The Use of Hereford: The Sources of a Medieval Diocesan Rite by William Smith

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Use of Hereford: The Sources of a Medieval Diocesan Rite by William Smith Julia Schneider William Smith The Use of Hereford: The Sources of a Medieval Diocesan Rite Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015 xxxi + 831 pages. Hardbound. $275.00. Anglican scholars began to examine the evidence for pre-Reformation English liturgical practices in the nineteenth century, in much the same way that Catholics studied medieval liturgical sources on the continent: as a historical enterprise and as a way to enhance current ritual practice. Although the era of large-scale critical edition projects aimed at determining the dissemination of unified practices is a thing of the past, scholars and lay readers alike still benefit from the same impulse toward knowledge of western liturgical heritage, including liturgical series that produce mainly diplomatic editions of important medieval liturgical books, as well as monographic treatments of relevant topics. In [End Page 179] the Anglophone world, such scholarship tends to focus on areas where important works have survived or for which there is enough extant evidence to support such a study, with the most prominent of all insular liturgical treatments focusing on the Diocese of Salisbury’s Sarum Rite. In his Use of Hereford: the Sources of a Medieval Diocesan Rite, William Smith seeks to extend the examination of English practices at the diocesan level beyond Salisbury or York, intending explicitly “to review and evaluate all the known sources relating to the medieval Use of Hereford, discussing in particular the missals (both manuscript and printed) and the gradual” (1). In his introduction, Smith sets the background for the text in a discussion of liturgical use (consuetudo) and the diversity of local practices under the umbrella of the Roman Rite in the Middle Ages. His treatment focuses on primarily on the development of liturgical practices in insular locales, as well as the history of prominent local churches, dioceses, and important monastic foundations. He then provides a discussion of the development of specifically non-monastic diocesan rites and practices, followed by a sketch of English liturgical developments after the Norman Conquest (1066) in the uses of Sarum and York, and their interaction with and influence on the liturgy at Hereford. Smith provides a history of Hereford’s early cathedral and diocese in chapter three, followed by a discussion of the origins and potential sources of its liturgy. He argues that the liturgical practices at Hereford did not stem from Rouen, as proposed by scholars who saw the Norman influence after the conquest. Although his counter-proposal is that the use’s antecedents come from the Bishop Robert of Lotharingia’s (1075–1079) home at Aachen, expert readers might find evidence for this argument wanting. Particularly useful in this chapter is his detailed yet synthetic portrait of the building of the medieval cathedral, which he carefully depicts as a process that took centuries, as a process headed by many visionary bishops, and as a monument to local craftsmanship (57–59). In chapters four through six, Smith describes fully the manuscript and printed sources which provide the basis for his (re) constitution of the Hereford Use and its comparison with those of Sarum and York. The manuscript sources include: four missals and several fragments; three full breviaries and fragments; a gradual and one gradual fragment; antiphoner fragments; a collectar; [End Page 180] an obituary with martyrology; pontifical fragments, and other manuscripts related to Hereford use. The primary text against which these will later be compared is the printed Hereford Missal of 1502, and he cites the printed critical editions of Hereford, York, and Sarum texts in the footnotes for comparison throughout. In chapter seven, he presents a discussion of the differences and commonalities in the ordines for the liturgy of the Eucharist, providing a table with the rubrics for the Canon of the Mass in each of three manuscripts and the 1502 printed Hereford Missal in order to show that the uses of Sarum, York, and Hereford were not that far apart at the end of the fifteenth century. The table is convenient as a quick reference, since the common texts are bolded. Subsequent chapters on the Mass and Office prayers, lectionaries, sequences, “invariable portions of the...