Until recently, research on the late medieval English Office liturgy has suggested that all manuscripts of the same liturgical Use, including those of the celebrated and widespread Uses of Sarum and York, are in large part interchangeable and uniform. This study demonstrates, through detailed analyses of the manuscript breviaries and antiphonals of each secular liturgical Use of medieval England, that such books do share a common textual core. But this is in large part restricted to a single genre of text--the responsory. Other features, even within manuscripts of the same Use, are subject to striking and significant variation, influenced by local customs and hagiographical and textual priorities, and also by varying reception to liturgical prescriptions from ecclesiastical authorities. The identification of the characteristic features of each Use and the differentiation of regional patterns have resulted from treating each manuscript as a unique witness, a practice which is not common in liturgical studies, but one which gives the manuscripts greater value as historical sources. The term 'Use', often employed as a descriptor of orthodoxy, may itself imply a greater uniformity than ever existed, for the ways that the 'Use of Sarum', a liturgical pattern originally designed for enactment in a single cathedral, was realised in countless other venues for worship were dependent on the times, places, and contexts in which the rites were celebrated.

The Divine Office--the cycle of daily worship other than the Mass--is the richest source of liturgical texts and music from the Latin Middle Ages. However, its richness, the great diversity of its manuscripts, and its many variations from community to community have made it difficult to study, and it remains largely unexplored terrain. This volume is a practical guide to the Divine Office for students and scholars throughout the field of medieval studies. The book surveys the many questions related to the Office and presents the leading analytical tools and research methods now used in the field. Beginning with the Office in the early Middle Ages, the book covers manuscript sources and their contents; regional developments and variations; the relationship between the Office, the Mass, and other ceremonies and repertories; and the deep links between the Office and medieval hagiography. The book concludes with a discussion of recent technical advances for handling the enormous amounts of evidence on the Office and its performance, in particular CANTUS, the vast electronic database developed by Ruth Steiner of Catholic University for the analysis of chant repertories. The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages is an essential resource for anyone studying medieval liturgy. Its accessible style and broad coverage make it an important basic reference for a wide range of students and scholars in art history, religious studies, social history, literature, musicology, and theology.

The "rhymed office" consists of a series of versified antiphons and responsories sung at certain fixed hours of the day as part of the liturgical worship of the Christian church. A special variety of rhymed office is the office in acrostic form, in which the initials of the individual items when read in sequence form a secondary text. The forty-two known acrostic offices were composed throughout continental Europe from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. The acrostics themselves usually name the feast, the author, or both. Complex acrostics are generally prayers or assertions of authorship. The acrostic can travel through all items of the work in the sequence of their performance, or join together only parts of the office (antiphons only, responsories only, Vespers service only, etc.). Both kinds of acrostic strive to lend unity to the discrete poetic items of the office: the first method compiles the diverse elements into one; the second orders the work into parts reflective of larger liturgical units. The two tendencies towards unification are also seen in the treatment of the metre and of the narrative material. The significance of the acrostic form is difficult to assess. The variety seen in the repertoire, and the virtual lack of interconnections between the various specimens, make it inappropriate to speak of a "tradition" of acrostic office composition. In the sources, the device is rarely evident to the eye. Moreover, the items have often been altered, rearranged and replaced, with the result that the acrostic is disrupted. No medieval account of the acrostic is known. The acrostic's focus on names (of author, saint, and feast) suggests that the hidden device is best understood as a prayer akin to the litany and the petition, whose essential movement is at once communal and inward. Style and subject matter of these offices are various. Metres may be regular accentual stanza forms, variations of these, or a freer assemblage of lines. Saints from the Bible, the early church, and the entire middle ages up until the fifteenth century were so celebrated. The manuscript and early printed liturgical books which transmit the acrostic offices are in some cases extremely numerous and widespread, whereas other offices are known from a single extant source.