Yearly Archives: 2011

New Piece at the Cafe

I have a new piece up at the Episcopal Cafe.

It’s an appreciation of the long-reviled phrase: “That is the way we’ve always done it…”

Much of it was prompted by reflections I’ve been having regarding the connection between ceremonial and theology, specifically how ceremonial tends to be a very local phenomenon.

One thing I touched on at points that needs to be teased out better is a distinction between incarnation, identity, and idiosyncrasy. I think the best place to start towards a good distinction of these is to note that idiosyncrasy occurs when local practice or customs begin to threaten catholicity. I need to put more language around that though—I think it serves as a rough-and-ready measure but it needs to acquire some nuance…

In any case—enjoy!

The Daily Office Lectionary of the 1549 and 1552 BCPs

Michael asked a question in a different venue about the Daily Office lectionaries of the various BCPs. This is a topic about which I have commented here on occasion and have been collecting notes until the time I have an opportunity to write on it more fully. However, the mood strikes to write a bit on the lectionary of the first two prayer books.

Official Statements

In the main, there is very little difference between the first book and the second. Indeed, there are no Scriptural differences that I can tell—there are only changes in how the days are entered in the kalendar and how the names of the books are rendered. The reading of Scripture between the two is identical. There are two places where the Daily Office lectionary is discussed. The first is in the initial preface that discusses the problem with the old way of doing things. It is a corruption of an originally better plan:

THERE was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so surely established which (in continuance of time) hath not been corrupted : as (among other things) it may plainly appear by the Common Prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service : the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient Fathers, he shall find that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness : for they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and specially such as were ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading and meditation of God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able also to exhort other by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth. And further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy scripture read in the church) should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion. But these many years past, this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals, that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread. And in this sort, the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima : but they were only begun, and never read through. After a like sort were other books of holy scripture used.

Thus, this preface lays out a fundamental principle: mass coverage on a yearly basis. Another preface describes the structure of what’s going on:

The Old Testament is appointed for the first Lessons at Matins and Evensong, and shall be read through every year once, except certain books and chapters which be least edifying,
and might best be spared, and therefore are left unread.

The New Testament is appointed for the second Lessons at Matins and Evensong, and shall be read over orderly every year thrice, beside the Epistles and Gospels ; except the Apocalypse, out of the which there be only certain Lessons appointed upon divers proper feasts.

And to know what Lessons shall be read every day, find the day of the month in the Calendar following ; and there ye shall perceive the books and chapters that shall be read for the Lessons, both at Matins and Evensong.

And here is to be noted, that whensoever there be any proper Psalms or Lessons appointed for any feast, movable or unmovable, then the Psalms and Lessons appointed in the Calendar shall be omitted for that time.

Ye must note also, that the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, appointed for the Sunday, shall serve all the week after, except there fall some feast that hath his proper.

This is also to be noted, concerning the leap years, that the 25th day of February, which in leap years is counted for two days, shall in those two days alter neither Psalm nor Lesson ;
but the same Psalms and Lessons which be said the first day, shall serve also for the second day.

Also, wheresoever the beginning of any Lesson, Epistle, or Gospel is not expressed, there ye must begin at the beginning of the chapter. [1552: And wheresoever is not expressed how far shall be read, there shall you read to the end of the chapter.]

Structure and Organization

Organizationally, the pattern is very simple. The books of the OT are read sequentially a chapter at a time except when certain major feasts intervene and receive their own readings. Case in point is the feast of the Circumcision on January 1—as a result the sequential read through beginning with Genesis 1 doesn’t begin until January 2nd.

So, MP (Morning Prayer) has two readings, the OT [Gen 1] and the Gospel+Acts [January 2 begins with Matthew 1]; EP (Evening Prayer) has two readings, the OT continuation from the morning [Gen 2] and the Epistles [Rom 1]. The fundamental rule is maximum coverage. If repetition happens, so be it. Case in point—Romans 2 is the appointed NT reading for the Circumcision at MP, and is then repeated in course  two days later as the NT reading for EP.

May 1st ends the first read through the New Testament Epistles—Jude is appointed on that day, on the next we begin again with Romans 1. The Apocalypse (as noted in the preface) is absent from the sequence. Likewise, the Gospels+Acts track of MP completes Acts 28 on May 2nd and Matthew 1 begins again the next day. The third NT read through is synchronized, Matthew 1 and Romans 1 beginning again together on August 31st. The cycle ends neatly and precisely on Dec 31 with Acts 28 and Jude.

Omissions

It then remains to note exactly what the ” except certain books and chapters which be least edifying” might actually be…

We’ve already noted the absence of the Apocalypse. This is the only omission from the New Testament. It appears in the NT readings appointed for the feast of John the Evangelist: MP gets Apoc. 1, EP gets Apoc 22. It also appears on All Saints: Apoc. 19 at EP.

Turning to the OT, things are a little more interesting. Because of the sequential lay out, I’ll move through sequentially, identifying dropped stitches or other items worthy of note:

  • Gen 10 (genealogies of the the sons of Noah)
  • Exodus 25-31 (these are the infinitely precise regulations around the construction of the tabernacle, describing how the tent and the vestments are to be made from costly fabrics, precious metals and gems, and how worship there is to be conducted.)
  • All of Leviticus except 18-20 which largely is about sexual relations with some economic and ceremonial rules thrown in too.
  • Numbers 1-9 (reckoning of Israel and disposition of the Levites, offering and worship rules)
  • Oddly, Isaiah is removed from sequence. Jeremiah follows immediately after Ecclesiastes
  • Mass omissions in Ezekiel; it’s easier to say what does remain than what doesn’t. What remains is Ezekiel 2-3, 5-7, 13-14, 18, 33-34.
  • The Apocrypha begins with Tobit on October 5th immediately after the end of Malachi. However, the books read are (in order) Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch. No Maccabees.
  • Isaiah begins on November 28th.

Preliminary Reflections

A full study uis needed to think through the implications of what’s here, but let me make at least a few tentative comments regarding what I notice here.

Lack of Liturgical Year

It should be noted first of all, that there is a notable absence of the liturgical year as a structuring device. The movement of the readings is determined primarily by the civil calendar and the sequence of the books themselves. In one sense, this is helpful because it greatly aids the cause of coverage: it’s quite plain what you’ve read and what you haven’t. On the other hand, it suppresses the liturgical year’s role as a means of ordering Christian time.

There’s only one clear departure from this principle and one perhaps accidental one. The movement of Isaiah to the end of the year is intentional. The first preface notes the custom of reading Isaiah in Advent—this lectionary keeps the same principle. The only other possible concession to pre-Reformation custom is the appearance of the wisdom books of the Apocrypha in the Fall. It’s hard to say, though, if this was by plan or simply sequentially-induced coincidence.

Lack of Apocalyptic

With the suppression of the Apocalypse and Ezekiel, we loose much of the hardcore apocalyptic content of the canon. Yes, Daniel is still in there as is the little apocalypse of Isaiah. However, the heavily visual vignettes disappear. I’m not sure exactly why. Part of the concern might have been the persistent interpretation of apocalyptic symbols with reference to governments and rulers. In short, apocalyptic provides ready fodder for those who would use the Scriptures against their rulers; Cranmer may have been taking this option out of their hands. Another interesting possibility is that much of the visionary material in Ezekiel and Revelation  relates to worship, particularly heavenly worship. Was there a suppression of the rich ceremonial described in relation to the worship of God in these texts?

Lack of Worship Law

Much of the legal material of the Law was suppressed. This is not surprising given the tendencies of Radical Reformation groups to try to take these seriously and impose ancient Israelite law on the portions of Europe they held. What seems significant to me, though, is the particular targeting of the legislation around the construction and ceremonial of the Tabernacle. The description of the wealth to be used and the richness of the material is excised. Why? Was this through concern about Radical Reformation tendencies, or was it a suppression of a particular biblical attitude towards worship that might have been used to uphold “Romish” customs around vestment and ornaments in churches?

Given the suppression of apocalyptic worship in relation to suppression of the regulations around the Tabernacle, it seems likely that one of the aims of this lectionary was to downplay the visual and ceremonial aspects of worship—but more study would be required to prove this point.

Conclusion

In fine, this is an interesting lectionary. Its principle goal is coverage of Scripture and it does that well. The OT is read through every year, the NT three times. Readings are at least a chapter long and therefore could get lengthy depending on the chapter. There is a conspicuous absence of the liturgical year in its organization and the omission of certain texts seem to further downplay the scriptural witness to ceremonial worship.

Sunday Observance in Anglo-Saxon England

Following up on the sermon I mentioned here about what folks should do on Sundays in pre-Conquest England, I’ve found quite a bit of additional material. The go-to resource on anything relating to Sundays in the Anglo-Saxon period is Dorothy Haines’s Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in Anglo-Saxon England. (I’ll warn you it’s a little pricey…) The blurb lays it out pretty well:

Few issues have had as far-reaching consequences as the development of the Christian holy day, Sunday. Every seven days, from the early middle ages, the Christian world has engaged in some kind of change in behaviour, ranging from participation in a simple worship service to the cessation of every activity which could conceivably be construed as work. An important text associated with this process is the so-called Sunday Letter, fabricated as a letter from Christ which dropped out of heaven. In spite of its obviously spurious nature, it was widely read and copied, and translated into nearly every vernacular language. In particular, several, apparently independent, translations were made into Old English. Here, the six surviving Old English copies of the Sunday Letter are edited together for the first time. The Old English texts are accompanied by facing translations, with commentary and glossary, while the introduction examines the development of Sunday observance in the early middle ages and sets the texts in their historical, legal and theological contexts. The many Latin versions of the Sunday Letter are also delineated, including a newly discovered and edited source for two of the Old English texts.

So—does anybody remember our discussion of interesting heretics in the Letters of St Boniface? One of the charges against Aldebert concerned a letter that he claimed dropped down from heaven:

Denehard, the priest, answered: ” I have a letter here which he made use of in his teaching, saying that it was written by Jesus and came down from heaven.”

Then Theophanius, the regional notary and treasurer, took it up and read out the following words:

“In the name of God. Here begins the letter of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which fell from heaven in Jerusalem [113] and was discovered by the archangel Michael near the gate of Ephraim. This very copy of the letter came into the hands of a priest named Icore, who read it and sent it to a priest named Talasius in the city of Jeremias. Talasius passed it on to another priest Leoban, who was living in a town of Arabia. Leoban sent the letter to the city of Westphalia, where it was received by a priest Macrius. He sent the letter to Mont St. Michel. In the end, through the intervention of an angel, the letter reached Rome, even the tombs of the Apostles, where the keys of the kingdom of heaven are. And the twelve dignitaries who are in the city of Rome fasted, watched and prayed for three days and three nights,” etc.

Yep—that’s the Sunday Letter. It takes a number of forms but essentially, this is a letter purportedly written by Jesus that says—in a nutshell—that he’s sick and tired of people doing work on Sunday and if they don’t shape up and stop doing things, that he’ll visit all kinds of nasty plagues on them and burn things up (in his mercy…). Likely written in Spain or Gaul around the 6th or 7th century, it did enjoy wide circulation. The Irish monks seemed to be quite fond of it and added a number of elements to it including Sunday lists which identified important and miraculous events that happened on Sunday according to either Scripture or Tradition, that provide further weight why Sundays should be hallowed.

As a result of the Sunday letter, both Carolingian and English law codes place some very heavy penalties upon working on Sundays. Free-men found working will be enslaved; slaves ordered to work on Sundays by their masters gain their freedom. Heavy fines, forfeiture of goods,  and floggings are all part of it too. The reason seems clear—the letter promises corporate punishments for individual offenses. From the perspective of early medieval legislators, then, harsh penalties would prevent some fairly severe supernatural consequences that would effect everybody.

Interestingly, our two most prolific authors of the Benedictine Revival appear to have had different attitudes towards it. Wulfstan seems to have approved of it and its circulation may be related to an imprimature of sorts from him:

Since all of these copies [of the Sunday Letter] date from the eleventh century, one might speculate that part of its legitimacy derived from its similarity, in some respects, to the work of Wulfstan, whose sermons also speak of the national disasters about to be visited upon the English for their many sins. It is significant that Letters C and E have been augmented with his writings and adopt some of his phrases, and Letters B, E and F are found side by side with his authentic works. The letter’s apocalyptic sermonizing would not have sounded excessive to any audience familiar with Wulfstan’s style and substance.

In her discussion of Letter C in particular, Haines seems to come within a hairs-breadth of suggesting that Wulfstan is indeed the translator/editor of this Old English version.

Ælfric, on the other hand, appears to have mostly ignored it. While he does state that Sundays are for rest and for going to church (gan to cyrcan, Godes lof to gehyrenne [ÆHom 17.72]), he doesn’t go beyond sensible patristic advice on the keeping of Sundays.

What I find fascinating is that the Sunday Letter tradition spends most of its time on three topics: what you shouldn’t do on Sundays, punishments that will happen if you do things on Sundays, and wondrous events that happened on Sundays—it says very little about what should be done. In particular, the advice in the anonymous homily cited before shows up nowhere here, particularly attendance at the Offices: “…he at the least should come on Sundays and on feastdays to morning-song and to mass and to evensong…”

So—was there an expectation that laity should be at the Offices? Apparently Caesarius of Arles thought so. The old Catholic Encyclopedia attributes to him the statement that laity should attend Sunday Vespers and while this statement is then cited ad nauseum across the Internet by Catholic apologists, I’ve yet to see an actual citation to a homily or treatise.  Thus, while the Sunday Letter tradition gives us some interesting material to work with, I’m still left with questions concerning how broadly laity were expected to be at Sunday Offices.

Perspectives on Ælfric

I’m reading through the LME again for a project I’m working on. Once again, I find myself baffled concerning the place of Ælfric in the modern academy.

There’s a folktale with wide circulation—I first encountered it in its Turkish form where the Hojja (a classic wise fool figure) is staring at the ground under a street-lamp. A passer-by asks him what he’s doing and he replies “Looking for a ring I lost.” The passer-by stops to help and they search without result for a while. Finally the passer-by asks, “Where exactly did you lose it?” The Hojja replies, “Inside my house.” “Well—why are we looking for it out here then?” “Because the light is so much better here…”

This, truly, is a core story for anyone who studies medieval materials—especially early medieval liturgical materials. So often we can’t look where we want to, we have to look where the light is good. We are thoroughly restricted by the materials we have.

Ælfric is like a gem sitting under a street-lamp that keeps getting walked over and stepped upon. The LME is such an unusual document: it lays out the monastic cursus of a pre-Conquest English monastery complete with local adaptions and a clear and definite section on the Night Office—one of the thornier items to reconstruct. Put this in relation to both the pastoral letters and Ælfric’s massive homiletical output and you have a wonderful window into Pre-Conquest church life. Yet I can count on the fingers of my hands the Church Historians who know him or do anything with him. Likewise, the number of Old English readers—virtually all in English departments—who appreciate his liturgical materials is likewise minuscule.

One obvious issue is language. The majority of Ælfric’s work is in Old English—a language inaccessible to most Church Historians. By the same token the LME isn’t really in Latin, it’s in liturgicalese which is a foreign tongue to your average medievalist no matter how good their Latin.

Another is publicity. Look in church histories and you’re not likely to find Ælfric. He’s too much of a regular guy. He wasn’t a great pope, prince, or even a ground-breaking interpreter. Indeed, one of the reasons I’m so interested in him is precisely because he offers an example of a what a regular well-schooled pious abbot would write and think. But—I stumbled across him by chance and followed the lead into the English Department. I sure didn’t hear about him in the theology school.

There’s a lot of work that remains to be done on his work and that of others like him. I’m working on it as are others, but we could use some more help!

Prayer Book Spirituality: Course Correction

I keep promising that substantive writing will return. I’ll stop promising and just give you this which is far more preliminary than substantive.

I’m becoming convinced that I’ve been approaching the Prayer Book from a slightly off angle; there’s a factor that had escaped me that I’m working on fitting back into place.

I was reading Christopher’s recent piece at the Cafe when this paragraph struck me strongly and clarified something I’ve been gnawing around in one branch of my recent research:

It has often been remarked that Thomas Cranmer intended to remake the Isles peoples into a vast monastery. I think this romantic notion gets Cranmer’s intent backwards. Rather our Prayer Book reforms the basic pieces of monastic piety and life precisely because in the first instance these matters should concern all Christians, not just monastics: Daily prayer and a life lived toward God and for neighbor in all the cares of daily and national life, including disputes over gentry seizures of commons and political intrigues at court. In other words, he intends to remake the Isles peoples into more well-formed and single-hearted, that is, praising Christians at work, in their home, and in their everyday community. It is within this generous framework that the particular dedications of our monastics should be placed, not vice versa.

Christopher hits the nail on the head, and a big part of it has to do with the origins of our prayer book.

Yes, the Offices that we have inherited as the larger part of Anglican spirituality are monastic in origin and are greatly shaped by Benedictine practice. I’d be the last to deny that. However, we over-simplify and misunderstand if we think that the relationship between breviary and prayer book is overly direct. We tend to  conceptualized it as: (Sarum Breviary->Payer Book Office). Sure, if we want to be more precise then we tend to sketch it this way: (Sarum Breviary->Quignonez/Hermann Revisions->Prayer Book Office). While this does get us closer, there’s one more mediating step that we’re leaving out. I think it really works more like this: (Sarum Breviary->Prymer->Quignonez/Hermann Revisions->Prayer Book Office).

The prymer’s the key. The Prayer Book isn’t a cut-down breviary with a missal added, it’s a jumped-up prymer.

Why does this matter? It’s all about audience and in whose hands what books were found. Breviaries and missals were books for religious professionals—professed religious and the clergy. The prymers were the books of the laity, that formed, shaped and directed lay spirituality along classic monastic patterns. Cranmer didn’t try and turn the Isles into one big monastery, rather, he sought to take the monastic-flavored piety already at work among the laity and broaden its Scriptural content.

Coming at it from this angle, we realize that the prayer book even at its start had strong roots in lay practice—and that changes quite a bit for me, at least.

At this point these are claims. I have hard evidence, but it’s not assembled yet to the point where it’s fully deployable. It’s on the to-do list…

Canadian Bishops on CWOB

I’ve been away from the computer for a while or, at least not in the blogging Anglican circles. I was alerted to an interesting news item by a friend of the blog. Looking back on the various sites that I frequent, I find it interesting that none of them has made mention of the recent meeting of the Canadian House of Bishops. At their just concluded meeting they “unanimously reaffirmed that the sacrament of the holy Eucharist is to be given only to those baptized in the Christian faith.”

Read more about it here.

Needless to say, I applaud the bishops for their decision. There is a logic to our sacramental rites that moves from Baptism to Eucharist. If anything, this was greatly enhanced by the 1979 Prayer Book. The new elevation of Baptism is an innovation, but I think a positive one. Any movement to degrade the position of Baptism is a clear step away from both the logic and theology of the Christian Church throughout the ages, and a big step away from the direction our prayer book leads.

I can only hope the American House of Bishops will issue a similar statement.

Holy Week Offices

After a year and a half, I still consider the breviary to be in beta because of issues like this morning—a missing collect and, in some cases, missing lessons. They’re fixed now and part of today’s events include a check through the rest of Holy Week to make sure everything’s functioning properly.

Exactly how the Holy Week and Triduum Offices are to be celebrated is a favorite topic among Anglican armchair liturgists; the various Books of Common Prayer give no indication of changes during this time but catholic practices give a variety of options with the Roman variations being predominate but I’m sure we can find some divergences even from that among regional uses (like the 24 candles of the Sarum tenebrae hearse as opposed to the more pedestrian 15 of Roman practice). I did write a bit about this last year which covers some of the various points to weigh.

Bottom line at the breviary is this: the breviary keeps the gloria patris for the beginning of Holy Week, but gives reduced offices for Triduum. The BSG version, however, does not use reduced offices but presents a full, regular, prayer book office. This probably is something that I should build into the preferences but haven’t had the time to do.

New Breviary URLs

The latest work at the breviary has not been primarily code changes, but has been the addition of some new dedicated pages. The breviary was designed to make pray the office both flexible and easy, and over it’s evolution, I’ve been making progress in both of these directions (more flexible and easier…).

I started with the date/time of day/option-sets entry screen.

Eventually, I made the move to cookies as a means of capturing specific options. (And I do need to do some work to make sure all of the options are functioning properly in cookie form…)

One of the issues I’ve faced from the beginning is the need for a static url which will get folks right down to the business of praying. An entry page was the only way in for two reasons—1) you had to make your choices somewhere, and 2) you needed to indicate what office you wanted to do. Cookies made the first one disappear, and—at the prodding of some friends—I’ve coded a page to by-pass the second as well. It functions by using javascript to find the timestamp on your computer (the client), then passes that value to my server-side PHP code. (So—if you have javascript disabled, this won’t work for you.) This allows me to present a single static url so that, if you already have a breviary cookie/set of preferences saved, all you have to do is jump to this url and the Office as you like it, appropriate to your time of day ought to appear.

Here’s the url: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/breviary/office.php

I’m still working out the exact times for changes between the offices so there may be continued tweaks with that part of it.

In related news, I have created a dedicated page for the Brotherhood of St Gregory—the ones who provided the impetus for this change, in fact—one of our Anglican religious communities bound by rule to pray the offices, according to their set preferences: a straight-forward Rite II with the monthly psalm cycle. This page requires no cookies at all and should work for anyone if this is the kind of office you desire: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/breviary/office_selectionBSG.php

For those interested, I’m also in conversations with Fr. John-Julian concerning a similar page for the Order of Julian of Norwich which should be up and running before too long.

So, my thanks to the Brotherhood for kindling a fire under me to get this work done, and I hope these new pages provide all of you with an even simpler way to experience the offices.

Riddel Posts

One of the standard features that identifies a church sanctuary as “English Use” is the appearance of a particular feature called a riddel post. These are two posts that stand at the north and south horns of the altar and have curtains (the “riddels” from whence the name comes) that extend back to the dorsal, the curtain mounted on the back wall right above the altar.

Like many of the features that adorn the English/Sarum Uses, this wasn’t actually a distinctively English characteristic. Instead that which is “English” tends to be that which is 1) pre-Baroque and 2) common to many of the diocesan uses in England and parts of northwestern Europe, especially France.

Recall that the English Use people of the later half of the 19th an early twentieth century were arguing a position against two different opponents. On one hand, they rejected the opinion of their Romanizing Ritualist colleagues that proper “catholic” expression should mimic the aesthetic of the Roman churches of the day which were Baroque or Rococo. On the other hand, they were arguing against the Low Church party who decried any ornamentation as a form of Popery. The English Use position was that, contra both the Romanizers and the neo-Puritans, they were the only ones who were holding properly to the rubrics of the Prayer Book since they were conforming their chancels to the Ornaments Rubric of the BCP which stated that chancels and vestments should be as they were in the second year of Edward the Sixth. So, they were in essence reviving a Renaissance (perhaps even early Mannerist?) aesthetic.

What prompted this post was the new background at the Breviary. For Lent, I’ve chosen to shift away from the leaves from the Little Office of the BVM that I’ve had up and I substituted some pages from the Office of the Dead. During today’s collect my attention was somehow caught by the image of the funeral mass and I realized that the altar in the picture had a nice set of riddels and riddel posts. As a point of reference, this image was taken from the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry and is probably the work of the Dutch Limbourg brothers or someone in their workshop from around 1416. (It’s from the WikiMedia Commons and is believed to not be under copyright.)

Here’s the image. Notice two things: first, the riddels and their posts. Second, note the directions that the angels are facing atop the riddels. Normally they face outward towards the congregation whereas here they face one another. A friend and I had been discussing whether angels facing were an authentic pose and, if so, what that indicated in terms of the classical authenticity of Dearmer’s “open position” where the deacon and subdeacon face both the celebrant and one another. This image is indeed a period attestation of both inward facing angels and, presumably, the open position.

Early Medieval Expectations for Laity

Posting will be quite light in the near future. I’m not giving up blogging for Lent or anything, but—as is usual—have way too many irons in the fire…

I warn you now, not only will posting be sporadic but it may also be both research intensive and potentially cryptic. I’m chasing several quite specific hares—and today’s led me into something I knew some of you would be interested in.

In Old English circles there are two main homileticians and two major anonymous collections: Ælfric, Wulstan, the Blicking Homilies and the Vercelli Homilies. Then there’s the mass of random anonymous stuff into which very few individuals go, myself included.

While trawling an old tome I found a reference to this interesting passage which shows up in an anonymous homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (i.e., old Passion Sunday):

Us is ðonne swiðe gedafenlic, þæt we gelomlice ure circan secan and ðær mid micelre eadmodnysse and stilnysse us to urum drihtne gebiddan and godes word gehyran. And se ðe on oðrum ðingum abisgad sy oððe to ðam ungehænde, þæt he dæghwamlice his circan gesecan ne mæge, he huru ðinga on ðam sunnandagum and on oðrum freolsdagum þider cume to his uhtsange and to mæssan and to æfensange and na to nanum idelum geflite, ne to nanum woruldlicum spræcum, ac to ða anum, þæt he his synna gode andette and hira forgifnysse bidde and ðære halgan þenunge mid micclum goddess ege gehlyste and siððan mid ælmæsdædum gange him to his gereorde and mid micelre syfernysse and gemetfæstnysse his goda bruce and na mid nanre oferfylle, ne mid oferdrince, forði ðe Cristenum men nis nan ðing wyrse, ðonne druncenscipe. (Assmann, BASP3, 144: [Assmann 12] B3.2.16)

It is very proper for us that we should frequently visit our church and there pray to our Lord and hear God’s word with great humility and silence. And the one who is busy with other things or is overcome and cannot visit his church daily, he at the least should come on Sundays and on feastdays to morning-song* and to mass and to evensong and not pass them in idleness nor in worldly speech, but in this only: that he confess his sins to God and pray for their forgiveness and that he hear these holy services with a great fear of God and afterward, with almsgiving, go to his meal and partake of his food with much sobriety and moderation and not with any overeating or overdrinking for there is nothing worse for Christian men than drunkenness.

* Uhtsange looks to be the aggregated Night Office of Matins and Lauds which was said at the hour of “uhta”–the first glimmer of light.