Sées, Archives diocésaines, MS 3 (T.f.3) / The Lancaster Missal

Although some scholars have previously expressed some doubts about whether this book was made in England, there seems to be no doubt that it was made on behalf of the Priory of St Mary next to the castle in Lancaster—even if it was not actually made at the priory itself. This much is clearly implied by the colophon—the scribal inscription at the end of the manuscript which provides information about when and why the book was made—and the postscript on the following page:

These items allow us to identify the patron or sponsor of the book’s as Ralph Courait, an early fourteenth-century prior of Lancaster, and they show that the book was designed to be used at the priory’s mother-house, the Abbaye Saint-Martin de Séez on the southern border of Normandy. The abbey’s ex libris (Liber sancti Martini Sagiensis) also appears on the final page (fol. 275v). Since Courait’s reign as prior of Lancaster began in August 1328 and ended before 27 July 1337, when permission was sought to appoint a successor, the book must have been made between these dates. It is copied in a mature Gothic bookhand with a strong vertical aspect and some distinctive ligatures.

To explain the background, the Abbaye Saint-Martin de Sées was re-founded in the 1050s by Roger de Montgommery, when he was viscount of Exmes (d. 1094). One of the most important figures in the following of William the Conqueror, Roger later became earl of Shrewsbury and his sons were also granted substantial honours in England. It was his third son, Roger the Poitevin (d. before 1140), who founded Lancaster Priory at some point between 1087 and 1094, granting it substantial lands and resources around Lancaster—indeed, almost everything that Roger held in the northern reaches of what would later become the County of Lancashire, apart from Furness. (Roger was known as ‘the Poitevin’, in part because he was married to Almodis, sister of Boso III, count of La Marche (d. 1091), but also because he had a second career in La Marche/Poitou after falling from favour and losing the last of his English honours in 1102.)

Founded as a daughter house of Saint-Martin de Sées, the priory owed a substantial annual pension of fifty marks (£33) to the abbey, which successfully retained its lordship over the house until the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. In 1209, after Normandy (and Sées) had fallen under French control, the abbot agreed a process for selecting new priors with King John. In return for 200 marks (£133) and two palfreys, the king agreed that in the event of a vacancy the abbot would present two of his monks to the king who would choose the next prior from this shortlist. The chosen prior was then to be given possession of the house and its incomes, and was not to be recalled without the abbot’s consent (see The Lancashire Pipe Rolls, ed. William Farrer (Liverpool, 1902), p. 231). It follows that Prior Ralph may well have been a monk of Saint-Martin de Sées—his surname is certainly French.

This missal is a substantial book of 275 folios, in a large format (480×275 mm), clearly intended to be seen and admired. The most puzzling feature comprises the many gaps in the texts of the offices and the places where the text has been replaced by an early modern hand. These changes (if that is what they are) seem to be the product of a later, half-finished attempt to revise numerous offices; but this hypothesis requires further investigation.

Points of particular interest include the original binding, whose boards are clearly visible along with the cords used to tie them together, and the calendar with which the book begins. The pages for January to August have been lost, leaving only the final four months; but those that remain are full of useful data. The feasts are divided into six ranks according to level of liturgical provision: (1) doubles (i.e. maximum provison with the antiphons sung after as well as before the Psalms and Magnificat at Vespers), (2) in copes (i.e. wearing coloured, festive vestments), (3) twelve lessons (i.e. the fullest form of the Night Office in the Benedictine liturgy), (4) in albs (i.e. wearing a white, intermediate-level festive vestment), (5) three lessons, and (6) commemorated (cf. Clemens and Graham, Manuscript Studies, p. 198). In general, blue ink is reserved for the feasts in the highest ranks, red for the middling feasts, and brown for those of three lessons and those ‘commemorated’ at some point during the day but not with lessons at Nocturns. But for a slight deviation from the usual pattern, see the entry for 14 September, which indicates that twelve lessons were read at Nocturns on this day, four for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and eight for the feast of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian. When two feasts fall the same day, the usual solution was to celebrate one at nocturns while leaving the other to be commemorated in some other way. In keeping with the missal's provenance and its intended destination, the schedules for September to December give prominent treatment to the following feasts:

• Nativitas sancte Marie uirginis. in capis [8 September]
• Octave sancte Marie uirginis. xii. lectiones [15 September]
• Sancti Michaelis in Monte Gargano. in capis [29 September]
• Octave sancti Michaelis. xii. lectiones [6 October]
• Sancti Wlfranni episcopi et confessoris. xii. lectiones [15 October]
• Sancti Michaelis in Monte Tumba. xii. lectiones [16 October]
• Sancti Melonis archiepiscopi et confessoris. xii. lectiones [22 October]
• Sancti Romani archiepiscopi. xii. lectiones (23 October)
• Sancti Martini archiepiscopi. duplex. [11 November] [Cf. the entries for All Souls and Christmas.]
• Octave sancti Martini. in capis. [18 November]
• Sancti Nicholai episcopi et confessoris. in capis. [6 December]
• Conceptio beate Marie. in capis [8 December]
• Sancti Ebrulfi abbatis [et] confessoris [28 December]

St Martin of Tours, whose Nativity is celebrated as a feast of the highest rank, was the patron saint of the Abbaye de Sées in Normandy. The feasts of the Nativity and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the patron of Lancaster priory, are celebrated as feasts of slightly lower rank, and the former is given its octave. The feasts of various Norman saints are also prominent: the Archangel Michael was the patron of the Abbaye de Saint-Michel, one of the most important Benedictine houses in Normandy; St Wulfram was one of the patron saints of Fontanelles, another great Norman house; St Évroult (Ebrulfus) was the patron of the Abbaye de Saint-Évroult, the house a short distance to the north-west of Sées that supplied the monks with which the abbey was founded; Archbishops Romanus and Mellonus were the patron saints of the cathedral at Rouen. Mons Tumba was original name for the island Mont-Saint-Michel where the abbey was located. The cult of St Nicholas, the patron saint of Bari in Apulia, gained popularity in Normandy from the eleventh century, when warriors from Normandy were active in southern Italy.

The two litanies of the saints on fols. 95r—96r also feature double invocations for St Martin (Sancte martine. ii. ora, i.e. ‘O St Martin, pray [for us], O St Martin, pray [for us] ...’). The book is lavishly decorated throughout, but the propers for several of these saints are also marked out with somewhat more elaborate initials in the sanctoral cycle—that is, in the section, chiefly on fols. 162r–254r, where the book sets out prayers, Bible-readings and sometimes chants which were used in the performance of the Mass on various saints’ days that were observed at Sées, e.g.

• In purificatio sancte Marie officium (fols. 170r–171r) [2 February]
• Annunciatio sancte Marie officium (fols. 176r–177r) [25 March]
• In translatione sancti Nicholai episcopi et confessors officium (fols. 182v–183r) [9 May]
• Translatione sancti Benedicti abbatis officium (fols. 198r–199v) [11 July]
• In die sancti Michaelis officium (fols. 227v–228v) [29 September]
• In uigilia sancti Martini officium (fol. 240rv) [10 November]
• In die sancti Martini officium (fols. 240v–241v) [11 November]
• In natali sancti Nicholai officium (fols. 249r–250v) [6 December]
• In die conceptionis beate Marie officium (fols. 251v–252v) [8 December]
• De sancto Martino (fols. 268r–269r) [For general use as a votive mass?]

Almost certainly drafted using an exemplar from Sées, these items reveal that the Abbaye Saint-Martin was deeply embedded in the world of the Norman Church—hardly a surprising conclusion. But there is also a striking entry in the calendar under 16 November for the feast of St Edmund of Abingdon, a famous archbishop of Canterbury (1233–40). Edmund was a secular cleric and a preacher famous for his advocacy of the Sixth Crusade. As archbishop he had been a staunch critic of King Henry III and an advocate of reform. He died in exile and was buried in France, at the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny, where miracles were reported at his tomb.

The author of the present site is grateful to Peter Kidd for permission to re-iterate and revise the observations about the present manuscript which he made in his blog Medieval Manuscripts Provenance: Weekly Notes and Observations, 3 March 2019.

Online Facsimile: Sées, Archives diocésaines, MS 3 (T.f.3). This facsimile is hosted by the Bibliothèque virtuelle des manuscrits médiévaux (BVMM), a website developed by the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT-CNRS). Please give your attention to the calendar pages on fols. 1r–2v and the colophon on fol. 275r and the postscript on fol. 275v.

References and Further Reading

• Farrer, W., and J. Brownbill (eds), A History of the County of Lancaster, vol. 2 (London, 1908). See pp. 167–73, for Lancaster Priory.
• Farrer, W. (ed.), The Lancashire Pipe Rolls (Liverpool, 1902). At pp. 289–96 Farrer provides an edition with extensive notes of the foundation charter from London, British Library, Harley MS 3764, fol. 1v.
• Gazeau, V., Normania Monastica, vol. 2, Prosopographie des abbés bénédictins (Xe–XIIe siècle) (Caen, 2007), pp. 353–5.
• Hill, R. M. T., D. B. Robinson, R. Brocklesby, and T. C. B. Timmins (eds), Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340, 6 vols, Canterbury and York Society 70–71, 76, 85, 93 and 101 (Torquay and Woodbridge, 1977–2011). See vol. 1, p. 41 (nos 127–9), for the presentation and institution of Ralph Courait at Lancaster.
• Jordan, W. C., ‘The English Holy Men of Pontigny’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 43 (2008), 63–75. Available at EBSCO.
• Mason, J. F. A., ‘Montgomery, Roger de, First Earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1094)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2015).
• Omont, H., Catalogue générale des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départments, vols. 1–2, Rouen (Paris, 1886–8), ii, 470–1 (for the colophon).
• Roper, W. O. (ed. and trs.), Materials for the History of the Church of Lancaster, 2 vols, Chetham Society, 2nd ser. 26 and 31 (Manchester, 1892–94). For the text and a translation of the foundation charter, see vol. 1, pp. 8–12.

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