This important volume is the first major and detailed study of the performance of the office liturgy in pre-Conquest England. While scholars of early English liturgy have been fortunate in recent years in the publication of new editions of significant manuscripts for the celebration of the Mass and for pontifical services, the evidence for the daily office has received much less attention. Nicholas Orchard's editions of the Leofric Missal and Ratoldus Pontifical, for example, with their detailed analysis and lengthy commentaries, have illuminated and clarified the development of the liturgies of the Mass and of the blessings and services conducted by bishops. Important work has been done by a number of scholars, Susan Rankin and Alicia Correa for example, specifically on individual Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and texts, but there has been no modern scholarly assessment of the totality of evidence for the secular or monastic office. This has been a serious lacuna; Billett's book not only fills this gap but also does so in such a way that students not only of the liturgy but also of the early medieval church will be in his debt.
The evidence for the daily office in Anglo-Saxon England is scant and difficult: with the exception of psalters, only one major liturgical book of the office survives from the period before 1000: the Durham Collectar or Ritual, Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19. The chants of the daily office are preserved in manuscript fragments such as the Ushaw Lectionary fragment or in additions to extant manuscripts such as the supplement of texts added to the Durham Collectar or those inscribed in the margins of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41. The student of the Anglo-Saxon office therefore needs to work closely with these surviving liturgical texts and to be able to interpret historical and narrative accounts about liturgical practice in England to gain the fullest possible picture.
The Divine Office is divided into two sections: the first (pp. 3–196) provides an overview of the office liturgy in Anglo-Saxon England while the second (pp. 199–388) is a detailed study of four manuscripts containing office liturgy: BL Royal MS 17.C.xvii, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D 894, and the additions to Corpus 41 and to Durham A.IV.19, all written in tenth- or eleventh-century England. These analyses are accompanied by tables and prefaced by a lucid discussion of Billett's methodology for assessing the provenance and origins of the chant texts they contain. Both sections are of the first importance for historians of medieval liturgy and of the early English church.
The first chapter of Part One sets the scene for the English situation by presenting the evidence for the performance of the office in Rome and on the continent. Billett argues that the great churches of Rome only celebrated one form of the office cursus and did not distinguish between monastic and secular forms of the daily office. He cautions that the Roman office was in constant evolution and fluid. Monastic practice in the west was not regulated until the Carolingian reforms of the eighth and ninth centuries; before then, while the Rule of St Benedict was venerated and adopted in some houses, abbots had discretion in the structure and content of the daily office. Monastic houses also followed their own traditions. The practice of the monastic office in pre-Carolingian Europe was diverse and the cursus as laid down in the Rule of St Benedict was only one among many traditions. In the middle of the eighth century, the Frankish church looked to Rome as a model of correct liturgical practice and the Roman cursus was promoted for use by both monks and clergy. A leader amongst foundations adopting the Roman office was Metz, where Bishop Chrodegang had composed a separate rule for clergy that required its performance. The Frankish liturgical reforms of the eighth century adopted the Roman cursus – the form of the office in the arrangement of psalms and readings – for use in both monasteries and secular communities. However, within the essential structure of the office, there was room for variation in the chants and texts used, and this could provoke controversy over how closely Roman usage should be followed and to what extent Frankish traditions could be continued. These eighth-century changes did not require the celebration of two different cursus by monks and clergy. This watershed occurred in the early ninth century when the Councils of Aachen in 816 and 817, under the authority of the Emperor Louis the Pious, regulated the lives of both monks and clergy in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict for the former, and a revised form of Chrodegang's rule for the latter. This is the first articulation of separate but parallel forms of the office. The impact of these rulings was probably gradual but their influence grew and profoundly informed monastic reform in the tenth century. It must be stressed that Billett's scene-setting chapter is no superficial survey but a close and scrupulous study of the evidence for the Roman office and of the central texts of the Carolingian period.
The Anglo-Saxon church was founded by the missionaries sent by Pope Gregory the Great and developed from practices and traditions imported by them. Rome and its customs were especially venerated in England and seen as providing authoritative tradition. These Roman practices were cross-fertilised with influences from elsewhere, with Ireland, Iona, Wales and other areas following ‘Celtic’ practices. It was also, of course, in close contact with Francia and the continent. Narrative sources for the Anglo-Saxon liturgy before 900 stress its adoption of Roman customs, highlighting the work of music masters such as the Roman John the Archcantor or St Wilfrid's Aeddi and Maban in teaching Roman liturgy. These texts have generally been subject to historical commentary that has tended simply to repeat their claims. Billett brings a liturgist's eye to their evidence and is able to demonstrate the widespread use of the Roman office, not the Benedictine, in England before 900. Details of narrative texts such as the ninth-century Northumbrian poem De abbatibus indicate clearly that the communities described were following a secular, Roman cursus and not a monastic one. So the English picture accords with the continental in showing the use of one office by monks and clergy. Where evidence of actual liturgical chants is preserved, for example in Alcuin's De Laude Dei, which incorporates an early antiphoner from York, this also points to the use of the Roman office and Roman texts, often archaic in nature, a conclusion reinforced by the discoveries of Nicholas Orchard in his investigation of the Leofric Missal that highlights a number of prayers apparently going back to ancient Roman tradition.
Continental influence in England was felt in two chronological waves. The first is evidenced in two manuscripts, the Durham Collectar, a book of office prayers and readings copied in southern England in the period 890 to 930 and augmented in the late tenth century for the diocese of Chester-le-Street, and Corpus 41, in which liturgical texts were added as marginalia in the eleventh century. Both books bear witness to the presence in England of the liturgy of the secular office according to ninth-century Frankish codification of Roman liturgy. The second wave was initiated by the English Benedictine reformers of the later tenth century who sought to impose a strict performance of the Benedictine reform and to introduce into England for the first time a distinction between the secular and monastic cursus. The mechanics of such a change were by no means straightforward, involving the training of monks in texts and music, the acquisition of new books and the re-education of many personnel. It is here that Billett's close study of his chosen liturgical books comes into play, showing how such an important educational and cultural change could be achieved: by the supplementation and adaptation of the existing secular cursus or by abandoning earlier books and practices and copying from scratch new liturgical books.
Billett thus charts the development of the office in Anglo-Saxon England, starting with the adoption of the Roman office and its use in secular communities such as cathedrals as well as monastic foundations. The evidence of the De Laude Dei indicates that even in the late eighth century ancient Roman texts, probably dating back to the theological and educational mission of the Roman John the Archcantor in 679, were still in use, supplemented by other material, including more recent Frankish borrowings. By the late ninth or early tenth century, English practice may have looked rather backward by continental standards; the evidence of the Durham Collectar and the marginalia added to Corpus 41 indicates the import of new Frankish books with their updated ‘Gregorian’ texts and chants. By the later tenth century, a number of Englishmen were swept along by the tenth-century continental reforms movements and wanted like their fellow monks at Fleury and Corbie to institute a strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, clearly distinguishing monks from clergy. However, Billett cautions that this major liturgical shift was not made quickly and liturgical books from St Augustine's Canterbury and elsewhere indicate that the new and updated books required to implement this change were still being compiled and copied.
Some measure of Billett's monumental achievement in this book can be made by recourse to Richard W. Pfaff's magisterial history of the liturgy in medieval England. Pfaff devotes just over two pages to the office in the pre-Viking Age and his discussion of the period from 900 to 1066 is fragmented between discussion of individual manuscripts and texts. Pfaff was particularly exercised by the question of local usage – what could be said of the liturgical celebrations of the minster churches of pre-Conquest England that dominated the local church and to what extent the celebration of the secular office was widespread in pre-Conquest England. For Pfaff, much of the history of the daily office in Anglo-Saxon England is simply unknowable. Billett's study illuminates: in establishing the celebration of the secular office by both clergy and monks before the impact of the tenth-century Benedictine reforms, he sheds light on the practices of local churches such as the south-western church where Corpus 41 was used and whose priest appears to have been laboriously updating his traditional English office with newer Frankish texts perhaps at the behest of his bishop. The problem of whether secular cathedrals in a pre-reform era were scrupulous in their celebration of the office is also clarified: Alcuin's De Laude Dei evidences the antiphoner for York, and the reliance of the reformers upon knowledge of the secular cursus in introducing their newer practices also speaks to its widespread use. Of course, much remains unknown: our evidence is fragmentary and scant and Billett's research uses snapshots to illuminate wider questions. But he has built an overall narrative that not only explains the evidence we have but is also in accordance with the historical evidence.
Historians have stressed that both in England and on the continent the distinction between communities of monks and clergy was blurred and ill-defined and that the Carolingian reforms of the ninth century were a watershed in their attempt to establish clear boundaries between the two types of religious. Billett's exposition of the ubiquity of the Roman office in early Anglo-Saxon England helps us to understand more clearly how the religious experience of clerks and monks overlapped and why the two groups often could not be distinguished. His account of the introduction of the Benedictine office by the tenth-century reformers highlights the challenges involved in their determination to follow the Rule strictly in accordance with continental practice: he emphasises how hard it must have been to unlearn existing practices as well as to acquire new ones. His argument that this was only achieved gradually fits with the evidence of the Regularis Concordia and its translation by Aelfric. The former refers at key points to the older clerical office and the latter adapted and modified the Regularis Concordia for use in his newly founded community at Eynsham. There was nothing mechanical about reform innovations: they required adaptation and provoked controversy. At the heart of Benedictine reform lay the question of tradition – the tradition of Benedictine monasticism and the authentic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon church. The reformers, in claiming that Benedictine monasticism had been corrupted and obliterated in England, sought to restore it in pure form by recourse to continental houses, notably at Fleury where the relics of the saint himself lay, and at Corbie. But they also claimed to restore the monasticism of Bede's golden age, culting earlier saints and reviving ancient communities. Billett points out that the old Romanum psalter was still widely used, instead of the Gallicanum of the continental Benedictine monasteries, a usage that was clearly intended to maintain and preserve ancient English practice.
This is a work not only of great technical erudition and acumen in matters liturgical but also of historical learning. Billett's interpretation of his liturgical evidence is placed firmly in the context of the historical development of the religious life in Anglo-Saxon England; he is not only impressively up to date in his historical learning but also admirably judicious in his assessment of complex historical matters. As a historian one might quibble with some details in his account, for example, his tendency to emphasise the Alfredian period as the possible date when new continental books and customs were imported at the expense of the reign of Athelstan, a ruler known for continental contacts and intellectual and cultural ambitions. The usage of neumes of a ‘Breton’ type would point to the latter reign as a likely time, when links to Brittany are well evidenced.
Billett's history of the office places the practice of the daily office at the heart of the experience of the religious life and particularly of reformed monasticism. It is an important reminder to historians of how their understanding of monasticism can be skewed by their reliance upon narrative sources such as hagiography or on the documentary record of charters. To be sure, the cult of the saints and landholding were fundamental parts of the religious life but the daily experience of a monk was shaped by his frequent participation in the liturgy and his training and role within the community decided by his aptitude for performance. I have indicated above how his analysis of the tenth-century liturgy illuminates the competing claims of tradition in English Benedictine Reform. His discussion of how Anglo-Saxon liturgy continued to retain ancient Roman texts long after Roman practice had in fact moved on illuminates how deeply embedded in the identity of the English church was its devotion to Rome: its tradition was both Roman and English. Students of the medieval liturgy, of the English church and of Anglo-Saxon religious and intellectual culture are greatly in Dr Billett's debt for this lucid and important book.
