cat. no. 77).

Sometimes, a particular service required a different kind of book. Those that demand the actions of a bishop are included in a pontifical (such as cat. no. 143): confirmation, ordination, and consecration of a church (as well as subsidiary texts, such as blessings of oils). An ordinarius (or ordinal, in English) outlines the life and liturgy of a specific house or church, and while this necessarily includes discussion of liturgical practices, it may also include directions on other parts of a community’s life: e.g., the dormitory, the great silence, the chapter meeting, meals. One such example is cat. no. 152. A confraternity book (cat. no. 144), presents liturgical and governance practices governing the organization of lay groups, but the activities may include matters that are not, strictly speaking, liturgical: self-discipline through whipping; acts of piety toward others; burials; and aid to survivors.