A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages

A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages. By James Monti. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2012.Pp. xxiv, 684. $34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-586-17283-1.)

James Monti takes the reader on a tour de force of medieval liturgical rites, mostly between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. Without simply reproducing entire manuscripts, he provides large sections of rubrics and prayers to give the reader a more direct experience of the rites. Amazingly, Monti translates every text entirely into English-a somewhat literal translation, which succeeds to take readers out of the contemporary world and into an earlier realm with different customs and culture. A Sense of the Sacred provides numerous manuscript witnesses for every sacrament, as well as several feasts and sacramentáis, including extensive footnote citations explaining and questioning the sources he examines. The only textual commentaries are quotations from authors such as Pope Innocent IV, William Durandus, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The book works best when taken...