In the previous chapter, I examined attitudes towards private prayer in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the ways in which the Hours were observed, the cross was adored and confession made in private devotion at that time. In Chapters Two to Four, I consider how these texts and traditions were received by monks and nuns in the late Anglo-Saxon period, beginning in this chapter with the private observance of the Hours and other uses of personal prayerbooks, and followed in Chapters Three and Four by private cross devotion and confession. This involves the examination of a number of manuscripts with their origins in the Winchester monasteries, of which certain sections, at least, seem to have been used for private prayer.
This chapter aims to give an overview of late Anglo-Saxon private prayer: the features which distinguish it from liturgical prayer, the most important
manuscripts in this field, the kinds of prayer which were transmitted, and their manuscript contexts. To begin with, I examine the features of prayer sequences which suggest that they may have been used in private prayer: the use of the singular grammatical number, the willingness to alter a manuscript to make gender changes, and the relatively frequent use of the vernacular language. After this, I give a full introduction to three eleventh-century manuscripts, all of which appear to have been personal compendia for monastic use rather than formal liturgical books, and
therefore contain sequences of private prayers. These are: Ælfwine’s Prayerbook, the Portiforium of St Wulstan, and the Galba Prayerbook.
Having narrowed down the field of research, I demonstrate that there was a difference between the various kinds of private prayer which can be found in these manuscripts: some prayers are specific to private prayerbook traditions, while others were derived from liturgical rites. Furthermore, different kinds of prayers were found in different contexts within the prayerbooks. They could, for example, be copied into blank spaces at the ends of folios, while other texts appear as simple sequences of prayers, or form ordines for private prayer which reached varying levels of complexity. Bernard Muir has drawn attention to these prayer programmes, noting that they are based on the liturgy for particular feasts but intended for
personal use: by building on his observations, I argue that it was from these programmes that the Special Offices emerged, such as those of the Virgin or the Trinity, which had arisen by the early eleventh century.247
The influence of the Divine Office itself can also be seen in private prayers. For example, prayers attached to psalters indicate that the psalms could be chanted for the good of one‟s soul or for those of one‟s friends and family; moreover, the text known as the Old English Benedictine Office explains why it was considered
important to observe the Divine Office at this time. In the light of these works, I present a brief source study of a series of vernacular prayers for the Hours in the
Galba Prayerbook, which are translations of the Latin Prayers ad horas found in the
Carolingian libelli precum, although the origin of these texts derives from the sacramentary tradition. Again, extending a theory propounded by Muir, I argue that
247
Bernard James Muir, ed., A Pre-Conquest English Prayer-Book (BL MSS Cotton Galba A.xiv and Nero A.ii (ff. 3-13)), HBS 103 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1988), 147, n. 1.
the translation and alteration of these prayers show the development of the private observance of the Hours in the eleventh century and beyond.248
Beginning with an overview of late Anglo-Saxon monastic private prayer and ending with one specific case study, this chapter acts as a basis for the studies of prayer to the cross and confessional prayer in the following two.
Evidence for private prayer
It is evident that the monastic life involved prayer beyond that which was required for the Divine Office and the Mass. This is implied in the Regula Benedicti, where the list of good works in Chapter Four includes the command,
orationi frequenter incumbere, mala sua praeterita cum lacrimis vel gemitu cotidie in oratione Deo confiteri (Rule, ch. 4.56-7).249
Prayer should normally be brief, although in private one might pray at length when inspired to do so (ch. 20.4). Monks were also permitted to pray alone in the oratory at any time (ch. 52.2-4). Furthermore, during Lent, they were expected to undertake extra prayer and spiritual reading (ch. 49.4).
St Benedict‟s precepts for the practice of daily monastic life and worship were revised for the tenth-century English church in the Regularis concordia, a customary intended for use in English monasteries and convents.250 It arose from the 973 Synod of Winchester, and was intended to be part of the reformation of the
248
Bernard J. Muir, „The Early Insular Prayer Book Tradition and the Development of the Book of Hours‟ in The Art of the Book: its Place in Medieval Worship, eds. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir, 9-19 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 19.
249
„[D]evote yourself often to prayer. Every day with tears and sighs confess your past sins to God in prayer‟. Timothy Fry et al., eds. and trans., The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981).
250
Lucia Kornexl, ed., Die Regularis concordia und ihre altenglische Interlinearversion, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie 17 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1993).
English church in this period.251 This document is therefore of great importance in demonstrating which aspects of the monastic life were considered essential enough to be restated or reformed. Noticeably, the Regularis concordia contains more references to private prayer than the Regula Benedicti. Again, private prayer in the oratory is referred to, but now includes voluntary prayer after Mass and Compline (RC, ll. 87-91, 477, 600-4). Furthermore, when a monk rises for Nocturns, he is expected to say verses and psalms on the way to the oratory, and, once he arrives, to say the penitential psalms, interspersed with three collects (ll. 257-96). Indeed, the
Regularis concordia also incorporates time for private prayer, psalms and spiritual
reading during the day (ll. 366-73, 530). The Regula Benedicti and Regularis
concordia therefore both insist upon private prayer, but the latter takes a far more
prescriptive attitude to it. The compilers of the later customary were apparently more certain of which prayers were effective to use, which suggests that the reformers placed a greater emphasis upon private prayer than did Benedict.
Although it is clear that private prayer was required in the eleventh century, it is nonetheless difficult to define. It cannot always be easily distinguished from liturgical prayers, partly because the liturgy is very often a source for private texts, but also because manuscripts do not usually differentiate between them, or regard the two as separate categories. It is rare, for example, to find a rubric stating specifically that a particular act of worship should be conducted alone.252 Nevertheless, there are a number of criteria by which private prayer sequences can be identified.
The grammatical number and gender used in a particular manuscript copy of a prayer can suggest its suitability for private use. The prayers to the individual members of the Trinity, common in the libelli precum tradition, have already been
251
Ibid., xvi. For more details on the origins of the text, see xvi-xxx.
252
discussed in Chapter One.253 Wherever these prayers occur, it cannot be doubted that they were intended for private use, as indicated by first person singular verbs and pronouns:
DOMINE IESV CHRISTE, FILI DEI VIVI ... te laudo, te adoro, teque glorifico. Ne me obsecro perire patiaris, sed per ineffabilem bonitatem tuam salua et adiuua me gratuito munere tuo (ÆP, no. 52.2).254
Prayers in the first person would be inappropriate in a liturgical context, in which the community prays together. The presence of a large number of prayers containing singular grammatical forms thus indicates that the part of the manuscript in which they appear was probably used for private devotion.
A prayer does not, however, need to be derived from the prayerbook tradition in order to be classified as private, as the meaning of a such a text is determined more by its use than by its origin. Many manuscripts include prayers of liturgical derivation, such as long sequences of different collects that have been taken out of their ritual contexts. Often, these have been grammatically altered so that their plural pronouns and verbs have been replaced by singular forms. For example, the fourteenth-century Missale ad usum Westmonasteriensis preserves the following prayer, „Qui uiuorum dominaris‟, as a collect for the Mass „Pro uiuis atque defunctis‟:
Omnipotens sempiterne deus ... te supplices exoramus ut pro quibus effundere preces decreuimus quosque uel presens seculum adhuc in carne retinet uel futurum iam exutos corpore suscepit pietatis tue clemencia.
253
See page 35 above.
254
„O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God ... I praise you, I adore you, and I glorify you. I beseech that you not allow me to perish, but save me through your ineffable goodness and aid me with your voluntary gift.‟ „Splendor et imago patris‟, Beate Günzel ed., Ælfwine’s Prayerbook (London, British Library, Cotton Titus D. xxvi + xxvii), HBS 108 (London: Boydell Press, 1993). Ælfwine’s Prayerbook will be introduced on pages 92-5 below.
omnium delictorum suorum ueniam et gaudia consequi mereatur eterna (Westmonasteriensis, II, col. 1179).255
Bernard Muir identifies this collect as an analogue for an almost identical prayer in the eleventh-century Galba Prayerbook. 256 However, in Galba, „exoramus‟ and „decreuimus‟ have been replaced with „exoro‟ and „decreui‟ (Prayer-Book, 104, ll. 4- 5), transforming this collect into a prayer in which one person speaks to God about those for whom he or she has already prayed, and asks God to bring about their future glory.
While the prevalence of prayers in the grammatical singular can indicate that a section of a manuscript was intended for private use, this pattern does not always hold true, as some prayers contain both singular and plural forms. For example, the prayer directly before „Qui uiuorum dominaris‟ in the Galba Prayerbook is a prayer that calls upon St Benedict for protection, which appears to have been taken straight from a liturgical source, and still contains the plural form „quesumus‟ (103, l. 1; „we ask‟).257 A prayer could therefore be made more suitable for private devotion by being adapted for grammatical number, but this did not always take place, perhaps because monks and nuns were not always skilled enough in Latin to make these alterations.258 Nevertheless, the removal of a liturgical prayer from the context of a particular Mass in itself suggests that it was being used for „unofficial‟ purposes.
255
„Almighty and eternal God ... we humble people implore you for those for whom we have chosen to pour out prayers: whether he retains this present world here in the flesh, or whether he has already received the world to come, by the mercy of your pity may he deserve the pardon of all his sins, and to follow those who have cast aside this body to attain eternal joy.‟ „Qui uiuorum dominaris‟, John Wickham Legg, ed., Missale ad Usum Ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, 3 vols., HBS 1, 5 and 12 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1891-7). Moeller, no. 4064.
256
Muir, Prayer-Book, 104. This manuscript will be introduced in more detail on pages 96-9 below.
257
Cf. Anselm Hughes, ed., The Portiforium of Saint Wulstan (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 391), HBS 89-90, 2 vols (Leighton Buzzard: Faith Press, 1960), II, 1, ll. 25-7. The Portiforium of St Wulstan will be introduced on pages 95-6 below.
258
See Stephan Waldhoff, Alcuins Gebetbuch für Karl den Grossen: Seine Rekonstruktion und seine Stellung in der frühmittelalterlichen Geschichte der libelli precum, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen 89 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2003), 21 n. 57, and 37-8.
Alongside singular and plural word forms, grammatical gender also provides a clue to how prayers were used, and this can take place in two ways. A prayer can appear in the masculine gender in one manuscript, and in the feminine in another; alternatively, the manuscript copy of a prayer can be altered by a later user of the opposite sex, either by erasure or by interlinear correction. In both cases, it is clear that the users believed that prayers could be made more appropriate to their own use by adapting it to reflect their own gender. For example, Ælfwine’s Prayerbook contains several prayers that have had feminine forms added by a twelfth-century user. „Te adoro, Domine‟ appears in the Office of the Trinity and includes these amendments:
Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori/trici, quia non sum dignus, ego
peccator/trix, leuare oculos meos ad celum (ÆP, no. 49.9).259
This adaptation is not entirely consistent, as „dignus‟ has not been altered to „digna‟; however, it is clear that, in reusing a prayerbook from a previous century, a female reader has made the prayer more intimate by making it reflect her own voice.260
When changes of gender and number are combined together, they provide strong evidence for a complete change of context, as can be seen in a collect for the
259
Emphases mine. „God, be favourable to me, a sinner, because I, a sinner, am not worthy to lift my eyes to heaven.‟ Günzel marks the added feminine forms in two ways: some she incorporates into the text, others she mentions in footnotes, e.g. „[s]ucurrite mihi, queso, omnes sancti Dei, ad quorum ego miser et peccator/trix patrocinia confugio‟ (no. 76.51; hasten to me, I ask, all the saints of God, and to those in whose protection I, wretched and a sinner, take refuge). „Miser‟, a footnote reveals, has been „changed into misera by a later hand.‟ T. A. M. Bishop‟s English Caroline Minuscule includes a facsimile of this particular folio, revealing that the „a‟ of „misera‟ was inserted into the main body of text without breaking the line, whereas „trix‟ has been added in superscript, above the final two letters of „peccator‟ and the space after it. As far as can be told, these two kinds of gloss have been added by the same hand, but Günzel edits them differently on the grounds of where the gloss letters appear in relation to the original script. T. A. M. Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 23 and plate 23.
260
It should be noted that not all of the feminine grammatical forms in Ælfwine’s Prayerbook were added by a later user. The final sequence of private prayers (no. 76) contains some feminine forms despite having been written during Ælfwine‟s time: Günzel suggests that these may have been copied in from the exemplar, which serves as a reminder that the gender of a text does not always prove who is using it. Günzel, Ælfwine’s Prayerbook, 4.
Mass „Pro prelatis et subditis‟, which has been identified, again by Muir, as an analogue for a prayer in the Galba Prayerbook.261 In the Missale ad usum ecclesie
Westmonasteriensis, the collect takes this form:
Omnipotens sempiterne deus qui facis mirabilia magna solus. pretende super famulos tuos et super cunctas congregaciones illis commissas spiritum gracie salutaris. ut et in ueritate tibi complaceant perpetuum eis rorem tue
benediccionis effunde (Westmonasteriensis, II, cols. 1143-4).262
The version in the Galba Prayerbook, which contains a wide range of gendered forms, has:
pretende super me, m‹i›sera‹m› famulam tuam, et super cunctam
congregationem mihi indignam commissam (Prayer-Book, 99, ll. 2-3).263
This collect began as a prayer for a congregation on behalf of its male leaders, but was then altered for the benefit of a single female superior praying for herself, now a „miseram‟ („pitiable‟) servant, that she might fulfil her own duties as a good abbess or prioress. The prayer retains the status conferred upon it by its liturgical origins, but in private use its purpose changes. Interestingly, this particular prayer appears again in Ælfwine’s Prayerbook, but in that manuscript it is a prayer not for superiors in general, but for „famulum tuum, abbatem nostrum‟ (ÆP, no. 76.6; „your servant, our abbot‟).
One final aspect of the gendering of prayer texts is that it also indicates how manuscripts travelled between monasteries and convents in the eleventh century. It is noteworthy that all three of the prayerbooks which will be introduced below
261
Muir, Prayer-Book, 99.
262
„Qui facis mirabilia magna solus‟: „Almighty and eternal God, who alone perform great wonders, extend to your [male] servants, and to all the congregations committed to them, a spirit of saving grace and, so that they may please you in truth, pour down on them the dew of your blessing.‟ Moeller, no. 3938c.
263
„Extend to me, your pitiable [female] servant, and to all this unworthy congregation committed to me.‟
originate from Winchester, or have a Winchester exemplar. This city was home not only to the Old and New Minsters, but also to the Nunnaminster, where the nuns would have had male chaplains to celebrate Mass for them.264 A large number of Latin prayers were copied into the Galba Prayerbook with feminine grammatical forms, yet all of the Old English texts in the same manuscript are specifically
gendered masculine, except for one which appears to have been written for a woman and then adapted for a man.265 If the translations were made for the benefit of those who did not know Latin well, then it is evident that men as well as women needed assistance with Latin. Alternatively, this text may indicate a desire to pray in one‟s mother tongue, which again would seem to apply to men as well as women. The presence of feminine Latin prayers, meanwhile, suggests that there were at least some educated women in the convent to which the manuscript belonged, and the Winchester prayerbooks provide an insight into the communication between monasteries and convents.
Another important sign of a manuscript‟s private use is a relatively high proportion of texts in the vernacular language. Old English is not unknown in late Anglo-Saxon liturgical books: it appears in rubrics, calendars of the saints and in penitential texts for the laity.266 Furthermore, in the eleventh century, considerably more vernacular texts related to the liturgy appeared, and Dumville notes that, while there is
no evidence that the liturgy was about to be translated for performance ... the testimony of the latest manuscripts hints that in time all of an English
liturgical manuscript‟s rubrics and directions (as well as much of any
264
Muir, Prayer-Book, xiv.
265
This is Prayer-Book, no. 65, the Prayers ad horas, which will be examined in detail on pages 132- 53 below.
266
David N. Dumville, Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies, Studies in Anglo-Saxon History 5 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 129-32.
accompanying computistical expositions) would routinely have been written in the vernacular.267
As an explanation for this trend, Dumville offers a range of different possibilities including a general rise in vernacular literacy, changing attitudes amongst high- ranking churchmen towards vernacular literature, or perhaps a decline in the production of Latin texts that allowed writers to concentrate on English books.268 Nevertheless, he maintains that church liturgy was not celebrated in English: it is at least reasonable to suppose that texts in Old English were used in less formal contexts, such as visiting the laity, teaching, or private prayer.
The Galba Prayerbook exemplifies Dumville‟s argument well, as it includes a number of prayers in Old English, all of which use the grammatical singular, and, where they are known to be translations, are generally very accurate.269 An example