LIBER SACRAMENTORUM ROMANAE ECCLESIAE EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, CRITICAL NOTES AND APPENDIX BY H. A. WILSON, M.A. FELLOW OF S. MARY MAGDALEN COLLEGE WITH TWO FACSIMILES Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1894 PREFACE THIS edition of the Gelasian Sacramentary was originally taken in hand in order to provide, for the use of persons studying the Western service-books, a text more convenient and more easily accessible than those of the earlier editions, and more accurate than that which is included in Migne's Patrologia Latina. For this purpose it was at first proposed to reproduce Tommasi's text, with an introduction, and possibly with notes critical and explanatory. Before adopting this course, however, it seemed desirable to examine not only the Vatican manuscript Reginae 316, from which Tommasi's text was taken, but also other manuscript authorities. The result of this examination was an enlargement of the original design. The Sacramentaries of Rheinau and S. Gallen proved not only to be likely to furnish better means of emending the text of the Vatican MS. than those which were at the disposal of Tommasi or Vezzosi, but to be themselves of such importance as to warrant an endeavour to make their contents, their arrangement, and their text more fully known. The task of comparing these later 'Gelasian' Sacramentaries with the earlier text of the Vatican MS. has been a slow and laborious one, since the differences of arrangement made it somewhat hard to trace, in the different recensions, the matter common to the three MSS.; even now, though the greater part of the contents of the text has been traced in one or both of the later 'Gelasian' books, it is probable that the portions marked as found in the MSS. denoted by the symbols R. and S. do not form absolutely the whole of the common matter. The marginal references, however, will show what parts of the text have actually been identified and compared with R. and S., while it is hoped that the references to various printed texts, though less numerous, may also be found useful. The references to Gerbert's Monumenta Veteris Liturgiae Alemannicae in particular may, in conjunction with the Appendix, enable readers to see in what surroundings the particular prayers and benedictions appear in the later 'Gelasian' books. The Appendix is intended to assist in this matter readers to whom Gerbert's work is not easily accessible, and to enable those who have his book at hand to find their way more safely in the labyrinth of his 'triple' Sacramentary, by showing what parts of that text are actually contained in the two Gelasian' books which he discarded in favour of a later manuscript. An account of the method which has been followed in the reproduction and correction of the text of the Vatican MS. will be found in the Introduction. It may be well to say here that corrections have been more sparingly made in the rubrics of the manuscript than in the text of the prayers, since it often appears that the errors of the latter are due to the mistakes of the scribe, and are absent from the text of other books of a date either earlier, or practically contemporary as belonging to the period before the literary reforms of Charles the Great. In the case of the rubrics, on the other hand, the evidence of other manuscripts is scantier, and it is often on the whole more probable that the ungrammatical form is the earliest in which the rubric appeared. With regard to the notes appended to the text, it should be observed that except where the spelling of a manuscript seems to be of any importance for the determination of the true reading, no notice has been taken of variations in cases where manuscripts are in substantial agreement with each other or with the printed texts marked as agreeing with them in a certain reading. To have taken account of all the divergences of spelling between the Rheinau and S. Gallen MSS., or |