A New Collection of English Recusant Manuscript Poetry from the Late-Sixteenth Century: Extraordinary Devotion in the Liturgical Season of ‘Ordinary Time’

Abstract

At Yale University, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection has recently acquired a fascinating manuscript of late sixteenth-century Roman Catholic devotional verse in English (Osborn Shelves a30). Following the liturgical year from Trinity Sunday to the feast of Saint Catherine on November 25th, these fifty-eight poems celebrate the solemnities, feasts, and memorials of the Roman liturgical calendar throughout the approximately twenty-six weeks comprising the major portion of ‘ordinary time’. Presumably, this collection would have had a companion volume, now lost, covering the period from Advent to Pentecost which includes the principal solemnities and great seasons of the liturgical year.