This book consists of sixteen important studies by widely respected scholars from England and the United States that all deal with manuscripts produced in England in the Middle Ages. The first group of studies reflects the meticulous analysis of liturgical manuscripts that characterize the scholarly career of the honorand. These studies deal with both early and late medieval liturgical concerns and include liturgy for Gilbertine lay brothers, a lost treatise by Amalarius, the re-working of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel book; the music for the Vigil of St. Thomas Becket; and the continuity of Processions from Old Sarum to Salisbury Cathedral. Two other studies involve exhaustive examination of the liturgies having to do with saints in Sarum missals and breviaries.

 

The second, historical section of this volume includes three studies on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the first on Anglo-Saxon priests, the second on annals relating to Wilfrid, and the third on the Old English Boethius and Bede. Six other analyses in this section of the book focus on the high and later Middle Ages: an illuminated crusade manuscript, here newly identified as English rather than Continental illumination; codicological evidence for revising the traditional dates associated with the life and writing of Gilbertus Anglicus; evidence for Bishop William Reed’s, prodigious collection and donation of books to Oxford Colleges in the later fourteenth century; anomalous writings in a sermon codex (parish records, a bona fides document, a papal letter, and three prayers from a votive mass for a pregnant woman); the considerable records of the private incomes of monks at Westminster Abbey; and a catalogue and analysis of medieval English manuscripts containing moral philosophy.