Ritual Texts

Monks didn't operate in ideology alone -- many orders were deeply rooted in tradition. Illuminated manuscripts were used in a meta ritual way for many in monastic orders. Manuscripts were created in an way that conveyed the order of a prayer or a sequence of actions a person needed to make for a religious purpose. According to Eamon Duffy, "... [reading Psalters,] by the twelfth century, become a routine and often obligatory extension of the monastic round of worship or Opus Dei. Monks were obliged weekly to recite more or less the entire Psalter in a complex arrangement divided into the eight daily offices starting with Matins and ending with the short bedtime service of Compline." [6]  He goes on to say that "by the twelfth century, however, monks were often also obliged to recite shorter groups of psalms such as the Penitential psalms or the so-called 'Gradular' psalms, and some short, simple, devotional offices, above all the 'Little Hours' of the Virgin, and, daily, the Office of the Dead in memory of deceased brethren." [7] These books were structured in such a way as to, in a meta fashion, preserve tradition of a type or category of prayer.

What's more interesting, though, is the didactic aspect of these manusctips. An example of this, as Susan Boynton puts it, is that "many monastic Psalters contain the texts of rituals for confession and penitence, attesting to their pastoral function within the monastic community in addition to their use in the education of monks." [9] This can be compared to other types of manuscripts that were made for a similar purpose. For example, the Somme le Roi, a guide of how to be king, had a similar connotation. The books were meant to be a moral manual for the ruler of France, Phillip III, in the same way that Psalters were meant to be guides on how to act in their communities for the monks.

The Bosworth Psalter is the psalter chosen for this exhibition because it includes the recitation of the Office which was mandated by the Rule of St. Benedict. It was introduced to English monastic order as the primary psalter to use. [10]

Another ritual manuscript that I chose for my exhibit is the Manuscript Leaf with the Martyrdom of Saint Peter Martyr in an Initial P, from a Gradual. Musical notation, itself the invention of medieval monks, appears in manuscripts large enough for a whole choir to see. [8] In monasteries and churches, musical chants were performed regularly during Christian liturgical ceremonies.