Liturgy and episcopal authority. The Evidence of the Noyon Sacramentary (London, British Library, Additional MS 82956, formerly Phillipps MS 3340)

Abstract

The liturgical evidence for bishops remains underexplored. What work there is tends to focus on those rites reserved to the bishop collected in pontificals and therefore ignores the potential of more mundane books in daily use. This case study of a sacramentary used by the bishop of Noyon in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries reveals, through a comparison with similar materials produced for contemporary communities within northern France, the ways in which the bishop’s roles in the secular world were reflected in minor changes made to the liturgy in use in one of his churches. It thus casts fresh light on the less well-known see of Noyon, and at the same time demonstrates the importance of incorporating such mundane materials into modern studies of episcopacy in this period.