medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Jane,
In case you don't find a Tours litany among the books of hours that have facsimiles on-line, here's another stab at answering your query.
I haven't studied many French liturgical manuscripts. but my experience with English ones suggests that you're probably likeliest to find the litany right after the Psalms in a Tours breviary. Many localities had their own traditional versions of the litany (or litanies-- usually a set of six), which despite following the same basic structure differed from each other by varying the order in which the saints were listed and including some locally important saints alongside the "universal" ones. Eventually these got more or less standardized to a single dominant form (generally Sarum for English churches unless they belonged to one of the religious orders, and I believe generally Roman in France), but complete standardization wasn't achieved until at least the mid-sixteenth century.
The Henry Bradshaw Society has published several volumes specifically devoted to medieval litanies from different churches and monasteries in England, but I don't know of any similar resource for France. However, before World War II Victor Leroquais compiled a wonderful multi-volume catalogue of manuscript breviaries in French public libraries, and its index should make it easy to find exemplars from Tours. Some of the mss may be available on-line nowadays, but if you want a definitive answer to your question you'll probably have to spend a little time in Paris at the I.R.H.T. or the Bibliotheque Nationale. (And one could do worse, right?) There may also be some Tours breviaries in England, but I don't know a convenient way of locating them. England unfortunately has no comprehensive catalogues of liturgical mss like those of Leroquais.
Good luck with your research, in any event.
Sherry Reames (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
On 06/18/13, Jane Stemp Wickenden wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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> Good evening all!
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> I have just joined the list, in pursuit of finding the answer to a question I have; but before the question, a little about myself if I may:-
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> I am a rare-books librarian, working at present in a historic medical collection which not many people know about (I hope that will change when the parent organisation finally consents to put the catalogue on the www). I usually describe myself as a thwarted medievalist: I did English Course II at university (starts at Beowulf, stops at Chaucer; special papers in Old Icelandic, Medieval Latin and Anglo-Saxon archaeology) and along the way picked up interests in medieval history, music, food and architecture, especially the building of the great cathedrals. I sing (sometimes) with the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, detest “The Da Vinci Code” and have a brother who wrote a book called “The secret language of churches and cathedrals.” So I hope that’s enough to go on with...
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> My question is this:
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> I’m trying to find out whether there was a local litany of the saints which would have been used in the Tours area in the 15th century. Can anyone direct me at a text, or an image of a manuscript page?
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> With thanks for reading; I look forward to being part of the list-community.
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> Best wishes,
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> Jane
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