Stowe Celtic Sarum

Interesting comments on my last post. The early Irish Stowe Missal in Latin was published in the Henry Bradshaw Society series; I doubt whether it's still in print. The chaplain of Lampeter did produce a (depapalised) English translation in something called - I believe - A Celtic Eucharist. If I did a Demonstration Celebration I would of course do it in the Latin: Latin was unvernacular to the Irish peasants who worshipped in the 790s, so do do it in a vernacular would be grossly inauthentic. I would also keep the congregation standing outside the church for the whole sevice, with the clergy starting outside and entering the church only after the Gospel. If there were torrential rain, that would only make the whole thing even more genuine. See my 2002 paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (Vol 102C, Number 1). Copies, if there are any left, at only 4.50 Euros from the RIA, 19, Dawson Street, Dublin2.

I did make plans a few years ago to celebrate a Sarum votive of the Five Wounds down in Cornwall to commemorate the 1549 Rising. This was being organised by a sound and admirable priest who reluctantly had later to tell me he had discovered that most Cornish Nationalists seemed to be antiChristian and those who weren't appeared to think that Methodism is the authentic Cornish indigenous religion: so his lovely idea had to be aborted. I had been planning a low Mass, and I discovered that while the Sarum Missal provides very full rubrical directions, they presuppose a Cathedral High Mass. It is not at all easy to work out what exactly Sir Mumpsimus did when he was racing through his Chantry obligation at six o'clock on Monday morning; my plan was to supply this void with help of the customs with which the preConciliar Dominican Low Mass used to be celebrated: Fr Aidan Nichols was a great help. But it all came to nothing.