INTRODUCTION. § 1. INTRODUCTORY. § 2. Life of Leofric. § 7. Forms of Letters. Scribe. CONTENTS. § 6. Punctuation. § 3. Policy of Leofric. § 4. The Leofric Missal. § 5. Accents. § 8. Abbreviations and Contractions. § 9. Music. § 10. Orthography. § 11. Carelessness of the § 13. List of Gregorian Sacramentaries. § 12. LEOFRIC A, Account of. § 14. Handwriting of A. § 15. Gatherings, Ruling of A. § 16. Ornamentation of A. § 17. Classes of Festivals in A. § 18. Additions to A. § 19. Rubrics and Titles in A. § 20. Comparison of A with other copies of Gregorian Sacramentary, and with later Missals. § 21. Date of A. § 22. Locality of A. Proofs of its having been written in North-Eastern France. § 26. Other Entries in B. § 23. LEOFRIC B, Account of. § 24. Ornamentation of B. § 25. Classification of Festivals, etc., in B. § 29. List of Obits in B. Proofs of its connection with § 34. LEOFRIC C, Account of. § 35. Ornamentation of C. § 36. Contents of C. § 37. Date of C. § 38. Locality of C. § 39. Liturgical Offices in C. § 40. Miscellaneous Entries in C. § 41. Manumissions in C. § 42. Historical Statements in C. § 43. List of Relics at Exeter in C. § 44. Letter of Adela in C. § 45. Letter of Pelagius in C. § 46. PASCHA ANNOTINUM. § 51. Proper Prefaces. § 47. Public Penance. § 48. Communion in both kinds. § 49. Intinction. § 50. Benedictions. § 1. THE MS. volume, now presented for the first time in extenso, has long been known to liturgical writers, and has been frequently quoted by them under the title of 'The Leofric Missal.' It is so called from its having been the property of Leofric1 first bishop of Exeter, and by him presented to Exeter Cathedral. Its liturgical interest lies in the fact that it is one of the only three surviving Missals known to have been used in the English Church during the Anglo-Saxon period, its companion volumes being the Missal of Robert of Jumièges, Archbishop of Canterbury, written in the first half of the eleventh century, and now in the Public Library at Rouen, [MS. Y.6], and the 'Rede Boke of Darbye,' written in the second half of the eleventh century, now in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. [Nasmith's Catalogue, No. 422.] § 2. Considerable uncertainty hangs over certain points connected with the life of Leofric. The exact place and date of his birth are unknown. Inett calls him a Burgundian 3. Dr. Oliver is a little more circumstantial, and describes him as 'descended from an illustrious family in Burgundy+;' but as neither of these writers give any authority for their statements, and as evidence can be produced which is inconsistent with them, the Burgundian theory may be dismissed without further notice. Florence of Worcester calls him 'Britonicus5,' a word which has been interpreted to mean 'a Breton,' or native of Brittany, by Mr. Pedler, and Professor Stubbs7, and 1 Leofricus, fol. I a; Leouuricus, Bod. MS. 718, fol. 180. b. 2 Schultingius gives an account of another English Missal existing in his time (1599) in the Library of St. Pantaleon at Cologne. Biblioth. Eccles. col. 1599, tom. iv. part iii. p. 145. Some of his extracts have been reprinted on p. 308, q. v. 3 Inett, J., Origines Anglicanæ, ed. 1855, i. 468. Oliver, G., History of Exeter, ed. 1821, p. 15. Probably following the earlier authority of Godwin. Cat. of Bps. edit. 1616, 5 In an. 1046. P. 455. • Anglo-Saxon Episcopate of Cornwall, p. 47. 7 Foundation of Waltham Abbey (or De Inventione Crucis), P. ix. 'an inhabitant of the Cornish portion of the diocese of Crediton,' by Mr. Freeman1. The latter interpretation seems to be the more probable; yet a person bearing the common Saxon name of Leofric2 cannot have been a Celt pure and simple, and 'Britonicus' can only imply that he was born in what was actually or traditionally Celtic ground, or that at least on one side of his family Celtic blood was flowing in his veins. But whatever may have been his birthplace, we know that his youth was spent, and his education received in Lotharingia. By residence he was therefore a foreigner 3, and as such he must have come in contact with Edward the Confessor during his enforced absence from England, 1016-42, at the court of his cousin Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy, who died in 1035, or of his infant cousin William, hereafter to be known as the Conqueror. When Edward returned to England to assume the Crown in 1042, Leofric probably accompanied him in the capacity in which he is first introduced to us in history as 'priest' or 'private chaplain' to the king. But further honours were soon showered upon him. The estate of Holcombe in Dawlish was conferred upon him 5. He was made Chancellor to the king. In 1046 the Bishopric of Crediton, which, since the death of Burhwold or Brithwold Bishop of St. Germain's, had comprised the two Sees of Devonshire and Cornwall, and which had become vacant through the death of Living, was offered to and accepted by him. Leofric sat as Bishop of Crediton for four years, but in 1050 he procured the direction of the King, and the sanction of Pope Leo IX, to transfer the headquarters of the See from Crediton to Exeter. The reason given for the change, both in the letter written by Leofric, and borne by his priest Lantbert, to the Pope, and also in the royal charter authorizing the transfer of the See, was the need of greater safety from the attacks of pirates. The enthronization of Leofric in his new cathedral took place with great pomp. The leading nobility and clergy of the realm were present, and formed a brilliant throng through which the Bishop advanced, his right arm being supported by the King and his left arm by Queen Edith 10. After an Episcopate at Exeter of twenty-two years, Leofric died on Feb. 10, 1072, and was buried in the crypt of the cathedral. The exact site of his grave is no longer known, and no memorial stone marks it, although as late as 1419 there is this entry upon the fabric rolls of the cathedral, 'Pro scriptura lapidis Domini Leofrici, primi ecclesiæ Exon. Episcopi " In 1568 a memorial to him was erected under the south tower consisting of an old altar slab of Purbeck marble, with a canopy over it of the same material, with this inscription, 'Leofricus the first 1 Norman Conquest, ii. 83. name. 2 E. g. Leofric, Earl of Mercia or Coventry, ob. 1057. His grandfather and that person's great-grandfather bore the same A duke Leofric and an abbot Leofric witness a charter of Ethelred in 994 (Kemble, Cod. Diplom., no. 686). Many more instances of the name occur in W. de G. Birch's Index List of Saxon Abbots, p. 82. Three persons named Leofric are among the witnesses to manumissions on fol. 8 and on fol. 377 of this Missal. 3 'Apud Lotharingos altus et doctus.' William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif., Rolls Series, lib. ii. § 94. p. 201. 4 'Kynges preost.' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in an. 1046. ‘Capellano suo.' Leofric Missal, fol. 3 a. 'Meo idoneo capellano Leofrico onomate nuncupato.' Charter of Edward in an. 1044, printed in Oliver's Lives of Bishops of Exeter, p. 8. 7 The date of the death of Burhwold, and the subsequent union of the dioceses of Cornwall and Devonshire, is uncertain. According to William of Malmesbury the union of the sees took place by the act of Canute, i.e. before 1035 (Gesta Pontif. Ang., lib. ii. § 94); according to Florence of Worcester by permission of Edward the Confessor, who was crowned in 1043. Living also held the bishopric of Worcester, which was given in 1046 to Ealdred. 8 Ubi ab hostilitatis incursu liber tutius ecclesiastica officia disponere posset.' Leofric Missal, fol. 3. a. 9 Quoniam piratici Cornubiensem ac Cryditonensem æcclesias devastare poterant.' Charter printed in H. and S. Councils, i. 694. The genuineness of this charter was doubted by Hickes, but is upheld by Mr. Haddan. Ib. 695, note b. The letter of Pope Leo to King Edward is given in this Missal, fol. 3. b. 10 H. and S. Councils, i. 692. Leofric Missal, fol. 3 b. 11 Quoted in Oliver's Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, p. 8. Archdeacon Freeman identifies this 'lapis Leofrici' with the sedilia. Architectural History of Exeter Cathedral, p. 40. byshoppe of Exeter lyeth here.' Some account must be added of Leofric's character and policy. At first sight one would imagine that as a foreigner, at least in education and habits, he would incur a share of the popular odium which attached to the foreign favourites introduced by Edward into high ecclesiastical positions in England. But Edward's foreign appointments can be divided into two classes. In the first place there were cases of the appointment of Frenchmen from Normandy, who were the King's favourites, but objects of hatred to the English people. Conspicuous among this class of nominees were Robert, Abbot of Jumièges, appointed to the See of London in 1044, and translated to the Archiepiscopate of Canterbury in 1051; William, one of the king's Norman chaplains, made Bishop of London in 1051 and Ulf, another Norman chaplain, elevated to the Bishopric of Dorchester in 1049. All of these prelates fled from England for fear of their lives, before the national reaction of feeling which took place in 1052. But there was a second class of foreign appointment, in which the favoured nominees came not from Normandy but from Lotharingia, a term which corresponds geographically to the South Netherlands, or to Belgium, and part of Germany west of the Rhine, and the French and German provinces of Flanders, Picardy, Artois, Alsace, and Lorraine; ecclesiastically, to the province of Cambray, including the dioceses of St. Omer, Tournay, Arras, Cambray, Namur; the northern part of the province of Rheims, including the dioceses of Soissons, Amiens, Laon; the province of Trèves, including the dioceses of Trèves, Metz, Verdun, and Toul; the southern part of the province of Mechlin, including the dioceses of Antwerp, Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent; and the western part of the province of Cologne, including the dioceses of Cologne and Liège. This district formed a borderland between France and Germany; in which both languages were spoken, but where German preponderated over French, and the inhabitants of which were more akin than the French to the inhabitants of this country. The appointment of a Lotharingian was therefore by no means the same thing as the appointment of a Norman to any post of honour or emolument in England. Nor were such appointments confined to Edward the Confessor. We may include among the more conspicuous instances of such appointments those of— (a) Duduc, made Bishop of Wells by Canute, in 1033, whom Florence of Worcester describes as of Lotharingian origin1, but whom his successor, Gisa, declared to be of Saxon nationality 2. (b) Hermann, a Lotharingian, chaplain to King Edward, made Bishop of Ramsbury in 1044. (c) Leofric, a Lotharingian, chaplain of the King, made Bishop of Crediton in 1046. Not one of these Lotharingian bishops fled from his See, like their Norman brethren in the Episcopate, in 10523. But though these bishops were not obnoxious to the inhabitants of their English dioceses on the score of their nationality, their appointment tended to the de-insularization of the English Church, and to its assimilation to the continental Church in the loss of national privileges and in an increased subservience to the Papacy. We are glad to believe the post mortem panegyric, preserved in this Missal, which states that Leofric was most active in teaching, preaching, promoting church restoration, and in fulfilling all the other duties of the Episcopate 4. His generosity, and his title to be enumerated among the benefactors of the diocese of Exeter, are undoubted. He recovered for St. Peter's Minster much of its alienated property, ' land æt Culmstoke, and p land æt Brancescumbe, and æt Sealtcumbe, and þ 1 'De Lotharingia oriundus, in an. 1060.' 2 'Natione Saxo.' Camden Society, vol. viii. for 1840, p. 15. 3 There were numerous later appointments of the same kind. In 1060 Gisa, a Lotharingian, and native of the bishopric of Liège, was made Bishop of Wells; and Walter of Lotharingia, chaplain to Queen Edith, was made Bishop of Hereford; Adelhard, a Lotharingian, a native of Liège, was appointed by Earl Harold as Canon and Lecturer in his newly-founded minster at Waltham. Baldwin, appointed Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, 1062-5, may have been a Lotharingian, though the balance of evidence seems to be in favour of his French origin. The distinction between Edward's Norman and Lotharingian appointments, first pointed out by Dr. Stubbs in the 'De Inventione Crucis,' has been set forth at length in Freeman's Norman Conquest, ii. 585-7. Fol. 3 a. |