derelinquat, quae et sacrae nos deditos faciat seruituti, et tuae nobis semper opem adquirat largitatis, et ab omnibus tueatur aduersis'; an amalgam, as it would seem, of alternative readings, possibly of separate compositions. But, from whatever elements elaborated, it must have suffered severely before it reached the cloister of St Augustine's. I may add that another Thursday mass in Lent gives us, at fol. 30, lin. 12, the uncorrected prae-Gregorian 'preces quae tibi gratae sunt' of the Verona book (XXIX. iii.), in striking and instructive contrast to the exquisite 'preces quae tibi gratae sint' peculiar to ourselves at fol. 34 v., lin. 16 in a mass of Gregorian compilation. Again, in the Secreta of yet another Thursday mass in Lent, at fol. 32 v., lin. 5, the 'munera iussisti dicanda' of the Verona book (XXVII. viii.) is in the Corpus MS. altered for the worse to 'iussisti munera dicanda'; while in the 'Pro Populo' of the same mass our first reading was 'repleamur' for 'repleantur.' True though it be that the reading may have been no more than a mere clerical error, I may venture to remark that such an error would not have been likely to happen had this particular mass been copied from an exemplar in uncial writing. The significance of this consideration will appear in the sequel. Although, at fol. 71, lin. 11, an adventitious mass is found to retain a prae-Gregorian reading, 'nostrae conditionis' (see XVIII. xix. of the Verona book), that reading varies from the 'conditionis nostrae' yielded by the textus rescriptus, on fol. 8, of a compilation which had undergone the editorial supervision of St Gregory. And in the same mass we have, as in the 'repleamur' just noticed, a reading which, one would suppose, would not have crept into the text except by derivation from a non-uncial exemplar. I refer to the manifestly corrupt 'et' for 'ut' in the passage 'Animae nostrae q. o. d. hoc potiantur desiderio et a spiritu tuo inflammentur,' &c. Of these nine pairs of rival readings there are three (the first, second and eighth) with which we need not concern ourselves; but in the remaining six, where one member of the pair is a bad reading, that bad reading is invariably our own. In other words, wherever in the postGregorian masses of our Proprium de Tempore an opportunity is afforded for contrasting our verbal text with that of other editions, the reading peculiar to the Corpus MS. is found to be as singularly and conspicuously bad as in masses of Gregorian cognizance it is singularly and conspicuously good. This, if anything, would seem to prove that the provenance of the primitive portions of the Corpus MS. was different from that of the adventitious; and accords with the theory that the textual purity of the one group is referable to a short and direct pedigree from an autoGregorian original. My chief object, however, in the present chapter has been to prove, not that the pedigree of the Corpus MS. is short, but that the characteristics of the verbal text of what ex hypothesi is the primitive portion of the Proprium de Tempore of the Corpus MS. are such as to justify us in saying that it exhibits a hitherto unsuspected recension, and that that recension is such as it may well have received at the hands of Gregory the Great himself. And if I may claim to have attained that object, I may further claim to have found evidence corroboratory of my thesis in the fact that the text of what is ex hypothesi the adventitious portion of the Proprium de Tempore is what we have seen it to be. THE VERBAL TEXT OF THE PROPRIUM SANCTORUM. Supererogatory and needless though it might be in me to recapitulate and dwell upon the several characteristics which distinguish the readings peculiar to the Corpus text of the Proprium de Tempore, I may, nevertheless, be permitted to remark that an accurate recollection. of those characteristics will be absolutely necessary to us in the task on which we are now entering. When dealing with the Proprium de Tempore we knew, with close approximation to certainty, which of its masses were of Gregorian, which of post-Gregorian, redaction; but the authors who helped us to that knowledge are all but silent with regard to the Proprium Sanctorum. Nor is the difficulty lessened by the circumstance that, whereas in the Proprium de Tempore the adventitious masses lie either at the close of certain groups, or, as on the Thursdays in Lent, at fixed intervals, they are in the other Proprium intermingled with primitive work in obedience to a chronological law of ruthless but exasperating impartiality'. Hence it is that I now take a different course from that followed in the last chapter. I shall begin by making a list of the readings peculiar 1 I need hardly say that, because this or that saint should happen to have been a Roman martyr who suffered in the early ages of our era, it by no means follows that the Roman Church had already assigned him liturgical honours by the time of Gregory the Great; for until long after the death of Gregory many of the Roman saints who now figure in our volume lay half forgotten in the labyrinthine passages of the catacombs. No. Reference Assignation Constituent Vulgate reading Corpus reading Postcommunio 77 v. (1) 77 v. (16) 77 v. (19) Sancti Praeiecti Martyris Octaua Sanctae Agnetis Martyris [Oratio] 9 78 (1) 78 Secreta 81 v. (13) Cathedra Sancti Petri Apostoli Postcommunio Laetificet nos 81 v. (20) De Sancto Mathia Apostolo Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis Sanctorum Martyrum Tiburtii et Va Oratio Secreta leriani Sanctifica nos q. d. [d. q.] salu- Satiati salutaris tuí mysterio q. d. in...nataliciis Pasti nostra deuotio (potestatis aduersae [aduersa-) riorum] potestates aduersariorum uel ut...defendas solennitate laetificet Laetificet nos quaesumus interueniente auxilio earum interuentu nobis cuius donasti subsidium da 27 93 V. (14) 96 (13) 97 v. (2) Sanctorum Primi et Feliciani Martyrum In Vigilia Sancti Iohannis Baptistae Sanctorum Iohannis et Pauli Oratio Postcommunio Secreta festa fauere [fieri] facta fore subsidium auxilium 116 (5) " 121 v. (9) 121 v. (15) Postcommunio Sanctorum Felicis Simplicii Faustini et Oratio Sanctorum Machabeorum Sanctorum Sixti Felicissimi et Agapiti In Uigilia Assumptionis Sanctae Mariae Secreta In Octaua Sancti Laurentii Sanctorum Timothei et Simphoriani Sancti Rufi Martyris De Sancto Augustino Episcopo Sancti Hermetis Martyris Decollatio Sancti Iohannis Baptistae De Sancta Sabina Sanctorum Felicis et Adaucti Sanctorum Mauricii Exuperii Candidi Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani Sancti Calixti Papae et Martyris De Sancto Luca Euangelista " Postcommunio effectu in honore celebrat quaesumus ut in...commemoratione [in passione] in passionis...commemoratione perpetua effectu nostra deuotio Secreta ut Oratio Secreta conciliet repleti tibi conciliet sancti martyris [sancti martyris sancti tui] digne [significata] euangelista tuo |