preceded, accompanied and followed the Conquest, and the
occupation by them of the highest posts in church as well as
state had a distinct effect on the liturgy of the English church.
These foreign ecclesiastics brought over with them a preference
for and a habit of using certain features of the Gallican liturgy
and ritual, which they succeeded in incorporating into the service-books
of the church of England. One of the Norman prelates,
Osmund, count of Séez, earl of Dorset, chancellor of England,
and bishop of Salisbury (1078–1099), is credited with having
undertaken the revision of the English service-books; and the
missal which we know as the Sarum Missal, or the Missal according
to the Use of Sarum, practically became the liturgy of the English
church. It was not only received into use in the province of
Canterbury, but was largely adopted beyond those limits—in
Ireland in the 12th and in various Scottish dioceses in the 12th
and 13th centuries.
It would be beyond our scope here to give a complete list of the numerous and frequently minute differences between a medieval Sarum and the earlier Anglo-Saxon or contemporaneous Roman liturgy. They lie mainly in differences of collects and lections, variations of ritual on Candlemass, Ash Wednesday and throughout Holy Week; the introduction into the canon of the mass of certain clauses and usages of Gallican character or origin; the wording of rubrics in the subjunctive or imperative tense; the peculiar “Preces in prostratione”; the procession of Corpus Christi on Palm Sunday; the forms of ejection and reconciliation of penitents, &c. The varying episcopal benedictions as used in the Anglo-Saxon church were retained, but the numerous proper prefaces were discarded, the number being reduced to ten.
Besides the famous and far-spreading Use of Sarum, other Uses, more local and less known, grew up in various English dioceses. In virtue of a recognized diocesan independence, bishops were able to regulate or alter their ritual, and to add special masses or commemorations for use within the limits of their jurisdiction. The better known and the more distinctive of these Uses were those of York and Hereford, but we also find traces of or allusions to the Uses of Bangor, Lichfield, Lincoln, Ripon, St Asaph, St Paul’s, Wells and Winchester.
Service-books.—The Eucharistie service was contained in the volume called the Missal (q.v.), as the ordinary choir offices were contained in the volume known as the Breviary (q.v.). But besides these two volumes there were a large number of other service-books. Mr W. Maskell has enumerated and described ninety-one such volumes employed by the Western Church only. It must be understood, however, that many of these ninety-one names are synonyms (Mon. Rit. Eccles. Anglic. 1882, vol. i. p. ccxxx.). The list might be increased, but it will be possible here only to name and briefly describe a few of the more important of them. (1) The Agenda is the same as the Manual, for which see below. (2) The Antiphonary contained the antiphons or anthems, sung at the canonical hours, and certain other minor parts of the service. (3) The Benedictional contained those triple episcopal benedictions previously described as used on Sundays and on the chief festivals throughout the year. (4) The Collectarium contained the collects for the season, together with a few other parts of the day offices. It was an inchoate breviary. (5) The Epistolarium contained the epistles, and the Evangelistarium the gospels for the year. (7) The Gradual contained the introit, gradual, sequences, and the other portions of the communion service which were sung by the choir at nigh mass. (8) The Legenda contained the lections which were read at matins and at other times, and may be taken as a generic term to include the Homiliarium, Passional and other volumes. (9) The Manual was the name usually employed in England to denote the Ritual, which contained the baptismal, matrimonial and other offices which might be performed by the parish priest. (10) The Pontifical contained the orders of consecration, ordination, and such other rites as could, ordinarily, only be performed by a bishop. To these we must add a book which was not strictly a church office book, but a handy book for the use of the laity, and which was in very popular use and often very highly embellished from the 14th to the 16th century, the Book of Hours, or Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, also known as the Prymer or Primer. It contained portions of the canonical hours, litanies, the penitential Psalms, and other devotions of a miscellaneous and private character. Detailed information about all these and other books is to be found in C. Wordsworth and H. Littlehales’, The Old Service Books of the English Church.
The Eastern Church too possessed and still possesses numerous and voluminous service-books, of which the chief are the following: (1) The Euchologian, containing the liturgy itself with the remaining sacramental offices bound up in the same volume. (2) The Horologion, containing the unvarying portion of the Breviary. (3) The Menaea, being equivalent to a complete Breviary. (4) The Menologion or Martyrology. (5) The Octoechus and (6) The Paracletice, containing Troparia and answering to the Western antiphonary. (7) The Pentecostarion, containing the services from Easter Day to All Saints’ Sunday. (8) The Triodion, containing those from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter Even. (9) The Typicum is a general book of rubrics corresponding to the Ordinale or the Pie of Western Christendom.
Period IV. The Reformed Church.—The Anglican liturgy of Reformation and post-Reformation times is described under the heading of Prayer, Book of Common, but a brief description may be added here of the liturgies of other reformed churches.
The Liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church.—This liturgy in nearly its present form was compiled by Scottish bishops in 1636 and imposed—or, to speak more accurately, attempted to be imposed—upon the Scottish people by the royal authority of Charles I. in 1637. The prelates chiefly concerned in it were Spottiswood, bishop of Glasgow; Maxwell, bishop of Ross; Wedderburn, bishop of Dunblane; and Forbes, bishop of Edinburgh. Their work was approved and revised by certain members of the English episcopate, especially Laud, archbishop of Canterbury; Juxon, bishop of London; and Wren, bishop of Ely. This liturgy has met with varied fortune and has passed through several editions. The present Scottish office dates from 1764. It is now used as an alternative form with the English communion office in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
The general arrangements of its parts approximates more closely to that of the first book of Edward VI. than to the present Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Among its noteworthy features are (a) the retention in its integrity and in its primitive position after the words of institution of the invocation of the Holy Spirit. That invocation runs thus: “And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and sanctify with thy word and Holy Spirit these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine that they may become the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son” (edit. 1764). This kind of petition thus placed is found in the Eastern but not in the Roman or Anglican liturgies. (b) The reservation of the sacrament is permitted, by traditional usage, for the purpose of communicating the absent or the sick. (c) The minimum number of communicants is fixed at one or two instead of three or four.
For fuller information see Bishop J. Dowden, The Annotated Scottish Communion Service (Edinburgh, 1884).
American Liturgy.—The Prayer Book of “the Protestant Episcopal Church” in America was adopted by the general convention of the American church in 1789. It is substantially the same as the English Book of Common Prayer, but among important variations we may name the following: (a) The arrangement and wording of the order for Holy Communion rather resembles that of the Scottish than that of the English liturgy, especially in the position of the oblation and invocation immediately after the words of institution. (b) The Magnificat, Nunc dimittis and greater part of Benedictus were disused; but these were reinstated among the changes made in the Prayer Book in 1892. (c) Ten selections of Psalms are appointed for use as alternatives for the Psalms of the day. (d) Gloria in excelsis is allowed as a substitute for Gloria Patri at the end of the Psalms at morning and evening prayer. In addition to these there are many more both important and unimportant variations from the English Book of Common Prayer.
The Irish Prayer Book.—The Prayer Book in use in the Irish portion of the United Church of England and Ireland was the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, but after the disestablishment of the Irish church several changes were introduced into it by a synod held at Dublin in 1870. These changes included such important points as: (a) the excision of all lessons from the Apocrypha, (b) of the rubric ordering the recitation of the Athanasian Creed, (c) of the rubric ordering the vestments of the second year of Edward VI., (d) of the form of absolution in the office for the visitation of the sick, (e) the addition to the
