Prechours. Eche of the prechours schal, be-syde the sermon day, haue thre hole days at lest oute of the quyer to recorde hys sermon."-Aungier, History of Syon Monastery, p. 391. P. 60, B. 626. skille. It is somewhat unaccountable to find this word, which appears to have been in such common use as in the sense of reason, miswritten swilk and suche, as it is in C and F, to the utter destruction of the sense. The mistake must have been made by a copyist before the recensions represented by C and F were made, the suche being probably a southern gloss of a northern blunder. Cf." and pat is skille."-Vernon, ante, p. 139, l. 405. B. 628-9. In sere kyndes, for certayn skylle; And na witt ne skille has, er bughsom."-P. C. 47-50. "For to do gile ne wrang unto na man Bot to do that skill is unto ilk man." Thoresby's Catechism, f. 297. The author has ended his treatise, and he repeats the two first lines much as the Q. E. D. of a theorem echoes the beginning. See another instance in Robert of Gloucester. He begins the prologue (page 1, line 1): 66 Engelond ys a wel god land, ich wene of eche lond best," and p. 8, end of prologue, "war porw me(1) may wyte þat Engelond ys lond best, as yt is y-write." ben was used with the force of wherefore, or therefore, in the statement of a conclusion, as, for example, Hampole, after telling how to help soules in purgatory, paradise, and hell, winds up: "pan availles almus, messe, and bedes, To pe saules pat er in alle pre stedes."-P. C. 2723-4. F. 354, 356. sey say, written as pronounced, a southern form in strong contrast with the north. In the southern pieces here printed we have the forms, seiz, seþ, seyinge, seid (Glossary), and Chaucer uses seye (C. T. 7209), seith (C. T. 177), seyn (C. T. 180), seide (C. T. 182). I have elsewhere (p. 197) quoted a remark of Dr Morris as to the southern orthography being retained with the northern pronunciation; and we have an example of the reverse in the " sez he" of the illiterate, and the equally incorrect seth, which is very often to be heard in our churches, instead of says (1) Me, men, indefinite. and saith being sounded, as written and as of old, to rhyme with pays(1) and faith.(2) P. 60, Grace, 1. 4-ayl. "ayl " and "schal" are not a very good rhyme to the eye; but in the East Riding up to the present day ale (pr. yăl) and shall (pr. sal) are sounded exactly alike. 66 The Ancren Riwle, p. 44, provides graces" before and after meat, and also before and after drink :-" Bitweone mete, hwo so drinken wule, sigge benedicite: Potum nostrum Filius Dei benedicat. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancte, Amen.' And blesce (sign the sign of the cross), and a last siggeð, 'Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit celum et terram. Sit nomen Domini benedictum ex nunc et in secula. Benedicamus Domino. Deo gracias."" THE BIDDING PRAYERS. The bidding prayers, according to the use of York, in all essential points were alike in their use and structure to those which were used in the southern province, though the earliest of those here given (p. 62) is some centuries earlier than any others which have hitherto been printed. The bidding prayers (as suggested by the name) are not so much a form of prayer, as a bidding of the bedes or prayers of the people, calling aloud upon them to pray, and directing them what to pray for, or, as in after times, calling upon them to use certain specified devotions, with a required intention-Paternosters, and afterwards Paternosters and Aves, or Aves only. They were used not only in this country, but in Western Germany and in France, where they held their ground as a part of the prône without interruption until the old Gallican Church was overthrown at the Revolution—the primitive custom of the priest speaking in the mother tongue being everywhere retained. As they were unknown at Rome, there can be little doubt as to the correctness of the received opinion that they are one of those customs which the Gallican Church received from the East-and very possibly one of those which our own Augustine adopted from the Church in Gaul when he gathered the English Use from those of Rome and Gaul in accordance with the (1) "For be life of þe saule mare him pays pan þe dede (death), for þus himself says."-P. C. 1734-5. (2) "For I nought hold him in good faith Curteis, that foule wordes saith."-Romaunt of Rose. "The gospel redde, a Cred after he saythe Lydgate, quoted, ante, p. 222. advice of Pope Gregory the Great. At all events, as the first of the forms here given is alone sufficient to prove, bidding the prayers of the people was practised in this country before the conquest. This custom of bidding prayer was of high antiquity. We find an example in the so-called Apostolical Constitutions (VIII, 9), and the nineteenth canon of the Laodicean Synod in the fourth century directs the use of prayer by the bidding of the deacon- διὰ προσφωνήσεως. But there is no occasion to enter upon the minute archæology of the bidding prayer, as it has been so fully treated by learned writers on the subject.(1) Certain resemblances to earlier forms will from time to time be pointed out in the notes; and it may be sufficient in this place to notice one marked variation from the earlier practice, which became the rule both in France and this country. As appears from the rubric in the liturgy of St James, (2) whatever may be its date; in the Apostolical Constitutions, which in the main may be taken as representing the practice of the primitive Church; in the homily of St. Chrysostom, where he so vividly describes this portion of the Eucharistic office;(3) and in many (4) of the early documents of the Gallican Church, not only is the bidding prayer-the προσφώνησις, oι κέλευσμα of the Greeks, the admonitio of the Council of Orleans-associated with the homiletic teaching of the people, but it always followed it. In the medieval churches of the West the bidding prayers preceded the sermon or pastoral instruction, when there was any, and at other times was used by itself, though, when in mass time, always in that part of it where the sermon, if any, used to be preached. The French ritualists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are very full in their account of the prône, and the several forms are (1) See Forms of Bidding Prayer with Introduction and Notes, Oxford, 1840. The initials appended to the preface will be recognized as those of the present most popular Bodley's Librarian, the Revd. H. O. Coxe, whose unvarying kindness in helping them in their researches on all sorts of subjects will have made him well known to successive generations of readers at the Bodleian. See also Bingham, Book xv, ch. 1, § 2 and 3; Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica, 299–308. (2) Merà dè rò ávayvwoai kai didážai.—Trollope, 41; Tetralogia, 41. (3) Hom. II, de Obscur. Prophet., Ed. Ben., VI, 188. (4) Perhaps the reference to the Bidding Prayer by Florus Magister may be an exception. He was a deacon or subdeacon in the Church of Lyons, and about A.D. 840 wrote De Expositione Missa. In ch. xi, on the sequence that is to be observed in the several parts of the liturgy, he says: "præcedente lectione apostolorum (i. e. the epistle) et evangeliorum, præcedente etiam nonnunquam sermone et allocutione magistrorum." Here he certainly makes a distinction between the sermo and the allocutio, and it does not seem unlikely that the allocutio magistrorum may be what we should now call the sermon, and sermo, the poopóvnog, or bidding of prayer preceding it. In the Paris ritual, corresponding to the manual of the old English uses, and quoted by Grancolas (Liturgie Ancienne et Moderne, 57), the prône, which included both bidding prayer and sermon, is described as the “sermo, quem parochus inter missarum solemnia habet ad populum." given in rituals of different dioceses. Nor is there any difficulty in ascertaining what was the rule in this country before the reformation; though it so happens that owing to a misconception as to the place of the sermon in the mediæval Church of England—and the connection between the sermon and the bidding prayer has been already mentioned— the evidence of our authorities on this point has been overlooked. According to the sixth Ordo Romanus,(1) and a modern rubric of the Roman missal, (2) the sermon is preached after the gospel and before the creed, when the creed is said. Hence several writers on this subject, (3) who in this, as in other instances, may perhaps have accepted the existing Roman rule as founded on the unchanged custom of the Church, have supposed that the rule applied to the Church of England before the reformation. As a matter of fact, our present rubric, according to which the sermon follows the gospel and creed, (4) is much nearer the Roman practice than that of our forefathers. According to a rubric in the Sarum manual, which in the absence of an Ebor rubric we may assume to represent the practice of the Anglican Church, the bidding prayers, which were rubricated "the bedes on the Sunday," "preces dominicales,” “preces pro,” or “in diebus dominicis," were to be said on Sundays in the procession (5) before mass in cathedral and collegiate churches; and in parish churches not in the procession, but after the gospel and offertory, before some altar in the church, or a pulpit for the purpose (ad hoc constituto).(6) The connection between the place of the sermon and the bidding prayer is recognised in the constitutions of Archbishop Arundel against Lollards, put forth in a provincial synod at Oxford in 1408, where it is directed that the preaching, as there allowed, should be at the time of the accustomed prayers (una cum precibus consuetis), which Lyndwood glosses, (1) Mabillon, Mus. Ital. II, 73. (2) Rit. celeb. Missam, VI, 6. This rubric was added at the revision of the missal by Clement VIII in 1604. (3) "In parochial service after the gospel, the bidding prayer was said, and the sermon preached."-Rock, Church of our Fathers, IV, 192. Maskell, A. E. L., 48; &c. (4) Durandus tells us that after the gospel and the creed "post illa” followed the preaching to the people.-Rationale, 4, xxvi, 1. (5) At Rouen the Archbishop preached in the procession before mass on Ash-Wednesday and five Sundays in the year. Voyages Liturgiques, 354. I cannot refer to any notice of the time when the sermon was preached in our English cathedrals, though it is not unlikely that, as in parish churches, it may have been in connection with the bidding prayer, and consequently, as at Rouen, in the procession before mass. In many, if not all, the cathedrals of the old foundation the rota of the preaching turns of the bishop, dignitaries, and canons dates back long before the Reformation. At York, probably from the circumstance that he was generally absent from the city, the Archbishop was set down once only, viz, on Good Friday. (6) Processionale ad usum insignis Ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis. London, 1554, fol. 56. The whole rubric has now been printed by Dr Henderson in the York Manual for the Surtees Society, pp. 133-6. "Those which are used to be made on Sundays after the offertory to the people."(1) By "After the Offertory" we must not understand immediately after the anthem so called (page 98, line 22). The name, as already remarked (page 228), was not confined to the anthem, but extended to the whole of the oblatory action. The precise point where the bidding prayers and sermon were introduced in the parish mass on the Sundays was most probably at the place where the priest ordinarily asked the prayers of the people (page 100, line 19), or rather after having done 80. This at least was the place where the prône, which included the bidding prayer and the sermon, continued to be said by some of the French clergy, as by others after the secreta, and before the preface, so late as the eighteenth century, the Roman rubric to the contrary notwithstanding.(2) This suggestion entirely tallies with the extracts as to the place of the sermon in this country, which I here insert, as I have ventured to differ as to the matter of fact from men whose research and candour give them every right to speak with authority on these subjects. In a Sarum Pontifical, A.D. 1315 and 1329, in the office at the consecration of nuns after the gospel, creed, and offertory, and before the preface, occurs the rubric, " Hic si placet, fiat sermo."(3) In the order for the consecration of nuns, given by Bishop Fox to the nuns of St Mary, Winchester, and "probably written soon after 1500,"(4) there is an English rubric, after the postulants have made their offering (ante, p. 237) they stood in a row on the north side "to thofferyng of other forlkys be doon; whych offeryng ended, the sermone shal be sayde by the bishop, or such a clerc as he shall appoynt . . . And the bisshop shall after thofferyng and sermone prosequute the masse unto Pax Domini, before the Agnus Dei."(5) (1) Provinciale. Lib. V, Tit. v, (o) p. 291, ad populum, for the priest did not so much pray, as pray (bid) the people to pray. (2) De Vert, Explication des Cérémonies de l'Eglise, 1709, I, 18, 19. The author strongly animadverts upon this custom, but he adds that it is not always the fault of the parish priests, but often that of their Rituals, which placed the prône after the offering instead of after the gospel, where the Roman missal places the sermon, Bauldry (Manuale Sacrarum Cæremoniarum, P. 1, c. x, § 1) in the previous century had drawn attention to the disregard of the then recent Roman rubric, in placing the sermon after the offerings (post oblata), which is a clear proof of the prevalence of the custom. In fact, not only was it enjoined in diocesan rituals, as mentioned by De Vert, but the "prône after the offertory" seems to be mentioned as a matter of course in the constitutions of a provincial council at Tours in 1583 (Grancolas, L'Ancien Sacramentaire, II, P. 1, 781). The modern rubrics of the Ambrosian rite require the sermon to follow the gospel (§ 17). The creed is not said in this place, but (§ 18) after the offering, and before the prayer super oblata (ante, p. 267). Query-Whether, as in other cases, there may not have been an adaptation to the Roman rite. (3) The York Pontifical, Henderson, Appendix, p. 208. (4) Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, II, 307, (5) Ibid. II, 327. |