Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Page 34

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Deshusses from Trent through Salzburg back to Alcuin in Tours.6
Except for the super populum-prayer ‘Populum tuum’, the St. Rupert
mass is identical to the mass composed by Alcuin for the patron saint
of the monks of St. Vedast, Arras, mentioned in his letter to them (see
PL 100, 215-16).
The earliest French sacramentary to contain Alcuin’s St. Vedast
mass is MS Cambrai 162/163, written for Saint-Vaast, Arras in the
second half of the ninth century: ’Deus qui nos deuota beati Vedasti’,
etc., but with the prayer super populum ’Deus qui nos sanctorum
tuorum temporali tribuis’, etc. (Sp 59*-63*). Some of the early French
sacramentaries have the preface ‘Cuius munere’, found for St. Martin
in Sp 1688. The earliest English source to contain the St. Vedast mass
is a fragment of an English missal of the late tenth century, Oslo RA
Lat. fragm. 208 (= Mi 1), written in a style of script very close to that
of the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold.7 It contains the three mass-
prayers with the preface ‘Diemque natalicium’. In the missal of Robert
of Jumiéges this mass has been adopted for St. Vedast, St. Augustine
of Canterbury, and St. Omer (pp. 161, 177, 210-11), with the preface
‘Cuius munere’ for St. Vedast, and ‘Diemque natalicium’ for St.
Augustine. Only the St. Vedast mass is provided with a prayer super
populum, identical to that of MS Cambrai 162/163.
It is interesting that the St. Vedast super populum-prayer is identical
to the postcommunion of the early form of St. Cuthbert’s proper mass
(Jum 166-67) which, by inference, can be traced back to the mid-eighth
century. Its only known source is the collect of a missa martyrum of
the Missale Gothicum (GaG 457).8 Alcuin may have drawn upon it
when he composed his mass of St. Vedast.
We are left with the mystery of the two versions of the prayer Popu-
lum tuum. Taken together, the masses of St. Martin, St. Vedast, St.
Emmeram, and St. Rupert all converge on Tours, or Alcuin. In the
ninth century the prayer, without the incise, wandered from Tours to
Salzburg (Trent), and to Baturich’s Regensburg collectar. Does our
prayer, with the incise, as in GeP and in our fragment, represent a first
6 J. Deshusses, Le Sacramentaire Grégorien pré-Hadrianic: RB 80 (1970), pp. 227
sq.; Idem, Le Sacramentaire Grégorien de Trente: RB 78 (1968), pp. 279 sq.; Idem,
Les Anciens Sacramentaires de Tours: RB 89 (1979), pp. 295 sq.
7 Ed. Lilli Gjerløw, Adoratio Crucis (Oslo 1961), p. 66.
8 See Ch. Hohler, The Durham Services, op. cit., pp. 157-58, 164, no. 13.