Reginald Maxwell Woolley
The Gilbertine Rite. Volume I Containing (i) the Ordinal and (ii) the Office of St Gilbert
Henry Bradshaw Society, 1921; digitally remastered 2010
Reginald Maxwell Woolley
The Gilbertine Rite. Volume II Containing (i) the Kalendar and (ii) the Missal
Henry Bradshaw Society, 1922; digitally remastered 2010
These are two somewhat esoteric (print-on-demand) paperback volumes which have been on my wanted list for several years and which I was given for Christmas.
The Gilbertines were an interesting monastic order, founded on a Cistercian model in 1130 by St Gilbert of Sempringham — Sempringham in Lincolnshire being their head house. They were the only entirely English monastic order, ultimately with 26 houses which survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century — whereupon Robert Holgate (right), the last Master of the Order became Bishop of Llandaff and in 1545 Archbishop of York.
The Gilbertines are interesting also because most of their monastic houses were mixed, although the monks and nuns did live in separate houses. It is also known from damage to the excavated skeletons of monks and from some of the few remaining records that the monks played football.
These two volumes reconstruct from several remaining medieval Gilbertine liturgical manuscripts the monastic rites of the Gilbertine Order. Volume I contains an introduction of some 45 pages which details the layout of the documents and discusses their dating in much detail.
The remainder of volume I and the whole of volume II (around 400 pages in total) consist of a straight transcription of the Latin text of the documents. There is no English translation, so one is reliant on one’s poor, 50 year old school Latin and some remaining knowledge of the rites of the Catholic Church to divine what is going on. And like all missals it takes quite a bit of working out what actually fits with what; nothing is linear and common sections appear just the once.
Have I read all of these two volumes? Well I’ve read the whole of the introduction, but sadly my Latin just isn’t good enough for the liturgy, although I have looked at large parts of the volumes and worked out roughly what’s going on.
They are really only for anyone with an interest in liturgy, the Gilbertines or medieval ecclesiastical history — and someone with a good grasp of medieval Latin.
Nevertheless they are nice, esoteric things to have!
Overall Rating (for the average reader): ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall Rating (for the specialist reader): ★★★★☆