manuscript
Accession Number NWHCM : 1926.158.4e
Description
Service book containing the offices for ecclessiastical processions (the entry of the choir and clergy and the accompanying hymn); wooden boards covered in vellum; written in Latin, from a church which had the relics of St Pancras, perhaps the Cluniac Priory of Castle Acre, Norfolk; the festival of the Dedication of the Church precedes the Annunciation, after Michaelmas is the festival of the Reception of the Relics of St Pancras, St Edmund and St Etheldreda are among the other saints commemorated, 15th century
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This little book is a 15th-century processional, a manuscript that once belonged to the monks at Castle Acre Priory, 33 miles west of Norwich, for their own use within the abbey church. We know this because the text pays special attention to the feast days of two individual saints: Saint Pancras, patron of Castle Acre’s mother house at Lewes in Sussex, and Saint Philip, whose arm was Acre’s most famous relic. Local East Anglian saints Edmund and Etheldreda are also commemorated in the text.
Written in Latin, the purpose of the manuscript was to provide words and musical notation to be sung by the monks during processions, indicating where, what time and on which date chants should be sung. On many pages this instruction is given by the use of red ink to make it stand out from the rest of the text, for example, in the words ‘Deinde pr[ocessio] circa claustru[m]’ – ‘Then the procession around the cloister’. This is remarkable as it allows us to follow and appreciate medieval voices in the location in which they were intended to be heard. At other points in the text, the dedicatee of the songs is given, for example De Sancto Paulo – ‘For Saint Paul’. The abbey church at Castle Acre was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Saints Peter and Paul.
Throughout the manuscript the chants are designed to celebrate special ceremonies in the liturgical calendar as well as feast days venerating particular saints. The words for one hymn, sung to the Virgin at the Feast of Purification, read in part: ‘Hail, full of Grace, virgin mother of God, for out of you is arisen the sun of justice, giving light to everything that sits in darkness.’
Small enough to fit into the palm of your hand and bound by two wooden boards covered in vellum, it is possible to imagine the book being carried by one of the monks as they processed through the priory. This would have been a grand affair with numerous singers and the full splendour of medieval ceremony. Castle Acre belonged to the Cluniac order, famous (and, at times, notorious) among other monastic orders for the use of elaborate ritual in their religious observances and extravagantly decorated church architecture.
Castle Acre Priory was founded by the Warenne family soon after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. William de Warenne’s fortunes had been transformed by the Norman victory and he had gained important estates in Lewes,Sussex, Norfolk and Yorkshire. He began construction of a castle at Acre in Norfolk and between 1080 and 1085 gifted property to a community of monks who had come from an earlier Clunaic monastery he had founded at Lewes. In 1089 his son, William II de Warenne granted the monks a new site and the resources to build Castle Acre Priory beside the River Nar. The church was consecrated in 1146-8 and the west end was completed in the 1160s. Further building work was later undertaken in the 14th and 16th centuries. This 15th-century processional either originated from or was based on an example from Warenne’s earlier Clunaic priory at Lewes, although written to reflect the new setting at Castle Acre in Norfolk.
Today the manuscript is extremely delicate, a victim of its 500-year-old age and history of use. But it is now possible to digitally ‘turn the pages’ of the Processional – whilst also listening to the recreated music of the monastic chants for the first time since the Dissolution of the Monasteries.