The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church

This book provides a study and critical edition of the corpus of hymns sung by monks and canons in their services in England before the Norman Conquest. It assembles textual evidence, some of it hitherto unpublished, based on all extant manuscripts. Of these, an eleventh-century Latin manuscript known as the ‘Durham Hymnal’, with its accompanying Old English interlinear gloss, provides the core of the edition and its base manuscript. An introduction and commentary include descriptions of the manuscripts concerned and discussions of the sources, liturgical use, and music of the hymns, as well as the phonology and vocabulary of the Old English gloss. The text of the hymns is accompanied by a translation of the Latin into modern English prose.

• A critical edition of certain Latin hymn texts and of the Old English ‘Durham Hymnal Gloss’ • Half introductory discussion and half critical edition • Important contribution to the study of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon England and the Continent

List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Sources of the Anglo-Saxon hymnals; 2. The transmission of hymns in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; 3. The language of the ‘Durham Hymnal Gloss’; 4. Musical notation in the Anglo-Saxon hymnals; 5. Editorial procedures; Text, translation, commentary and apparatus; Appendices; Bibliography; General index to the introduction; Index of hymns incipits; Table of hymn numbers; Indexes.

‘Milfull’s work should quickly become not only a useful specialized monograph but also a standard reference tool.’ Early Medieval Europe