International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2008 Abstracts

Information about the silently-celebrated Canon of the mass was available in a number of medieval French mass commentaries that were written or translated for laymen. Perhaps the most widely read liturgical commentary that discusses the Eucharist in this period, Guillaume Durandus’s Rationale divinorum officiorum, was written by a French bishop and then translated into French during the late fourteenth century. Thus, one could argue that French attitudes toward the consecration of the Body and Blood influenced the Church throughout Europe. Although numerous unpublished vernacular commentaries have been used to study lay access to the content of sacramental liturgies, the rare genre of French-language missals represents a rich and underexploited source.

Close analysis of French-language missals offers ample evidence for the complex negotiation of boundaries between laity and clergy during the late Middle Ages. The inclusion or omission of liturgical and visual information provides evidence for the levels of participation lay men and women may have enjoyed during the mass celebration. For example, standard textual and iconographical components of Latin-language missal manuscripts were altered for a Francophone lay audience. More was consistently revealed about consecrating the Body than the Blood in French vernacular missals, which vividly demonstrates the limits of what was being communicated to laypersons. In several cases, rubrics explaining, “Cy ne sont pas mises les parolles du sacrement,” were inserted to notify lay persons that key liturgical words had been omitted. Methods and modes of concealment served to heighten the impact of all information regarding the mysteries of the mass, particularly the consecrated Blood of Christ.