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 PRAYER-BOOKS

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PRAYER-BOOKS

portions of the Office. Many of those thus pre- served must have been intended for the use of great personages and, like the famous "Utrecht Psalter", for example, in the ninth century, or the psalter of Archbishop Egbert of Trier (d. 993), were elaborately illustrated, and, as in the last case at least, very considerably enlarged by devotional additions. At least five psalters of this kind are still in existence, which seem to have belonged to St. Louis of France, more than one of them being clearly of English workmanship, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was very famous. One of these, now pre- served at Leyden, was used by the saint in his boy- hood as an elementary reading-book, a fact which brings us very near the origin of the English name "primer". Moreover, to pass from the complete book of psalms to a collection of offices, of which the principal was the Little Office of Our Lady, was the most natural of transitions, and we thus arrive at the manual which is universally recognized as being the great prayer-book of the laity during the close of the Middle Ages (see Primer, The).

The psalter t>-pe, however, was not the only form of manual of private devotions which existed in the Carlovingian period. Several collections of mis- cellaneous prayers, often with extracts from the Gospels and more especially the Passion according to the four Evangelists, still survive from the eighth and ninth centuries. The codex known as "the Book of Cerne", written apparently for Bishop .(Edeluald of Lichfield (S18-30) and now preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, is one of the most famous of these, and it has recently been rendered accessible, with valuable notes by Mr. Edmund Bishop, in the edition of Dom Ku>-per3 (Cambridge, 1902). The traces of Celtic influences and, as Mr. Bishop points out, of "Spanish s>-mptoms", are very marked in this book, but it is difficult not to admit that such a prayer as the "Lorica" (breastplate), which, while resembling that attributed to St. Patrick, is different from it and ascribed to a certain LoJing, partakes in some respects of the nature of an in- cantation. There are also in the "Book of Cerne" and some similar collections forms of general accusa- tion for confession, embracing almost every imagi- nable crime, which were probably intended to help the penitent, much as a modern examination of con- science might do. Closely resembling the "Book of Cerne" is the eighth-century Book of Nunnaminster (MS. Harl. 2965). This also contains the Passion according to the four Evangelists and a miscellaneous collection of non-liturgical prayers (many of them con- nected with the Passion of Christ), and also the "Lorica" of Loding. Irish and Galhcan charac- teristics are much in evidence, in spite of the book coming from Winchester. This is still more the case with Harl. ^LS. 7053, a fragmentary "book of private devotions written by an Irish lady probably a nun", and with MS. Reg. 2, A. XX., compiled probably at Lindisfarne in the eighth century. In all of them, despite much genuine piety, there is a pronounced tendency to fall occasionally to the level of magical incantations and spells. Even on the Continent these collections of prayers for private use were apt to wear an Irish colouring, as, for example, may be observed in the tenth-century "Libellus Precum" of Fleury (printed by Martene, "De antiq. ecc. ritibus". III, 234), though prayers extracted from the Fathers, e. g. St. Augustine and St. Ephrcem, predominated. Alcuin in his "De Psalmorum Usu" and "Officia per Ferias " (P. L., CI, 465-612) also made similar collections. His arrangement of such de- votions according to days of the week was especially noteworthy, since it was conspicuously revived by Simon Vercpa-us and other prayer-book compilers of the sixth centur>'.

The affection for the Psalms, even when dissociated

from any form of Office, was always a conspicuous feature in the early devotional books of the laity; see, for example, the "Liber Orationum" of Charles the Bald (ninth century, edited at Ingolstadt, 1583), in which, after the example of Alcuin, selections of the Psalms are made for various spiritual needs, e. g. "Psalmi pro tribulatione et tentatione carnis", "Pro gratiarum actione", etc. When, however, some few centuries later, it had become the custom in most of the monastic orders to supplement the Di\'ine Oflfice with various "cursus" of the Blessed Virgin, of All Saints, of the Holy Cross, etc., these excres- cences upon the official prayer of the Church acquired great popularity with the laity also, and in the long run it seems to have been felt that the psalms in- cluded in these little offices, with the Gradual and Penitential Psalms, sufficed for the needs of the ordi- nary layman. Hence the "Book of Hours", or "Primer" (q. v.), as it was called in England, gradu- ally replaced the Psalter in popular use. At the same time an immense variety of prayers came to be added to the Office of Our Lady, which formed the kernel of these " Hors ", so that hardly any two manu- script copies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are identical in their contents. In the case of books -nTitten for the devotion of royal and noble personages, the most exquisite artistic skill was often lavished upon the illuminations and miniatures with which they were adorned. Be it noted also that in course of time a certain traditional order of subjects estabfished itself in the full-page miniatures which commonly preceded each of the Little Hours, the Penitential Psalms, the Office for the Dead, and the other elements of which these Books of Hours were made up, but to give details would be impossible here. A brief description of some of the most famous of these artistic treasures, e. g. the "Horte" of Bona of Luxemburg (1327) and that of Catherine of Cleves, wife of Duke Arnold of Gelders, is given by Father Beissel in the "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach" (.A.ug., 1909) and a more general account by Dr. M. R. James in his catalogue of the MSS. of the Fitzwilliam Museum (especially pp. xxv-.xxx\aii).

L^pon the introduction of printing an immense stimulus was given to the production of manuals of popular devotion. Apart from a relatively quite small and unimportant class of booklets (the "Fifteen O's" in English, "printed by command of Princess Ehzabeth, Queen of England", at Caxton's press in 1490, may be cited in illustration), the books issued from 1475 to about 1530, though the names differed, varied hardly at all in tj-pe. In France and England the "Horse" held undi-sputed sway. As explained in the article Primer, certain elements were constant, and the supplementarj- matter exhibited a constant tendency to increase in bulk and we may add also in extravagance. In Germany the book known as the "Hortulus Animoe" (the little garden of the .soul), which seems first to have appeared in 149S, enjoyed most popularity. But though, the "Hora;" and the "Hortulus" were apt to differ somewhat in arrange- ment, their contents in substance were identical, and, more particularly after the "Hortulus" was brought out at Lyons in 1504, the various publishers of the one book made no scruple about appropriating any feature in the other which took their fancy. Both in the "Horae" and the "Hortulus" we find, at any rate in the later copies, almost without exception, after the Calendar, the Office of the Blessed Virgin, ex-tracts from the four Gospels (either the beginnings or the narratives of the Passion), the Penitential P.salms, the Litany of the Saints, a long series of prayers to the Holy Trinity and the Divine Persons, to Our Lady and to different saints, mostly with an antiphon, versicle, and respond taken from liturgical books, also prayers for the principal feasts borrowed from the Missal, and particularly the Office for the