This major contribution to the study of medieval liturgy takes into account an office Lectionary copied for the Victorine house of Faronville, near Melun. The manuscript under study is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 14281, an early 13th-century Lectionary which belongs to the Saint Victor collection at the BnF. The author, Karin Ganss, provides a deep and well-structured research study which is organized in three parts: a detailed presentation of the manuscript, an analysis of the content of the Temporal, and a study of the Sanctoral.
Ms. Latin 14281 is described in its smaller details: paleographical and codicological features are accurately reported, along with elements of the decoration and a reconstruction of its recent provenance. Despite paleographical evidence that points to the early 13th century, the manuscript could be a copy of a late 12th-century Lectionary, since Bernard of Clairvaux, canonized in 1174, is absent from the Sanctoral. Ganss brings valuable arguments to support the identification of the place named Faronville, which she places near Melun, in the archdiocese of Sens. The abbey of Faronville belonged originally to the Benedictines of Saint Eloi and only in 1134 did it become a priory of Saint Victor abbey. The reconstruction of the historical context is made through a very meticulous and comprehensive evaluation of historiographical and historical sources, among which are the cartulary and the Necrology of Saint Victor, the inventory of the properties of Saint Victor (kept at the Archives départementales Seine et Marne), the Ordinary of Saint Victor (under the rubric De computatione priorum), and a great variety of literary sources. Furthermore, the analysis of the Necrology leads to an exhaustive prosopography of the priors of Faronville. In this respect, Ganss’ work proves itself to be an exemplary model for research methods in the investigation of liturgical manuscripts.
The Temporal in Ms. Latin 14281 is divided into two parts. The first one contains readings for the first and second nocturne of the night office for the Sundays and ferial days of the weeks following the feast of the Holy Trinity. The order of readings and the choice of the biblical books are compared to the Ordinary of Saint Victor and to the order of readings of Saint Ruf. Texts are also compared to the Victorine Breviary, the Lectionaries of other churches such as Montiéramey and Cluny, and to the Cistercian tradition. Ganss provides a detailed study of the texts, their variants and omissions, and their relation to biblical texts. Particular attention is devoted to readings for Ember weeks, the only readings whose text is patristic rather than biblical, being taken from Leo I, Bede, and Hrabanus Maurus. The second part includes the readings for the Sunday third nocturne, which comprise a Gospel pericope and a homily divided into three lessons. Readings of the Temporal are carefully considered in comparison with other Lectionaries and--most important--with the Ordinaries of Saint Victor (Mss. BnF, Latin 14455, 14456, 14506, 15064), of the Trinitarian order (which adopted Saint Victor’s liturgy), and those of Saint Géry of Cambrai and Saint Arnulf of Metz.
The third part of Ganss’ work is devoted to the Sanctoral. She offers an accurate study of the authors of the texts (from Bede, Gregory the Great, Jerome, and Leo I), along with analysis of the feasts of saints. All details of the Sanctoral--both Proprium and Commune--are considered, as is the referral to Sundays for the dominica infra octavam and the octave of certain feasts. Ganss gives a comparison with the Sanctoral of Notre-Dame de Paris and discusses the patronage of Mary Magdalene at Faronville, proving that the dedication of the priory to Mary Magdalene appears in Ms. Latin 14281 for the very first time.
The volume ends with an appendix that includes a description of the manuscripts that have been used for comparison, namely Paris, BnF, Latin 806 (Augustinians’ Office Lectionary), Latin 812 (Lectionary), Latin 1018 (Marseille Breviary), Latin 14280 (Homiliary), Latin 14302 (Homiliary), Latin 14363 (Legendary), Latin 795 (Saint Médard Office Lectionary), Latin 803 (Office Lectionary from Arrouaise), Latin 805 (Augustinians’ Office Lectionary from Arrouaise), Latin 809 (Trinitarians’ Breviary and Missal), Latin 14449; Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, 347 and 698; and Paris, Arsenal, 943. The appendix is followed by a bibliography and indexes of biblical passages, of authors and works, of persons, of manuscripts, and of liturgical feasts.
To complement this review, we would like to point to some details that, in our opinion, could have been considered otherwise. Since the manuscript is available online, it is easy to check the interesting inscriptions on fol. 1r, especially the ownership mark of Faronville, where Ganss reads “indampna alienauerit,” claiming that the term “indampna” is not elsewhere attested in Latin. However, according to the ductus of this scribe, the last letter can’t be an “a,” but it is rather a 9-shape sign for “us,” so the word should be read as “indampnus,” which is recorded as a synonym for “innocens” (see G. Loewe, Glossae nominum, Leipzig 1884, p. 55) and makes sense as referring to the potential thief. In the same paragraph, it could be worth noting that “eum fuerit” is clearly a scribe’s misspelling for “eum furaverit.” We observe en passant that Ganss doesn’t give any date for the two ex-libris.
Regarding paleographical analysis, Ganss points to two main hand changes in the manuscript: the first one occurs between fols. 128 and 129, the second between fols. 162 and 163. A third change matches the addition at fols. 308v-309r. But while in the first case the script is clearly different, there seems to be no shift in script or hand on fols. 162-163. In this instance, a discussion of the different features of each hand would have been truly helpful to get the author’s point.
Although liturgy is here extremely well analyzed, shedding light, for the first time, on the relations between different Victorine houses and between Victorine liturgical use and other ones, like Augustinians and Trinitarians, the author neglects some points of investigation that could be useful for understanding the performative aspect of the liturgy. For example, she analyzes in great detail the sources of the readings of the Temporal, but she fails to argue for the relationship between the two series of readings, that for the first two nocturnes and that of the third. Specifically, she doesn’t discuss the liturgical practice of “imposing the historia” for the office readings of the summer season, where biblical books were changed according to the solar month. The main consequence was that for each month, the number of Sundays was 4 or 5, depending on the year, so written liturgical texts had to be adapted to the current situation, adding a Sunday (and taking back the last formulary) or omitting one. Ganss numbers the Sundays of the first section sequentially, as their readings were to be said in that order, without discussing the possible Victorine or Faronville peculiarity on this matter.
Again, it is not clear why she talks about “four readings” for the third nocturne: it’s true that there are a Gospel pericope and a homily divided into three readings, but the Gospel is part of the first reading (namely, the seventh of the whole night office) and, from a liturgical point of view, there is a total number of three readings, each one to be followed by a responsory. The author is certainly very precise and correct in her descriptions, but, like someone who uses an extremely powerful magnifying glass, she sometimes risks losing sight of the big picture.
A smaller incongruity appears at p. 38, where Ganss says that the rubric for the first liturgical day, which has not been copied in the manuscript, should be “feria prima lectio prima,” whereas the first reading clearly refers to Monday, that is, “feria secunda.” In the edition of the incipits, though, she correctly transcribes “feria II” (104). Finally, the rich history of Ms. Latin 14281 could be completed with the reference to its final destination, since it was acquired by the National Library in 1796 (as the stamps of the French Revolution period confirm), along with the rest of the Saint Victor collection.
Nevertheless, these observations are minor compared to the extent and accuracy of the work, which should be regarded as an example of accomplished research, both in the methodological approach and in the quality of the results. Moreover, Ganss’ work is, at the present time, the most comprehensive and deep study of Victorine liturgy. We can only wish that research like this will soon extend to the other texts of the office and of the Mass, for a broader and fuller understanding of the use of Saint Victor and its impact on late medieval worship and liturgical practice.