Book containing the forms of worship used in religious services. In the Christian religion, services are of two principal types, the sacrificial rite of the Mass in which Communion is celebrated, and the Divine Office, a cycle of daily devotions to be observed eight times during the day. The Sacramentary or MISSAL contains the text of the Mass, the BREVIARY the text of the Divine Office. Similarly, the Gradual is the choir-book for the Mass, the Antiphonal for the Divine Office (see CHOIR-BOOK). Other books were developed to assist in the performance of the Mass. In the early Middle Ages, Gospel books for reading the lessons from the Gospels were produced as separate volumes. By the 7th century AD it was customary to read specific passages or pericopes for particular feast days. Since the lessons did not follow the Gospel order, it became necessary to prepare a Gospel List or Capitulary to indicate their proper sequence throughout the liturgical year. Related to this practice was the use of canon tables to correlate the reappearance of similar passages in the four Gospels in tabular form (see CANON TABLE). Invented by Eusebius of Caesarea between 314 and 331, they were included in St Jerome's revision of the Latin Gospel text in 383 or 384 and are a regular feature in Gospel books used for the Mass before the 13th century. In an Evangeliary (Evangelistiary, Gospel Lectionary or Pericope book) the sequence of Gospel lessons was arranged in the order in which they were read during the liturgical year, eliminating the need for canon tables and requiring that Evangelist portraits, if they appeared at all, be grouped together at the beginning of the book, as in the Pericope book of Henry II (Munich, Bayer. Staatsbib., Clm. 4452), presented to Bamberg Cathedral in 1007 or 1012. In this manuscript the lessons for the Temporal (Sundays and feasts commemorating the life of Christ) and Sanctoral (saints' days) appear together. Major feasts are emphasized by one or sometimes two facing full-page miniatures and a framed, large decorative initial with an elaborated opening phrase of the text written in gold on bands of purple.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
