ABSTRACT
The history of hymnology has to be written. Certainly the subject dates back to the Middle Ages; the various versions of the Expositio Hymnorum, for example, were well known in England and on the Continent at the time. Among the various genres of religious and liturgical Latin poetry in the Middle Ages, the hymn undoubtedly occupied a leading position. The small number of extant manuscripts makes it difficult to come to any decision about the general knowledge and use of hymns in Anglo-Saxon England; were, for example, hymns commonly known at all among clerics outside the great churches and monasteries? In the Middle English period from the twelfth to the sixteenth century the picture changes: manuscripts extant and printed editions of hymnals and breviaries are numerous, despite the wholesale destruction of liturgical books at the time of the Reformation.
