Missale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesie Sarisburiensis.

Sarum Missal, printed in Paris in 1555

Here are a number of details from a Sarum Missal printed in Paris by William Merlin in 1555.  This is just one of a large number of Sarum missals that were printed in Paris during the reign of Mary I, for export to England as part of the re-equipping of English parish churches following the Edwardine iconoclasm.  It seems that demand was great and consequently these Parisian missals were rather hastily composed,  Many, like this example, were illustrated with re-used woodcut blocks of varying styles and dates, some forty or fifty years old. 

Sarum Missal, printed in Paris in 1555

Sarum Missal, printed in Paris in 1555

Sarum Missal, printed in Paris in 1555

Sarum Missal, printed in Paris in 1555

Comments

Canon Tallis said…
It would seem that Mary I had the sense not to trust the printing to English printers. It is terrible to think that the great Use of Sarum had so quickly become foreign, but Mary and her set were so set on looking backwards, going backwards, that for all the beauty of that printing it was already doomed.
Anonymous said…
Eamon Duffy has cogently argued that, far from looking backwards, the Marian church was embarked on a serious reform plan, and that a reign of five years was not long enough for it to become established. It's all there in "Stripping of the Altars".
Simon Cotton
Lapinbizarre said…
There were a number of English printings of the Salisbury missal in the 1550s, Canon Tallis. The 1557 folio edition, published by Kingston & Sutton, but printed by three different printers, one of them K & S, was the topic, long ago, of my master's thesis. The printing of service books was of little concern to the civil authorities, just so that their content was orthodox. The Marian authorities in fact exercised less direct control over the printing of liturgical and devotional works than the regimes that preceded and followed them.

Rouen & Paris had been centres for the printing of liturgical works from the late 15th century onwards and had provided many printings for the English market prior to the break with Rome. This 1555 printing, typical of the output of the period, indicates a resumption of that commercial tradition.

The mixture of "gothic" and renaissance woodcuts in the last of the scans (I see that I have already commented on this on Alan's Flickr page) is striking to the modern eye, but typical of the period.

Roger Mortimer
Lapinbizarre said…
ps apologies for mis-spelling your name - yet again, I imagine. Can you correct it on posting?
Canon Tallis said…
Roger,

I have seen this in some of the early printed pontificals. Actually I should have checked on the number of printings of the Sarum Missal during this period. The truth is that I love the Sarum missal and the Sarum Use, especially as it stands against the innovations of the Roman Curia initiated by Alexander VI's Master of Ceremonies.

Simon,
In spite of what Duffy argues, in terms of the Marian Church, the issue is what you would term as reform. Given Mary's dominance by Spain and the Spanish inquisition which she imported into England, I have grave doubts that they would have any idea of what needed to be done. On the other hand, Elizabeth I wanted to retain the services of all of Mary's bishops with the exception of London so the were probably men of character and ability. But would they have understood and backed the need for a liturgy in a language "understood by the people," or the need for a married clergy in accordance with the writings of St Paul in both Timothy and Titus. The cardinal of Lorraine certainly advocated for Elizabeth's reforms at Trent but the Holy Ghost kept arriving in the Spanish dispatch boxes.
Lapinbizarre said…
The 1500 "Morton" missal is the only commissioned printing that comes to mind. Printed in London by Richard Pynson, wholly or in part at the expense of Cardinal Morton, whose famous rebus [a falcon ("mort"), standing on a barrel ("tun"] is incorporated into the book's woodcut borders, it is considered to be the finest English incunabulum.

As I recall - my copy of the revised Pollard & Redgrave should be to hand but is not - about five intact or substantially intact copies survive. There is a spectacular copy on vellum, formerly in the Spencer Collection, in the John Rylands Library. I vividly remember being handed box after box of soft-centered chocolates by library staff as I studied the book on Christmas Eve, 1969. The good old days! I imagine that supervision has become stricter since ownership of the Library passed to Manchester University.

A dismembered copy of the Morton missal was, incidentally, copy text for much of the 1557 Kingston & Sutton edition.

Roger Mortimer
Anthony Symondson SJ said…
Canon Tallis, it is anachronistic to look at the Marian restoration in terms of progress and conservatism. What preoccupied her and the Protestant reformers was truth and how it was to be embodied in theology and worship. For Queen Mary the only liturgical text available in England for Catholic worship was the Sarum Missal. The Edwardian Prayer Book was anathema to her.

As Simon Cotton has pointed out, Duffy describes the Marian Church under Cardinal Pole as advanced in the vanguard of Tridentine reform both in The Stripping of the Altars and in his recent work on the Church in her reign.

By the time the English Mission arrived from Rome and Douai in the 1590s the revised Roman Missal of St Pius V was brought with them and thereafter was used at recusant Masses. This was the rite known predominantly by the English martyrs thereafter.

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