APPENDIX V.-LYDGATE'S MERITA MISSÆ. And whan he was in any care, He prayd to the Image euyr mare; I dar we say that pryd gothe beforen, And schame comythe aftyr, and blawythe horne. 3if Enemys com to any coste, And, thou I klype the, prowde knapys, (1) Read alther-best 153 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. THE FOUR TEXTS. Page 1. Mass-book. This from very early times was the English name of the Missale. "Missal" is comparatively modern, and in all likelihood was never in ordinary use as long as the massbook itself was a service book of the Church of England. By the Canons of Elfric (xx), the mass-priest before he was ordained (gehadod) was to have for his spiritual work, amongst other holy books, "pistol-boc. godspel-boc and mæsse-boc."(1) The "mæsse-boc" also occurs in a similar enumeration (2) in Ælfric's Pastoral Epistle (XLIV); and in a list of the ornaments of the church at Sherburn, (3) which must be very nearly of the same date, and is written at the end of the York Minster (Xth century) Gospels, from which the Old English Bidding Prayer (page 62) is taken, we find "twa Cristes bec (Gospels), and i. aspiciens(4) (1) Thorpe, Ancient Laws, II, 350. The epistles and gospels, the Calendar, the Grayle, &c. were not at first collected in a Missale completum or plenarium, such as is the modern missal, which embodies the parts of the service, assigned to priest, deacon, sub-deacon, and people. Muratori had never heard of any service-book as early as the eleventh century, "in quo universus iste sacrorum apparatus coagmentatus et per ordinem distributus legatur," and hence he suggests a doubt as to the introduction of solitary masses before that time. Maskell, Mon. Rit., I, p. cxxxv; Daniel, Cod. Liturg. I, 27. (2) Thorpe, Ancient Laws, II, 384. (3) King Athelstane gave the manor of Sherburne (in Elmete) to the see of York in the year 959, which may explain this entry in the York Minster Gospels. (4) Before the days of title-pages books were often designated by the first words,-in inventories we often find the first words of the second folio for their better identification-and it is, therefore, not improbable that the Aspiciens may have been the Antiphoner or Anthem-book, which, as we find in Lyndwood-Lib. 3, Tit. 27. Ut parochiani (z)-contained not only anthems, but also the hymns, responds, &c., of the canonical Hours. The first respond of the nocturns, or first office of the first Sunday in Advent, begins "Aspiciens a longe; " and Amalarius (De Ordine Antiphonarii, cap. 8. De officio, Aspiciens a longe) notes that these words "currunt per omne tempus adventus Domini in nocturnali officio, et matutinali, ac vespertinali." and i. ad te leuaui(1) and ii. pistol bec. and i. mæsseboc." In the thirteenth century we have the Ormulum (White) :— Icc hafe sammnedd o piss boc pa Goddspelless neh alle, hatt sinndenn o þe messeboc Inn all pe 3er att messe.-Ded. 29-32. And in Havelock the Dane (Skeat)— A wol fair cloth bringen he dede, And per-on leyde pe messebok, The caliz, and þe pateyn ok.—ll. 185-7. It would be easy to multiply examples from wills and inventories down to the reformation; the following are among the latest: John Lord Scrope of Bolton in 1494 leaves his "masse booke imprented" to his chaplain ;(2) and there were in the chantry of St Blase in York Minster in the year 1520 “ij mes bowkes, on of parchment, & ye oder of prynt."(3) Our last example must be from a book of churchwardens' accounts (4) for the first year of Queen Mary, as that brings us down to the last reign in which Latin service-books were bought out of the church-rate :-1533 "Item paid for a Masse boke. Vis. viiid." P. 2. Title. There is not a contemporary title to any of the six manuscripts. Præmia missæ has been written at the beginning of the Corpus MS. (Text C.) in a later hand, either from the mention of the "medes" of the mass (line 13), or from this being the name of another book often mentioned in wills and inventories of the XVth century, but of a very different character. Mr Turnbull in his "Visions of Tundale" (1843) headed the fragment from the Advocates Library in Edinburgh as "The Mass" (our MS. A.), but the name here given more fully conveys the purpose of this "devocioun" (page 60, F. 351), which is now for the first time printed at length. A poem with the title "De Meritis Missæ" is printed by Mr Wright from the Douce MS. among "The Poems of John Audelay" (Percy Society, 1844), parts of which however are much older than the "blynd Awdlay," as will be pointed out in the notes on the (1) Ad te levari are in like manner the first words (Ps. (123) CXXII, 1) of the office of the first Sunday in Advent; and this book may have been the Grayle, which according to Lyndwood-u. s. (a)—contained not only the Gradalia, but also the Officia, and the other things " quæ ad chorum spectant in missæ solemnis decantatione."-See Durandi Rationale, 6, i, 25. "Graduarius dictus est a gradualibus, quæ in eo continentur; qui a pluribus officiarius nuncupatur, ab officiis, seu introitibus, quæ ibi continentur." (2) Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Society), III, 95. "Missall" also occurs in this collection (A.D. 1432) II, 21; and (A.D. 1436) II, 75. (3) York Fabric Rolls (Raine), p. 278. (4) Wing in Buckinghamshire.—Archæologia, XXXVI, 232. |