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The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography. Edited by Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. Pp. xxiv, 632. $65.00.)
Liturgy frequently figures in scripture and sacred literature as a heavenly banquet or royal feast. Margot Fassler and Rebecca Baltzer have brought to the festal board a cornucopia full of rich and varied offerings. This book presents twenty-three essays by internationally renowned medievalists and liturgical musicologists on the liturgy of the hours in the medieval Latin West. The essays are arranged as chapters under six general headings: a methodological introduction, the pre-Carolingian office, manuscript studies, regional developments from the Carolingian era to the later Middle Ages, hagiography, and the use of computers in research on the divine office.
The intended readers, or rather invited guests, range from the novice in liturgical studies to the adept in the more specialized fields of musical palaeography and the performance of Latin verse. In other words, there is something for everyone at this bountiful table.
As a prelude to the feast, Lila Collamore welcomes the reader to the study and arrangement of the liturgy of the hours as the means par excellence of sanctifying time with scriptural prayer over the course of the day, the night, the week, the year. Margot Fassler then lays out the common source materials for the study of the office and its history, using Advent as a test case for dealing with the various tools and indices available to today's liturgical scholar. Laszlo Dobszay explains how to read an office book.
Leading the second section, on the pre-Carolingian office, James MacKinnon (d. 1999) lays out the origins of the western office. Joseph Dyer comments on the office in the Rule of the Master. Peter Jeffery identifies eastern and western elements in the...