of diuyne servyse, more than in the saynge without note."-Ed. E. E. T. S., p. 9.(1) P. 4, B. 30. prayere. It will be observed that this word is here a dissyllable, as in French. In the next century it would seem to have been fully naturalized, and to have acquired the English accent, and scanned as a monosyllable, if we may assume that the alteration in C. 30 was made to suit the metre. C. 18. Saynte Jerome. There does not appear to be anything in the extant writings of St Jerome, or the spurious pieces, printed as such with his works, which could be made to stand for this quotation; but apart from this consideration, and supposing my conjecture, as to Archdeacon Jeremiah being the author, to be as far from the mark as it very possibly may be, it is still most probable that the "Jeremy" of texts A. and B. is the true reading. It would be much more likely for a scribe, who had never heard of a "Dan Jeremy," to change it to St Jerome, upon whom so many mediæval quotations are fathered, than for the well-known name of Jerome to be changed into Jeremy; and we may observe that the description, as a "devout man" and "a religious," would have seemed especially applicable to this father, who was not only known as one of the four Latin doctors, but also distinguished in the Middle Ages as the "perfectus monachus." P. 5, E. 24. hely. It was a great interest to Archbishop Whately to trace the concatenation of ideas which led to manifest blunders; and many amusing stories used to be current in Oxford of the expedients he adopted to extract them from the men themselves when his acuteness was at fault. I doubt whether even he could have made anything out of some of the blunders of the puzzleheaded scrivener of this text; and though I cannot pretend to say what he meant by hely, I think I can guess why he avoided (2) the word ill, which we find in the other MSS., except when, as in lines 192, 272, and 529, the rhyme was too strong for him—not because the old Norse "ill" (Icel. Illr; M.G. ubils; A.S. yfel; Germ. übel), which came over with the Danish invasion, had not found its way from the northern to his west-midland dialect, and he did not know the meaning-but because he did know the meaning, and looked upon it as a word of ill omen, and therefore was unwilling to use it. I have not had an opportunity of examining the MS. and observing whether in the places he writes it, he has "signed away" the ill-luck, but I have noticed in other (1) In the heading of the chapter (p. 23), it is "songe wythoute note." (2) In line 373, he writes heuy. In line 51, speaking of confession, he utterly destroys the sense, and instead of writes "Knowe to God that þai are ille", "Know to God þat harowd helle". MSS. that when writing this very word ill, the names of the Evilone, (1) certain sins, or curses, and so forth, the scribe has often added a small cross (2) for this purpose. P. 6, B. 31-2. know-draw. Compare Hampole : "All es contende in pis tretice here Alle if I be of symple kunnyng.”—P. C. 9577-80. Of sere maters, þat er unknawen Til laude men þat er unkunnand.”—P. C. 336-8. And the Ormulum: "Ich hafe wennd intill Ennglissh goddspelles hallge lare. Affter þat little witt tatt me. min drihhtin hafeþþ lenedd."-II. 13—16. B. 33. auter al dight. We find in Myrk an account of what was required in the fifteenth century :— "Fyrst se, prest, as I pe mynne, Loke pat by candel (4) of wax hyt be, (1) "Some vse when they here the fende named in play or in wrathe to say Ave maria; that lyke as he ioyeth of the vycyouse namynge of his owne name, so is he rebuked by namynge of thys holy name maria."—Myroure, p. 78. (2) See example, ante, p. 118, 1. 8. Cf. Lindisfarne Gloss., Jo. viii, 48. (3) This counts the corporas. Durandi, Rat. 4, xxix, 1 & 7. (4) It was directed by a provincial constitution of Archbishop Reynold, in a council at Oxford in 1322, "Accendantur duæ candelæ vel ad minus una." Unlike the direction in this place, we often find pictures where the light is in the hand of the minister; e. g. the woodcut frontispiece of W. de Worde's Vertue of the Masse. The "Novum Registrum Ecclesiæ Lincolniensis," or the Statutes given by Bishop Alnwick for Lincoln Cathedral in 1440, lately printed by Bishop Wordsworth, the present occupant of that see (see an article in the Quarterly Review, January, 1871, vol. cxxx. 225), contain minute directions for the treasurer as to the number of candles to be provided according to the season, as for example:-"in festis novem lectionum . . . . invenire debet unum cereum super cornu altaris versus aquilonem et duos super parva candelabra And set hyre, so pat pow hyre se, Wayte pat ho brenne in alle wyse Tyl pow haue do pat seruyse."-11. 1865–1880. The illuminations of manuscripts, and the woodcuts in early printed service-books, enable us to form a very accurate idea of a mediæval altar. In some cases, and more particularly in later examples, besides the paten and chalice, we may notice a cross or candlesticks or the pax-brede; and there are sometimes costers or curtains running on rods at the north and south sides of the altar. There is marked absence (2) of the numerous ornaments which may be seen on modern altars. Indeed, to judge from the manner in which they are spoken of in the following extract—the author being a Roman catholic clergyman-it would seem that their more general adoption was quite recent. He tells us that the altars of the Roman basilicas, "unencumbered with tabernacles, reliquaries, statues, or flower-pots, support a cross and six candlesticks; furniture which is sufficient without doubt for all the purposes of solemnity, and yet may be endured even by a puritan. The other ornaments, or rather superfluities, which are too often to be observed on the altars of Catholic churches, owe their introduction to the fond devotion of nuns or nun-like friars, and may be tolerated in their conventual oratories, as the toys and playthings of that harmless race, but never allowed to disfigure the simplicity of parochial churches and cathedrals.". Tour through Italy, by Rev. John Chetwode Eustace, 4to, 1813, I., p. 373. ante altare, qui ardere debent ad utrasque vesperas, completorium, matutinas et missas. ... In diebus feriatis tantum unum cereum inveniat super altare; ad vesperas, completorium, et ad missas, duos super candelabra parva." (1) That is, on the right hand, looking east, as in the old rubrics and ritual expositors. The right and left of the modern Roman rubrics refer to the right and left of the crucifix on the altar. See Maskell, A. E. L. 19. The more usual way of distinguishing the sides and ends of the altar in the Church of England before the reformation was north and south, as in the Eastern Church, and as still retained in the rubric of the Book of Common Prayer. See also p. 16, B. 156, and the note there; p. 54, B. 579, &c. (2) The learned Benedictine, Abbot Gerbert, in his Disquisitions (Tom. I., p. 199), after discussing reliquaries, crosses, and candlesticks as ornaments upon altars, draws attention to the illuminations of the St Blas Missal (sæc. ix.), as showing the altar "planum quidem ac omnibus hactenus recensitis ornamentis destitutum, vestitum tamen." This vesting is not after the scanty fashion of later times, but, as may be observed in examples reaching down to the Reformation, was such as is described in the Voyages Liturgiques (p. 79, 80) at the cathedral of Angers about the beginning of the last century. "Les autels selon l'ancien usage. . . . . sont a nud, et ne sont couverts de quoi que ce soit; de sorte que ce n'est qu'un moment avant d'y dire la Messe, qu'on y met les nappes, qui débordent comme celle qu'on met sur un table ou l'on dine, et il n'y a point de parement." P. 6, B. 34. reuysht right—not as yet with all the vestments worn at mass, but, as may be gathered from the two following lines, and the thirteenth-century Rouen rubric quoted in the next note, p. 178, with amice, alb, girdle, maniple and stole, but without the chasuble. The fact that this was still the practice at Rouen at the end of the seventeenth century confirms the explanation here given; and it is curious in itself as an instance of established custom holding its own, when the written law was silent, for the rubric there quoted had disappeared from the MS. missal of the next century, and was not inserted in the printed missal of 1497, which is the only one I have had opportunity to examine. In the description of the ceremonies at Rouen, in the Voyages Liturgiques, (1)—and unless I have overlooked it, there is no mention of the practice anywhere else(2)—it is mentioned (p. 328) that, during tierce, the priest who was to celebrate mass, the deacon and subdeacon, were "revétus comme pour la messe, excepté la chasuble et les tuniques ;" and (p. 361) that the priest who was to celebrate high mass on Sundays was, before tierce, "revêtu d'aube, d'étole et de manipule." B. 35-38. The marginal note shows the sense in which I had understood this passage, and which I still conceive to be the meaning; namely, that the priest was already vested for mass, except the chasuble, and took that, the "overmost vestment," from off the north end or north (3) part of the western side or front of the altar, and, stepping backward from the footspace of the altar, put it on over his head above the alb and other vestments which he had already put on according to a French local use. I had not intended to prolong this note beyond a reference to my authorities for including this in the number of places in this treatise, which have led me to the conclusion that the original was written with reference to the Rouen use. But it so happens that the text has had the honour of an anticipatory criticism, (1) Voyages Liturgiques de France par le Sieur de Moleon (Lebrun des Marettes), Paris, 1718. The journeys appear to have been made before 1698, see p. ix, p. xii, and 319. (2) At Orleans the priest had formerly said the psalm Judica (ante, p. 90, 1. 14) in his alb and stole before putting on his chasuble.—Voyages Liturg. 200. At private masses the Cluniacs vested at the altar, the vestments and mass-book being brought from the vestry by a conversus or novice; but they did not put on the chasuble until after confession.-Udalricus, De Antiquis Clun. Monast. Consuetudinibus, L. I., c. 30, quoted by Martene, De Antiquis Monachorum Ritibus, Lib. II., c. vI., 17, 18. (3) The "south auter nook" (cornu) had been already occupied by the mass-book (p. 10, B. 87) when the altar was dight. The custom of taking the vestments from the north end at the beginning of the service is still retained in Scandinavian churches, and (when they are taken from the altar by simple priests) in Roman also.-See p. 164, n. 2. the corrected proofs of the earlier sheets of this work having come into the hands of Mr Scudamore when he was engaged in the preparation of the second edition of his Notitia Eucharistica, which has just been published. He does not accept my gloss in the margin; but with the text before him, he cuts the knot (p. 116) by a conjectural reading which suits his own rendering of the passage, and argues that it is to be understood of spreading the corporas. Mr Scudamore very courteously challenges me to a discussion on the question he has raised. First, then, as to this alteration. In line 38, for "him" he reads “it "—" does it upon IT." Now, if there were any authority in the manuscript for this correction, it would at once settle the question in the sense for which he contends, but there is none whatever. I had myself copied it "hi" from the MS. some twenty years ago. Mr Brock, whose accuracy is well known to the members of the E. E. T. Society, had written it "him," in the copy which he made for this edition, marking the expanded contraction in italic, and he left it unaltered when he read the proof with the original. I had therefore very little doubt myself, but I was unwilling to allow the reading to stand if there could be any doubt as to its correctness, and referred the point to my friend Mr Thompson, (1) who, with his usual kindness, answered my letter at once. He writes, "the MS. has hi, which can stand only for him;" and from his judgment as to the reading of a manuscript there is no appeal. But, assuming that Mr Scudamore's is the only tenable explanation, there was no occasion for him to correct the text. Towards the close of the xivth century, when the Museum manuscript was written, "him" was still sometimes used in the dative, as "his" was then, and down to the time of King James' translation of the Bible, the genitive of the neuter "hit." The "him" of the MS. might therefore have been taken to refer to the altar, and "bit" to the corporas, if this way of construing the line had been consistent with the remainder of the passage. For, apart from any other consideration, I am inclined to think that a closer examination of the text will convince Mr Scudamore he is mistaken in his explanation. He glosses "comes oback" (1. 37) as of the priest "walking backwards" in order to spread the corporas on the altar, and offers no explanation of the other half of the line "a litel doune; "—but if the "clothe" of the text had been the corporas, or the altar-cloth, the priest would not have moved away from the altar in order to spread it; rather in that case he would have spread it on the altar before descending the altar-step for the confession. Perhaps Mr Scudamore might not have found the same difficulty if his attention had been directed to the mediæval ritual of the (1) E. Maunde Thompson, Esq., MSS. Department, British Museum. |