Understanding Medieval Liturgy. Essays in Interpretation ed. by Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Understanding Medieval Liturgy. Essays in Interpretation ed. by Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton James Bradley Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton, ed. Understanding Medieval Liturgy. Essays in Interpretation London and New York: Routledge, 2018 xvi + 332 pages. Paperback. $51.95. First published in hardback in 2016, the paperback edition of this collection of essays on the interpretation of medieval liturgy offers a fresh opportunity for students, as well as established scholars, to benefit more broadly from the work of its several authors. As is often the case, the presentation of an already-published book in paperback format brings a degree of affordability and portability. Whilst we are all familiar with studying in the comforting surroundings of libraries and reading rooms, the contributions in this volume draw the reader back to foundational principles of scholarship, from a range of complementary fields. As such they are best returned to at various stages during the process of research, writing, and editing. The paperback edition of this work makes this all the more possible and is to be commended. The book is divided into four parts, each offering two or three short essays. Part One, "Researching Rites," includes chapters on the research of the history of liturgical rites in general (Helen Gittos), and in particular obsequies (Frederick S. Paxton), and the role of music in the liturgy of the early medieval period (William T. Flynn). Part Two, provocatively entitled "Questioning Authority and Tradition," presents a paper debating the appropriate weight of authority given to Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze's edition of the Pontificale Romano-Germanicum (Henry Parkes), and also a comprehensive historiographical essay on the Uses of Sarum and York (Matthew Cheung Salisbury). Part Three, "Diversity," offers insights into excommunication rites of the tenth and eleventh centuries (Sarah Hamilton), medieval rites of exorcism (Florence Chave-Mahir), and medieval rites for the consecration of churches [End Page 67] (Mette Birkedal Bruun and Louis I. Hamilton). Part Four, "Texts and Performances," looks at church architecture (Carolyn Marino Malone) and liturgical "performance practices" (Carol Symes). Each chapter offers extensive footnotes and, thereby, encouragement for further reading. The essays are well written, neither universalizing their theses nor making points so obscure about a particular idea that they are of no broader application. The inclusion of a bibliography for the entire volume, whilst extensive, is perhaps less useful than a short bibliography at the end of each essay might have proved. The editors, Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton, provide a particularly useful introduction to the book, which weaves together the wide-ranging and multidisciplinary areas of interest into a coherent whole. As can be seen from the contents, and is freely acknowledged by the editors, the book is particularly oriented toward study of the rites and ceremonies which take place outside the Mass and Divine Office. Matthew Cheung Salisbury's essay on the Sarum and York rites is an exception to this, although this contribution is (in the vein of the whole book) more about interpretation and sources, and less an analytical study of the liturgical rites themselves. As the editors make clear in their very first paragraph: "Most of the contributors to this book would not describe themselves as liturgists" (1). This means that the insight of scholars with extensive experience in a wide range of complementary disciplines is instantly available, but inevitably this attribute can at times give implicit (and even explicit) voice to the idea that the liturgy is a means to an end, rather than an end or focus of study in and of itself. Typographical decisions, such as the use of a lower case 'm' for Mass, and occasional infelicitous phrases such as "performance," though certainly not unknown even amongst liturgical scholars, contribute to that tendency. Perhaps inevitably in a work of primarily Anglophone scholars, there are also occasional turns of phrase which reveal theological or ecclesiological preferences with which Catholic scholars might be uncomfortable. One area where the collection is particularly strong is in its challenge to the weight and contemporary usefulness of scholarship [End Page 68] which has been considered definitive for a significant amount of time, but which now demands reevaluation. In addition to the essay by Henry Parkes...