There was a large but not quite equal number of
triple episcopal benedictions to be pronounced by the bishop after the
Lord's Prayer and before the communion. This custom must either have
been perpetuated from the old Celtic liturgy or directly derived from a
Gallican source.
Period III. _Anglo-Norman Church._--The influx of numerous foreigners,
especially from Normandy and Lorraine, which 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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