Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies

Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies. By DAVID DUMVILLE. Studies in Anglo-Saxon History 5. Woodbridge, U.KI: The Boydell Press, 1992. x + 193 pp.

David Dumville laudably attempts to remove liturgical studies from the exclusive domain of specialists in liturgics and, without sacrificing learned and critical perspective, to turn the examination of the documents of the liturgy to the service of more general historical studies. The book is dedicated to Helmut Gneuss, the Munich professor whose interest as a literary scholar in the texts and books of the liturgy has been so fruitful.

Dumville begins with studies of two calendars. The first is that of the Junius Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27), probably from the 920s and containing the Psalterium Romanum with an Old English gloss derived...