Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies by David N. Dumville (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 521 Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies. By David N. Dumville. [Studies in Anglo-Saxon History.] (Rochester, NewYork:The Boydell Press. 1992. Pp. x, 193. $5900.) David N. Dumville's important collection of previously unpublished essays on matters related to the English liturgy during the tenth and eleventh centuries is dedicated to Helmut Gneuss,"on his sixty-fifth birthday in gratitude for his formidable contributions to the study of Anglo-Saxon liturgy and manuscripts ." Such a tribute to Professor Gneuss is appropriate, for his work on liturgical manuscripts is central to the contemporary study of the English liturgy; equally central,however, are Dumville's own studies on the provenances and interrelationships of ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-century manuscripts, and the collection of studies under review presupposes access, ifnot indeed familiarity, with Dumville's Wessex and Englandfrom Alfred to Edgar and English Caroline Script and Monastic History, volumes three and six respectively in the Studies in Anglo-Saxon History series, as well as his important essays on"English Square minuscule script" in volumes 16 and 23 oíAnglo-Saxon England. The first study, "The Kalendar of the Junius Psalter," examines the neglected kalendar (fols. 2'-T) of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS.Junius 27, the so-called "Junius Psalter."The feasts in this kalendar that were graded high are indicated by hexametrical verses which replicate the lines in a metrical martyrology, sometimes known as the "Hampson" martyrology, the earliest surviving manuscript of which is London, British Library, MS. Cotton Galba A.xviii. Dumville constructs an elaborate but plausible hypothesis which suggests Canterbury as the probable point of origin of both the metrical martyrology and the liturgical material in the Junius Psalter's kalendar, which therefore allows the attribution of MS. Junius 27 to Canterbury. In "The Liturgical Kalendar of Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury: a Chimaera?" Dumville argues that the kalendar of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 579, the "Leofric Missal," does not derive from a Glastonbury original, but from Canterbury . His case for freeing the kalendar from Glastonbury is strong, indeed, since the Glastonbury attribution was constructed on a scholarly repetition of F. E. Warren's flawed argument for such an origin when he edited the Leofric Missal in 1883; the case for attributing the kalendar to Canterbury remains, as Dumville admits, to be proven. The third article, entitled "Liturgical Books for the Anglo-Saxon Episcopate:A Reconsideration," begins with Gneuss's data concerning only those books which would have been used by a bishop or archbishop, to which Dumville adds a brief essay on relevant paleographical and codicological considerations for each book. He concludes with an assessment of all tenth- and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon pontificals known to him, showing how they emanate from the metropolitan see out to other bishops. In fact, the article is rich in implications for the transmission of many kinds of liturgical books, pontificals being traceable in sufficiently large numbers to define the paradigm. 522 BOOK REVIEWS The final study comprises a selection of notes under the collective title, "Liturgical Books from Late Anglo-Saxon England: A Review of Some Historical Problems."There is hardly room here for a thumbnail sketch of each of the nine problems with which he deals, for each short essay delineates a fresh approach to a topic central to the history of the English liturgy. The topics include: the continuity of liturgical tradition (and lack of it) as evidenced by the liturgical manuscripts from the eighth century to the tenth; the transference of eighthand ninth-century books from northern to southern centers exclusively until about the time of King ^Ethelstan, after which southern books are often seen to be conveyed northwards; the liturgical or quasi-liturgical use of the hagiographical libellus containing a uita and sometimes benedictions and homilies; the contribution of the Celtic (especially Breton) Church to the English Benedictine renewal, as evidenced by a variety of works of canon law, computistics, and hagiography and poetry; the function of documentary materials added to liturgical manuscripts to which a list of Gospel books so augmented is appended ; the presence of Old English in liturgical books as evidence of a trend which accelerated in the...