ABSTRACT
Art historians have long appreciated the Stowe Breviary as a fine example of English manuscript illumination in the early fourteenth century, but few scholars have noticed that this manuscript is also exceptionally rich in liturgical texts about saints. For sainte Anne and five other feasts of saints it also includes full proper offices—that is, complete sets of individualized chant texts—that are rarely seen in other Sarum manuscripts. Historical studies on the cult of St. Anne suggest the significance of texts like the pre-Sarum office in Stowe, since they attribute the earliest western liturgies for Anne to England and northern France in the century or two preceding the Stowe manuscript. Early calendars and liturgical manuscripts have survived so sporadically that it is impossible to get a clear picture of the way Anne's cult began and spread before the fourteenth century.
