ABSTRACT
The results of the detailed comparisons of the missal (mainly ordinary and canon, collects, secrets and postcommunions, sequences, post-Pentecost alleluyatic verses, and pre-and postcanon prayers) and breviary (collects) portions undertaken in this survey suggest a protracted and irregular process of eclectic borrowing from different sources in the evolution of the later Hereford service-books. There is evidence that Sarum variants were not infrequently borrowed to replace texts apparently regarded as outdated by the mid fourteenth century, resulting eventually in the establishment of 1502 and 1505 as the final stages in the development and consolidation of the principal sources for the Hereford mass and office liturgies. The influence of other rites, possibly including early post-Conquest Welsh and monastic, might also have been considered, though this would involve a separate line of enquiry difficult to pursue conclusively within the narrow limits of this study. This process of selective borrowing and assimilation, which may best explain the textual differences between the Hereford manuscript and printed missals and breviaries, appears to have been begun by Bishop John Trillek (1344-60/1) and continued by Bishop John Trefnant (1389-1404) during their putative reforms of the rite, though by what means, and to what extent, remains uncertain. The early post-Conquest Hereford rite, it has been suggested,1 may owe its origins to Bishop Robert the Lotharingian (1079-95) as part of his reforms of the cathedral and diocese. By Trillek’s time this rite, already settled, was evidently in need of revision to enable it to adapt more readily to changing devotional circumstances, with growing numbers of new festa, including those of the recently canonized Thomas Cantilupe, making increased demands on the limited resources of a small and far from affluent cathedral.
