The ordering of the Old Customary 2 – OCR

Apart from the first 24 sections, which correspond with OCO in order and content, the rest of the text of OCR is significantly re-ordered. For simplicity of reference, these sections can be numbered as five parts.

1. The institution sections 1-11
2. Arrangements in quire sections 12-24
3. Ordinary Sundays and weekdays sections 25-46
4. Major feast days sections 47-104
5. Lesser feast days sections 105-113
6. Special provisions on Maundy Thursday, special
processions and services of  the Dead
sections 114-118
7. Provisions for memorials sections 119-121
8. Blessings section 122
9. Common chants section 123

Parts 1 to 6 are comparable with OCO. Part 7 deals with the contents of additional devotions appended to the main Office. Part 8 and 9 might have been included in a different context: the rhyming blessings belong with the Breviary, and the chants with the Tonary.

Within Parts 3, 4 and 5, there is a consistent approach, but significantly different from OCO.  OCO presented Office, Procession and Mass in three separate parts, each part dealing in turn with ordinary Sundays and weekdays, major feasts, and lesser feasts; and it presented the table of duties for the whole year early in the Office section. OCR inverts this process. OCR takes Ordinary Sundays and weekdays (sections 25-46), major feast days (47-104), and lesser feast days (sections 105-113) as the major divisions. Within each main division, there are sub-divisions. Each sub-division begins with the table, then the Office, Processions and Mass.

In Part 3, Sundays (sections 25-40) are more clearly separated from weekdays (sections 41-46). A similar pattern can be discerned in Part 4, dealing with major feast days (sections 47-104). In each case, the table marks the beginning of a new subdivision – in all 13 sections dealing with allocation of duties: tables for Christmas and other comparable major feasts (sections 47-50), feasts of nine lessons (61), Triduum (66), Easter Day (62-63), Octave of Easter (82), Eastertide (88 and 91), Invention of the Cross (94), week of Pentecost (103).

In Part 5, three more tables deal with other feasts during the year (105), feasts in Eastertide (109), and within octaves of feasts (110).

The additional materials

In 1279 a form of the Ordinal and Customary found in this manuscript source was taken to the cathedral succentor for review. This resulted in a number of changes and corrections being made in these texts (which it is not yet possible to identify since the version available to us is a later, fair copy). There were also additional materials which were incorporated in a separate section headed ‘Addiciones’. Later additions continued to be made to this section, up until at least the end of the thirteenth century (though not necessarily through direct contact with the cathedral).

There is also another, shorter group of additional materials which are relevant to the Customary.

Both sets of additional materials were edited and printed in W. H. Frere, The Use of Sarum, II (Cambridge, 1901), with the titles of ‘Miscellanea’ and ‘Addiciones’.