ABSTRACT
I come now to the third and last of the major generic traditions on which the SEL has drawn, that of the liturgy. In the introduction to this book I indicated my intention to bypass most of the questions surrounding the origins and development of the SEL, in favor of a broader approach, which acknowledges the importance of a variety of contexts and focuses primarily on interpretive issues. Yet the liturgy is important not just because of its influence, which is unquestioned, but because scholars have hypothesized that liturgical materials, in the form of the saints' lives epitomized in medieval breviaries, may represent the actual source of the collection, das Ding an sich.1 The thirteenth century saw breviaries compiled for the first time in a convenient portable form; they not only gave instructions for the celebration of the divine office but included, in the section informally known as the Sanctorale, generous chunks from the Latin vitae (or previously epitomized versions thereof) that were then used for a series of readings known as 'lessons' on the day that a saint's life was to be honored.2
