Antecedents and Testimonies
The earliest document giving an account of liturgical services in the Diocese of Durham is the so-called "Rituale ecclesiæ Dunelmensis", also known as the "Ritual of King Aldfrith" . The Manuscript (in the library of Durham cathedral, A, IV, 19) of the early ninth century contains capitula, chants and especially collects, from the Epiphany to Easter, then a proprium sanctorum, a commune sanctorum and many forms for blessings. The greater part has an interlinear Anglo-Saxon translation.
At the end various scribes have used up the blank pages to write out a miscellaneous collection of hymns and exorcisms and a list of contractions used in books of canon law. Its connexion with Durham and Northumberland is shown by various allusions, such as that to St. Cuthbert in a collect (intercedente beato Cudbertho Sacerdote; p. 185 of the Surtees Soc. edition). This fragment represents the fusion of the Roman and Gallican uses that had taken place all over North-Western Europe since the first Frankish Emperor Charlemagne (768-814) or even earlier (Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien, 2nd ed., 89-99). Many parts of it exactly correspond to the Gregorian Sacramentary sent by Pope Adrian I to the emperor (between 784 and 791; Duchesne, op. cit., 114-119).
The great Benedictine monastery of Durham was founded by William of St. Carileph in 1083; he brought monks from Wearmouth and Jarrow to fill it who served the cathedral till the suppression in 1538. The foundation of the cathedral was laid in 1093 and St. Cuthbert's body was brought to its shrine in 1104. A catalogue drawn up at Durham in 1395 gives a list of the books used by the monks for various services. Of such books not many remain. A Gradual of about the year 1500 with four leaves of a Tonarium is at Jesus College, Cambridge (Manuscript 22; Q. B. S.), and a Durham Missal written in the fourteenth century is in the British Museum (Harl. 5289). The parts of this Missal that correspond to Holy Week and Easter are printed in vol. CVII of the Surtees Society's publications (pp. 172-191; see also the "Westminster Missal", III, 1424, Henry Bradshaw Soc., 1897, where the Durham variants are given).
But the most important document of this kind, the volume called "The Ancient Monuments, Rites and Customs of the Monastical Church of Durham before the Suppression", written in 1593, exists in several manuscript copies and has been printed and edited on various occasions, lastly by the Surtees Society (vol. CVII, 1903; see bibliography). It is a detailed description of the fabrica ecclesiae of the cathedral, but also of the various rites, ceremonies and special customs carried out by the monks who served it. From it we see that the Durham Rite was practically that of the North of England (corresponding in all its main points to the Rite of York), with a few local modifications such as one would expect to find in a great and flourishing monastic church.
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