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ABSTRACT
This article examines relevant information from Amesbury Priory to elucidate the ways in which the priory celebrated the life of their patron saint Melor in a commemorative office. Based on Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Ee.6.16, the article examines ways in which the Amesbury telling of Melor’s life differs from both other English as well as French sources. Drawing upon English breviaries that include lessons for Melor’s feast day, it shows the ways in which they differ from the Amesbury material. Rather than focusing on Melor’s wounding and prosthetic hand and foot, the Amesbury commemorative office emphasises the role of the one female character in the story in the days leading to Melor’s death. The article includes a transcription the breviary sources, and the commemorative office in CUL Ee.6.16 as well as material from two fragmentary breviaries associated with the priory.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to several people who have read various portions of this manuscript or engaged in conversation with me about it, especially Nicolas Kamas, Jesse Mann, Sherry Reames, Katie Bugyis, Alison Alstatt, and Lori Kruckenberg.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 There are two different sets of folio numbers in this manuscript. The correct folio numbers are found in the lower right hand of the recto side in pencil. The more obvious, but wrong, numbers are in the upper right in ink. For the most part, the count is off by one until the last quire. I have chosen to use the correct, pencil, numbers but to put the ink numbering in parentheses since anyone looking at the manuscript would see those most obviously. I am indebted to Katie Bugyis for pointing this out to me.
2 E.g. David N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 103. Bell also indicates the breviary fragments from Amesbury in the Jackson Collection at Windsor Castle as well as fragments held in a private collection that Christopher de Hamel has made available to me. Berenice Kerr discusses the manuscript describing it at one point as an Horae and at another as a breviary. She asserts that ‘The office of St Melor, which is also contained in this breviary, would almost certainly have been recited only on his feast days’. Berenice M. Kerr, Religious Life for Women c.1100-c.1350: Fontevraud in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 118, 23.
3 Nigel Morgan dates the manuscript from 1275–1300. See English Monastic Litanies of the Saints after 1100 (London: Boydell Press for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2012) I: 10. An additional hint as to the date of the manuscript is found in the prayer for our prioress ‘Ida’, found on fol. 156r. Ida is named as the prioress in 1256 and 1273. By 1390 Alice is listed as prioress. See ‘Houses of Benedictine Nuns: Abbey, Later Priory, of Amesbury’, in A History of the County of Wiltshire, ed. R B Pugh and Elizabeth Crittall (London: Victoria County History, 1956), 3: 242–59. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol3/pp242-259 [accessed 24 March 2023].)
4 David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London: Longman Group Limited, 1971), 104–5. See also the Victoria County History of Amesbury at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol3/pp242-259#anchorn4, accessed July 17, 2023.
5 For one study of this subject, see Sue Ellen Holbrook, ‘Guenevere: The Abbess of Amesbury and the Mark of Reparation’, Arthuriana 20:1 (2010): 25–51. Amesbury’s proximity to Stonehenge and Glastonbury encouraged these stories.
6 For information on the English house of the Order of Fontevraud see Kerr, Religious Life, 122–5.
7 Cambridge University Library and Henry Richards Luard, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: University Press, 1856–1867), II: 262–3.
8 For a succinct English telling of the story, see http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/melor.html accessed June 3, 2023.
9 For a fascinating discussion of the significance of this act of violence, see Agatha Hansen, ‘The Prosthetic Hinge: Saints, Kings and Knights in Late Medieval England’, PhD diss., Queen's University, 2014, 101–85.
10 François Plaine, ‘Vita inedita S.Melori martyris in Britannia Minori ab anonymo suppari, ut videtur, conscripta,’ Analecta Bollandiana 5 (1886): 165–76, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101076472636&view=1up&seq=176. He numbers the sections from 1–17 but omits section 3.
11 André-Yves Bourgès, Le Dossier Hagiographique de Saint Melar (Lanmeur, FR: Centre international de recherche et de documentation sur le monachisme celtique, 1997).
12 André-Yves Bourgès, ‘Novelles conjectures sur les origines du Lancelot en prose’, Bulletin de la Societé archéolgique du Finistère (2010): 173–82.
13 October 1 was also the feast day for the translation of Remigius, Germanus, and Vedast. In Sarum sources the first three lessons at Matins are for these saints, the middle three for St Melor, and the final three usually relate to the gospel for the day. See, for example, the rubrics in Christopher Wordsworth and Francis Procter, Brevarium ad usum ecclesiae Sarum, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882), III: 885–6.
14 Sherry L. Reames, ‘‘Unexpected Texts for Saints in Some Sarum Breviary Manuscripts’, in The Study of Medieval Manuscripts of England: Festschrift in Honor of Richard W. Pfaff, ed. George Hardin Brown and Linda Ehrsam Voigts (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2010), 182. I appreciate Professor Reames’ help in locating copies of these readings. Although Melor appeared regularly in the Sarum calendar, his feast day was often observed with the lessons for the Common of Martyrs. Reames discusses the diversity of breviary lessons about saints in Saints' Legends in Medieval Sarum Breviaries: Catalogue and Studies, York Manuscript and Early Print Studies, (York: York Medieval Press, 2021), 17–25.
15 Grandisson was Bishop of Exeter from 1327 until 1369, so the manuscript collection dates from that period and most likely reflects liturgical revisions from 1335–1340. Reames, Saints' Legends, 170–1.
16 The readings in Bodleian Auct E.1.1 tell the story as far as the meeting between Rivold and Cerialtanus but do not actually describe the beheading.
17 It is beyond the scope of this essay to offer a hypothesis on the order of composition of these sets of lessons. Doble postulates that Grandisson uses the version in BL Royal MS 8 C VII as the basis of his lections whereas Bourgès postulates the relationship as flowing the other direction. G. H. Doble, Saint Melor: Patron of Mylor and Linkinhorne, and of Amesbury (Wilts.) (Long Compton, UK: The 'King's Stone' Press, 1927), 13. Bourgès, Dossier, 41.
18 Bourgès’ edition of the Tynemouth text divides into the corresponding sections, finding that Tynemouth omits only section j completely. For this edition see Bourgès, Dossier, 91–3.
19 The first fifteen folios of the manuscript are a later addition, but the rest of the manuscript is continuous with one scribe until the very end of the manuscript.
20 Alan Thacker, ‘’Loca Sanctorum: The Significance of Place in the Study of the Saints’, in Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, ed. Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 2.
21 Sally Harper, ‘’Traces of Lost Late Medieval Offices? The Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae of John of Tynemouth (f. 1350)’,’ in Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell, ed. Emma Hornby and David Maw (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2010), 19.
22 See Hansen, ‘The Prosthetic Hinge’, 34–5. Hansen notes ‘If the prosthetic can “resurrect” the body of Melor as King, then the presence of prosthetics also situate the text in ways that run contrary to mainstream resurrection ideology in the fourteenth-century. A resurrected saint wearing a prosthetic signals material change, which places the text in opposition to traditional Patristic images of reforging, collecting, and hardening typical to the theology of resurrection held for the majority of the Middle Ages, wherein every particle of the body was present and/or returned (if lost, i.e. through mutilation, disease, etc.).’
23 Translation from Doble, Saint Melor, 10.
24 See Sally Elizabeth Roper Harper, Medieval English Benedictine Liturgy: Studies in the Formation, Structure, and Content of the Monastic Votive Office, c. 950–1450 (New York: Garland, 1993), 117–20.
25 ‘Nota quod ab hac ebdomada usque ad aduentum domini; teneatur de beata ethelburga semel in ebdomada usque aduentum domini cum xij. Leccionibus. Nisi propter principales festiuitates et propter seruicium beate marie remaneat’. J.B.L. Tolhurst, ed.,The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey, 2 vols., (London: Harrison and Sons for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 1927), I: 149.
26 In a listing of hymns for prime throughout the year, the hymn on Thursday is for Edward and the hymn on Saturday is for Mary. Fitzwilliam Museum MS 2-1957, fol. 10r.
27 CUL Ee.6.16 includes a full commemorative Office of the Virgin (fols. 17r-41v [fol. 18v-42v]) with seasonal variations for Advent (fols. 69v-75v [70v-76v]) and Christmas (fol. 56v-59r [57v-60r]; 84v-92v [85v-93v]). This office was presumably celebrated on Saturdays.
28 Lessons 3–12 all fall within the portion of the story identified as ‘f’ by Bourgès. For comparison, it is the last part of Text P (59–60) and falls in the middle of Text M (66–7). Bourgès, Dossier.
29 ‘Veniens autem mutrix martiris ad domum in qua corpus iacebat, et angelos dei et lucernas diuino splendore lucentes vidit.’ Carl Horstman, Nova Legenda Anglie, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), II: 184.
30 Bourgès, Dossier, 60.
31 Bourgès, Dossier, 67.
32 The Latin is ‘better’ but ‘best’ seems like the smoothest English translation.
33 The Anglo-Norman version uses the term ‘norice’ or ‘nurice’ and also gives a more prominent role to Melor’s aunt. A. H. Diverres, ‘The Life of Saint Melor,’ in Medieval French Textual Studies in memory of T.B.W.Reid, ed. Ian Short (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1984), e.g. lines 204–10.
34 Although the manuscript sources come from the period when Amesbury was a priory and dependency of Fontevraud (1177), it is quite possible that the liturgies themselves date back to the period when Amesbury was an abbey.
35 Diverres, ‘Life.’ In this version the manuscript is unfortunately damaged after line 213 in which the norice gives permission to Melor to sleep with Cerialtanus and Iuxtanus. Thus, we do not know if she offers a blessing to him.
36 The rubric in the de Hamel fragments states that only the lessons change on the octave, all other elements remaining the same as on the feast day. It makes sense, then, that the commemorative office also uses the same antiphons, responsories, and psalms as the feast day.
37 In several of the manuscripts I consulted, the Latin clearly reads menbra instead of membra. I have kept the spelling of the manuscript where it has been spelled out. When the ‘m’ was indicated by an abbreviation, I have spelled it out as membra.
38 See See Bourgès, Dossier, 237–8, fn. 102 which includes this line as ‘que post aere commutata’.
39 CANTUS 008117 for the Common of a Martyr.
40 I am indebted to Alison Alstatt and Lori Kruckenberg for their insights on this matter.
41 RCIN 1145381.b (2).
42 This first verse has 5 lines. There is then the incipit for the doxological verse Laud deo dei filio from the vesper hymn.
43 There are a few syllables missing due to the missing edge of the fragment. The text reads:
Ave celi flos melore/ sacro [per] fusus odore/ claritatis cum decore/ vere lucis syderetu qui flores in hiis ho … / Fructu status dignioris/ et honoris amplioris/ oblatatus federe.Fac ut nost[ ] Incolatus/ prece tua sit beatus/ et ad laudem dei gratus/ pietatis munere. (Hail Melor, the flower of heaven, steeped in the holy fragrance of clarity truly with the beauty of star light. You who blossom in these hours, enjoying a more worthy position and expanded by a more spacious covenant. Make it so that we dwell in your blessed prayer and in praise to God, an acceptable gift of piety.)
44 RCIN 1145381.b (2).
45 Tolhurst, Ordinale, 319.
46 Bourgès, Dossier, 67–70.
47 My transcription from the images available online at https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Stowe_MS_12. Fol. 307v-308r.
48 My transcription from a microfilm copy provided by Sherry Reames.
49 Should probably read ‘excrescere.’
50 Transcription taken from Horstman, Nova Legenda Anglie, I: xxv.
51 My transcription from the digital images at Digital version available at https://www.diamm.ac.uk/sources/4857/#/
52 The scribe has clearly written borentini not corentini here.
53 Transcription taken from J. N. Dalton, Ordinale Exon. (Exeter Chapter MS. 3502 Collated with Parker MS. 93), Henry Bradshaw Society, (London, 1909, 1909, 1926), III: 364–5.
54 Bourgès, intra
55 Latin for Iscariot.
56 This manuscript is available on the National Library of Scotland website on f. 321v (#648 of images). https://digital.nls.uk/early-manuscripts/browse/archive/232641631#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=399&xywh=1576%2C-1492%2C4872%2C5915. It was edited by W.D. Macray, Brevarium Bothanum, sive portiforium secundum usum ecclesiae cujusdam in Scotia where the Melor material is found on 615–16. The transcription is taken from the Macray edition.
57 This word is probably ‘fratricida’ but it is hard to read in the manuscript.
58 Edition in Breviarium Bothanum suggests virorum for this. P. 615 in edition.
59 A = antiphon. C = Chapter. R = Responsory. H = Hymn. B = Blessing. VR = Versicle. P = Prayer. L = Lesson.
60 CUL Kk6.39 fol 175r – Ad decus ecclesie psallentes respice christe tu que melore tue pius erige vota eterne. There is an additional antiphon in the Jackson Fragments for the beginning of Vespers on the feast day: Martir benignissime melore te in christo sollempnizantes tuere. Alleluya. Alleluya. This antiphon appears in CUL Ee.6.16 following the chapter at Lauds.
61 RCIN 1145381.a (3) reads invicti christi militis pollens melori meritis.
62 RCIN 1145381.a (3) reads forno restrinxit fidei puer etatem pueri.
63 RCIN 1143581.a (3) reads Absorbet.
64 RCIN 1143581.a (3) reads artus.
65 Possibly incipit for CANTUS 003561 for common of martyrs. There is a different versicle in the Breviary fragments: Sit pro nobis intercessor sancte melore christi dilector. (RCIN 1145381.a (3)
66 RCIN 1145381.a (3) has die which makes much more sense.
67 This prayer is the one most commonly found for Melor in other sources. The Jackson Collection fragment also has a collect for Remigii here (the other saint celebrated on this day). (RCIN 1145381.a (3)).
68 This is the only psalm incipit given for the first nocturn. It likely implies the sequence of psalms found in CUL Ee.6.16 for the Office of St John Baptist (also a martyr) which is Psalms 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10.
69 See Cambridge University Library, Kk6.39 fol. 175v where this antiphon is also given but with lac instead of ac.
70 Probably Gloria et honore coronasti eum domine as in CANTUS 008081 for the Common of Martyrs.
71 CANTUS 006039, a common response. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine domini.
72 This should be read as amictui (clothed).
73 Marked iv in manuscript but clearly 3rd lesson.
74 Rivold is Melor’s uncle.
75 Cerialtanus is Melor’s guardian.
76 The words through here have a line through them and a marginal note which I believe reads et nox innocens.
77 Boxidum is the name of the castle where Cerialtanus and Iuxtanus met Melor and killed him.
78 There are no psalm incipits for this nocturn although there is a space between the end of the responsory and this antiphon where one could have been. The psalms for the second nocturn of Matins in the Office of St John Baptist in CUL Ee.6.16 are 14, 20, 23, 54, 64, 91.
79 This is a reference to St Courentinus. One of the French vitae lists the monastery of Courentini as the place that Melor goes to. See Bourgès, Dossier, 57.
80 Cantus 008170 for the Common of Martyrs. Posuisti domine super caput eius.
81 CANTUS 006656b is a possible response: Ostende nobis domine misericordiam tuam et salutare tuum da nobis.
82 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads verebatur.
83 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads illi hoc proficere cum matre non dimisit.
84 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads animadverteret.
85 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads tristis.
86 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads clarissima.
87 RCIN 1145381.b (1) reads matri.
88 RCIN 1145381.b (1) has additional material here, indicated in bold. Igitur donari meruit a deo: claro huiusmodi nobiliter triumpho. Ubi namque a cogitacione non cum avertere quiverat dulcissime matris hortamenta: dimisit eum sue voluntati mater dicens.
89 The three canticles the third nocturn of Matins for the Office of St John the Baptist are a set used for the Common of Apostles and Martyrs. See James Mearns, The Canticles of the Christian Church Eastern and Western in Early and Medieval Times (Cambridge: University Press, 1914), 90, Set 1. The first canticle begins Beatus vir.
90 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads antedictus.
91 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads docentis.
92 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads cum scriptis.
93 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads cumque.
94 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads scelerati.
95 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads oppidi.
96 RCIN 1145381.b (2) ends cruorem eius; hinc inde candentes.
97 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads mirabilis.
98 RCIN 1145381.b (2) reads adorandi.
99 This should read planicie I believe.
100 The B is missing in the manuscript.
101 There seems to be a missing syllable here. It appears as ‘post aere commutata’ in another version. See Bourgès, Dossier, 237–8, fn. 102 where the text for the entire hymn is given from another source.
102 Versicle from the Common of Martyrs CANTUS 008117 Justus ut palma florebit in domo domini R. Sicut cedrum Lybani multiplicabitur.
103 See above for a discussion of this rhymed passage.
104 Incipit for last verse of the Vespers hymn.
105 St John Baptist uses psalms 1, 2 and 6 at Prime.
106 Antiphon from lauds.
107 St John Baptist uses Psalms 119, 120 and 121 at Terce.
108 Rhyming antiphon sung at Lauds repeated here.
109 Antiphon at lauds Martir benignissime.
110 Blue letter P for piis is missing but the small letter indicating where it should go can be made out faintly.
111 St John Baptist uses Psalms 122, 123, and 124 at Sext.
112 3rd antiphon at lauds.
113 The text is CANTUS 007010 from the common of martyrs, but the script and placement indicate it was used as a chapter here.
114 CANTUS 007155 – Feast of Stephen the King in cantus but given with N. in place of name plus V. 007715a – common of a confessor.
115 Scansion and number of lines seems off here, but the placement, text size, and style are like other hymns.
116 There is an overlaid sheet attached to folio 128v. The basic folio contains the end of Melor’s office. The overlay has non-Melor material.
117 Office of St John Baptist has hymns 11, 115, 119 and 122 for 2nd Vespers.
118 Incipit for the final responsory of Matins.
119 Incipit for prayer from 1st Vespers.
120 The name of the mountain given in other versions of the story is either Coci or Scoci.
121 Should read vicus.
122 Maioci is the name of the town where he was buried. See, for example, Bourgès, Dossier, 69.
123 Not sure of this abbreviation.
124 I am grateful to André-Yves Bourgès for his identification of iudhel as Judhael, a Breton king and saint.
125 Probably Childebert I c. 496–558) who was a Frankish king; his share of the Frankish kingdom contained the Amorican peninsula. Childebert is also mentioned in the hymn to Melor edited by Plaine in François Plaine, ‘Vita inedita S. Melori martyris in Britannia Minori ab anonymo suppari, ut videtur, conscripta,’ Analecta Bollandiana (5) 1886: 176. ‘Hildebertus, rex Franciae/Tot auditis virtutibus/ Locum auxit memoriae/ Melori donis pluribus.’
126 amoveat is written in above unicos.
127 See fn. 125 above about Hildebert who also figures in the matins readings for the Octave of St Melor.
128 It is unclear who Count Vitaleus is. There was a monk hagiographer named Vitalis but this would seem to be a different person. (See Bourgès, Dossier, 17.