326 



On the Consuetudinary of S. Osmund. 



officiis ecclesiasticis." Its opening' sentence at once proves it to be 

 no original work ; for it says, that its purport is to explain all the 

 customs and usages, as well as the offices of the " persons/' appointed 

 for the carrying out the work of the cathedral— as Bishop Osmund, 

 of blessed memory, founder of the same, instituted and ordained — 

 (( Personas et eorum officia, dignitates, et consuetudines, quibus 

 ecclesia Sarisbiriensis ordinatur et regitur, juxta institutionem felicis 

 memorise Osmundi ejusdem fundatoris et episcopi, presens tractatus 

 explanat." There are, moreover, internal evidences which, apart 

 from the character of the writing itself, enable us to tell the 

 approximate date of the manuscript. Thus in § 21, we have among 

 double feasts, Christmas Day and the four following days — namely 

 the feasts of S. Stephen, S. John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, 

 and S. Thomas of Canterbury — and S. Thomas a Becket was not 

 canonized till the year 1173, some seventy years after Osmund's 

 decease. And in § 56, the day of S. Thomas the Martyr is expressly 

 named among " Lesser double festivals." Moreover we have, in 

 § 44, mention of the festival of S. Michael in Monte Tumba " which 

 was not appointed as a lesser holiday till the council of Oxford in 

 1222. So that, in its present state, the consuetudinary cannot 

 possibly be of an earlier date than c. 1225. 



But another fact comes to our aid in fixing the date of the manu- 

 script in question. A copy of this same MS. was furnished for 

 the use of S. Patrick's, Dublin, and this same copy (which may be 

 called almost a verbatim copy), and which is pronounced to be of 

 the writing of the thirteenth century, has, after many vicissitudes, 

 found its way into the library of the University of Cambridge. 

 Now the church of S. Patrick's, Dublin, was new modelled, " ad 

 exemplar insignis ecclesise Samm/' and erected into a cathedral 

 church by Henry de Loundres, who was Archbishop of Dublin from 

 1213 — 28, and who was present at the first consecration of such 

 portion of our present cathedral as was then built, by Bishop Richard 

 Poore, in 1225. 



The conclusion, therefore, to which we come is this, that whereas 

 the original MS., which has perished or been lost, was drawn up for 

 use in the cathedral at Old Sarum, the present MS., which we still 



