A Liturgical Miscellany in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190

Abstract

The composite volume now known as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College [CCCC] 190, contains on pages 143 to 151 a mixture of liturgical exposition and prescription. The Latin passages constitute neither a polished work nor, like much else in the manuscript, an obvious antecedent to Old English texts, and so the group has never attracted much notice. I offer here the first discussion and edition of the passages in the belief that they shed new light on the sources and applications of liturgical commentary in late Anglo-Saxon England. Of equal or perhaps greater interest, the excerpts also include portions of the ordo for a pontifical mass on Christmas Day. The ordo, as we shall see, resists close dating or localization, but the very type of document has rarely survived in pre-Conquest English manuscripts and so merits attention. Both the expository and ordinal passages occasionally hint of access to unusual sources at some late Anglo-Saxon church, possibly Worcester cathedral during the pontificate of Wulfstan I (1002–16).