ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to review and evaluate all the known sources relating to the medieval Use of Hereford, discussing in particular the missals (both manuscript and printed) and the gradual. Together with other ancient English diocesan rites, this was finally abolished a decade after 1549, when the statutory imposition of the Book of Common Prayer sought to ensure national devotional uniformity, with a reformed liturgy in the vernacular regulating public prayer and the administration of the sacraments.2 In order to elucidate this term, all too often left unexplained, a liturgical ‘use’ (consuetudo) may be defined as the local variation of a standard or parent rite, which in the West, particularly since the time of Charlemagne (771-814), came to be regarded pre-eminently as the Roman rite. Early uses arose partly through the adoption of Gallican features by the Roman rite as it became established throughout Europe, and partly through local developments in that rite itself following its reform as a curial liturgy by Innocent III (1189-1216) and his successor Honorius III (1216-27).3 The great eras of cathedral building, the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, were decisive periods in the development of the distinctive local uses, which became consolidated and codified in customaries representative of the great churches where they evolved.4 As collections of time-honoured liturgical customs these were as individual as the architectually unique foundations that created them, with carefully worded directions relating to ritual and ceremony, vestments, and the regulation of feasts, including the local cults contributing to their spiritual and regional
1 Le Sieur de Moleon [Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes], Voyages Liturgiques de France (1718), preface, iii.
