Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers some of the problems and possibilities of working on rites. It examines the presumptions of, and methods used by, Michel Andrieu, Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze to construct their edition of the so-called Romano-German Pontifical, and shows how unrepresentative that edition is of the manuscript record. The book explores approaches by musicologists. It explains how the debates of nineteenth-century Anglicanism shaped the editions of the late medieval Uses of York and Sarum. The book demonstrates the value of reading the liturgical evidence of monastic customaries alongside the surviving architectural record, through case studies of Saint-Benigne, Dijon and Wells Cathedral, whilst Carol Symes. It addresses problems of interpretation that frequently surface.