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those in the choir to sing their parts from memory.6 Likewise, this is a
basic list reflecting a generalized overview, and other books continued to
circulate and find uses: as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century,
the Archbishop of Canterbury’s list of the books required in all parish
churches in Canterbury included two additional Mass/Office books.7
Understanding the context of the aspiciensbœkr requires keeping in mind
both the centrality of these core five books and the potential for variation.
A core distinction among these later medieval books is between those
used by the main officiant or priest – the Breviary and Missal – which
usually lacked any sort of musical notation, and the notated books used by
the choir, namely the Antiphonal and the Gradual. The Antiphonal was
the core choir book for Office performances, containing all proper (chang-
ing) parts of the Office for the choir, generally supplemented by a Psalter,
which contained the common or ferial (unchanging) parts. Further com-
pilation could happen, and so-called Noted Breviaries and Noted Missals
were complete Office and Mass books which incorporated full notation
and the material from the Antiphonal and Gradual. But the general distinc-
tion between the officiant’s books and the choir books, divided between
Mass and Office, was standard.8
6 Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy, 59. As Harper points out, surviving
liturgical books from the earlier period were themselves often used for teaching, reference,
or copying, and do not thus necessarily reflect those books being actively read during
liturgical performance. For liturgical performance from memory, see Harper, The Forms
and Orders of Western Liturgy, 59; Katherine Zieman, Singing the New Song: Literacy and
Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008),
31, 42–43, 67–71; Matthew Cheung Salisbury, The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval
England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 18.
7 Archbishop Robert Winchelsey issued his constitution between 1295 and 1313, which
included a legendam and a troparium, see discussion in Judith Middleton-Stewart, Inward
Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk,
1370–1547 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001), 159–60, where these are identified as
a “lesson-book” and a “troper.” The archbishop’s list, notably, does not require churches to
own a Breviary. See also footnote 46.
8 For a quick and useful survey of the medieval liturgy, including liturgical books, see
Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy. A more detailed English-language study
of the liturgical books and manuscripts can be found in Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts
for Mass and Office. Both Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources,
trans. William George Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (Washington D.C.: The
Pastoral Press, 1986) and Eric Palazzo, A History of Liturgical Books from the Beginning to
the Thirteenth Century, trans. by Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press,
1998) are also useful, though it should be kept in mind that they are focused on books from