Anselme Davril • 1990
This manuscript, written at Fleury in the early twelfth century, was noticed and partially edited by Dom Edmond Martène in the 17th and 18th centuries. It consists chiefly of a calendar, a psalter, the usual canticles, Pater and creeds, a litany of the saints, and a monastic ritual embracing an ordo missae and various ordines for the events of life within the monastery, including rites for the sick and dying, and the special blessings of the liturgical year. This edition omits the psalter.
The MS can be seen as a careful, original composition (though there are, of course, parallels elsewhere), designed for use in its place of origin, most probably under Abbot Boson II (1108-1137) and is to be seen as a witness to a harmonization and consolidation of liturgical books that took place in Fleury in the 12th century.
A sacramentary (Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 41), a Missale plenum with neumes (Trier, Bibliothek des Priesterseminars, MS 187), a portable breviary sanctoral (Orleans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 125 [103], 13th century), together with an ordinary-customary with prosarium and processional (Orleans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 129 [107]) also serve as witnesses.
Virtually nothing remains of earlier liturgical books at Fleury, which were most likely destroyed after the revision. The Fleury ritual is independent of the Romano-German Pontifical but has borrowed numerous elements from English sources, quite probably through the Winchcombe sacramentary (Orleans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 127 [105]) among other intermediaries.
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