The study of ancient and medieval liturgy is often dry. The material is complicated, the scholarship convoluted, and much material remains available only in old editions or unedited manuscripts. Original work requires a variety of skills and frequently painstaking research. All too often it has been left to specialists, and there is a certain genre of liturgical scholarship that is all but inaccessible to other historians, as well as to practitioners, let alone a general audience. Joseph Dyer's recent book upends all these stereotypes.
The text is clear: it has been designed for wide readership, but with enough references to satisfy most experts. The chapters and the argument are elegantly constructed, moving through a variety of elements pertaining to liturgical reading. Here, Dyer helps capture the rich sensory experiences involved in reading or hearing the scriptures in medieval churches, as well as preparing the appropriate texts. He discusses in sensitive detail and in successive chapters the tools used for reading (1), the readers themselves and their desired characteristics, both practical and ethical (2), the arrangement of texts for reading, including mise-en-page and punctuation (3), the formulae for cantillation (4), the pronunciation of readers and how it affected the comprehension of hearers (5), the position of readers within sacred space (6), the furniture used to enhance “the dignity and sacrality of the chanted text,” such as ambos and screens (7), the vestments worn (8), and the ceremonial surrounding the cantillation of the Gospel at Mass (9). The main text is enriched by samples of music, architectural drawings, well-chosen quotations from past authors, and images of historic furniture, manuscripts, and vestments. As a result, users of the volume, whether they are new to the study of liturgy or initiates of both sacred and scholarly mysteries, will find themselves taking tours down unknown but delightful avenues. I hope it becomes a useful resource and a spur to further research.
Throughout Dyer moves seamlessly from late antiquity to the early modern period. He also draws our attention regularly to questions of experience and activity: “the laity's devout participation in the Mass” (12); the mutual “responsibility” of scribe and lector to achieve “impeccable cantillation” in terms of audibility, sense, and adornment of text (60); the alignment and orientation of buildings and worshippers, as well as the intimacy or separation of ministers and congregation, men and women; and the visual impact of developments in furnishing and vesture that took place, particularly from the twelfth century onwards. All this and more contributed to “sacralizing the Word” (181).
The author makes clear that this study arises not merely from historical curiosity, but from his own engagement with the traditional or “extraordinary” form of the Latin Mass in a Roman Catholic parish, as he has watched deacons and celebrants chant the Gospel “strictly in accordance with the rubrics of the Missale Romanum (1570)” (12). Facing into the left transept with their backs to the congregation, certain “basic problems” became evident during the recitation of these readers. “I was intrigued about how this curious directionality came about and what it implied about communication of a text” (ibid.). We should be grateful that Dyer's interest was aroused in this way – and, perhaps, grateful that the recent flowering of traditional liturgy in Catholic churches has brought various issues to the fore. Previous generations of liturgical scholars – from Jean Mabillon to Louis Duchesne, from Gregory Dix to Antoine Chavasse, Romano Guardini, and Josef Jungmann – once took for granted the existence of common living examples. But it has become more difficult to gain access to such experiences after the sweeping liturgical changes enacted in almost all churches in the second half of the twentieth century. Continuity has been lost. We live on the other side of a sea change in religious practice, which makes the study of liturgy a rather different affair.
This is a study of rare quality, particularly for a single author, and this review can hardly do it justice. The significance and range of material Dyer takes in is impressive, and the reader gains a sense of the whole environment involved in sacred reading and how much work and imagination is necessary to recover this context. The breadth of this book also suggests the diverse competencies needed to discuss liturgy to the fullest extent. Across his career, Dyer has most often been an author of articles and book chapters, so this is also a rare monograph length contribution.
There are some unavoidable limitations. Dyer has had to focus his considerations on the development of the Latin Liturgy and particularly the Mass, rather than wider reading practices among the Eastern churches, in Jewish synagogues, or even in the diverse contexts of medieval Islam. Latin lectors were hardly alone in their practices of singing and reverence. Enthusiasts for the medieval Latin Office, too, are left with only a few morsels to enjoy in this book. The focus is upon the Middle Ages, of course, but the topic requires Dyer's gaze to sweep across developments from Late Antiquity onward. Some generalizing remarks are therefore necessary, though in his introduction, he rightly admits that he “cannot presume to have covered adequately all dimensions” of the relevant history (13). I fear that some users of this text will still take the book as just that sort of manual, as Dyer freely draws on comments from reformers, church fathers, modern liturgists, and late medieval resources like The Lay Folkes Mass Book. But this is unavoidable and cannot be seen as a criticism. The volume is an absolute delight to read, as well as a considerable resource. I hope it enjoys a wide audience.
