PREFACE.

This new edition of the so-called Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis has been edited for the Surtees Society by Dr. U. Lindelöf, Professor of English Philology in the University of Helsingfors, who, at an earlier date, has paid special attention to the philological and linguistic peculiarities of the interlinear English version of the Latin text. For the care and scholarship with which he has thoroughly revised the earlier edition published by the Society and has produced an accurate and trustworthy text, our gratitude is due. While he has avoided all emendations which, however justifiable, would affect the literal fidelity of the text to its original, he has supplied notes upon the errors and doubtful readings of the MS. in an appendix to the volume.

Professor Lindelöf has also written the part of the introduction which deals with certain palaeographic and linguistic features of the book. Although its interest from a liturgical and historical point of view is of less significance, it has been thought advisable, for the sake of completeness, to include a general account of its contents from this standpoint, which, together with an index of the Latin collects and chapters, has been written by the Secretary of the Society, and forms the opening part of the introduction to the present volume.

The thanks of the Society are due to the Dean and Chapter of Durham and to their honorary librarian, Mr. J. Meade Falkner, for giving special facilities for the consultation of the original MS. by the editor. Professor E. V. Gordon, of the University of Leeds, has given valuable assistance, and Dr. Craster and Mr. Gambier-Parry, of the Bodleian Library, have read the proofs of the earlier part of the introduction and furnished helpful suggestions. The plates, illustrating typical pages of the volume, are the work of Mr. Macbeth, whose facsimile of the Durham Liber Vitae is already in the hands of members.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

(BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON.)

The MS. A. iv, 19, in the library of the Dean and Chapter of Durham was edited for the Surtees Society in 1840 by Joseph Stevenson under the somewhat misleading title Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis. As Lingard observed, in his brief but admirable account of the book, the publication was a disappointment to those who expected to find in it "the order of divine service, and of the administration of the sacraments, according to the form practised in the English church before the Conquest." The fragmentary and miscellaneous character of its contents rendered it an imperfect example of the type of service-book which it represents; and that type is concerned merely with a limited selection of liturgical forms. Stevenson's edition, moreover, did nothing more than reproduce the text with a short and not very enlightening introduction, and without any critical apparatus. The editor was not impeccable, and to the numerous errors of the MS. he added mistakes and misreadings of his own. The unsatisfactory nature of his work has long been recognised by scholars, and the present edition is intended to remedy its defects, and in particular to supply a more trustworthy version of the interlinear translation of some four-fifths of the MS. executed by a Northumbrian scribe in the tenth century.

At the same time, it is possible to underrate Stevenson's method of editing. Dr. W. H. Frere, now Bishop of Truro, in his introduction to the edition of The Leofric Collectar published by the Henry Bradshaw Society, has given a summary description of the volume and its contents. With reference to the addenda, which constitute the second and larger half of the book, he says: "the printed edition suffers here more than elsewhere from the scribe's habit of omitting titles, and the editor's unintelligent dependence upon such titles as are given.” It is true that

1 Lingard, Hist. & Antiquities of the A.-S. Church, 1845, ii, 359.

2 The Leofric Collectar compared with the Collectar of St. Wulfstan, together with kindred documents of Exeter and Worcester, vol. ii (H.B.S., lvi), p. xx.

Stevenson's neglect to furnish any critical commentary left much to be desired, but this gives no positive ground for depreciating his intelligence. As an editor, he doubtless suffered from that want of minute accuracy in which, in a far from exacting age, he was by no means unique; but his work was a genuine endeavour to reproduce the MS. as he found it. If he inadvertently added to its faults, he at any rate refrained from confounding the text by importing emendations into it. In the present edition the original text has been treated by Professor Lindelöf with a more sedulous accuracy, but its errors have been allowed to stand, and for corrections the reader must look to the notes. It would have been easy to polish the surface of the text with wholesale emendations, but its individuality would thus have been destroyed; and it is no part of the duties of an editor to conceal the deficiencies of a MS. which is unique. Both Lingard and Dr. Frere have analysed the contents of the book, and Dr. Frere's analysis, though brief, has a special value as the work of one of the most learned liturgical scholars of the present day. The volume has been known so long as the Durham Ritual that, in spite of the obvious drawbacks of the title, it has been considered unadvisable to change it for the purposes of a new edition; while the complex character of its composition, as it has come down to us, prevents the attribution to it of any more comprehensive or satisfactory title. The foundation of the work, however, is a Collectar or compilation of the collects and short chapters used at the day-hours throughout the year, to which a large amount of supplementary matter has been added. It is, in short, a book for use by the officiant at choir services, containing those portions of the service which are proper to him, together with a number of miscellaneous prayers for special occasions, and additions which serve as cues to his part.

Owing to the loss of a number of leaves, the Collectar is incomplete. The whole work actually consists of three separate parts, of the contents of which an account may be given before proceeding to further details.

A. Part I (pp. 1-138) comprises the collects and chapters for the various seasons of the year, with additional matter, arranged as follows: (1) Temporale (pp. 1-43); (2) Sanctorale (pp. 43-80); (3) Commune Sanctorum (pp. 81-94); (4) Benedictions (pp. 95-125); (5) Miscellaneous addenda (pp. 126-138).

(1) The Temporale at present begins among the little chapters for the Epiphany, followed by the collects (pp. 1–3), the chapters and collects for the Purification (pp. 3, 4), and the chapters for Ash Wednesday (p. 5). A