Cultural Exchange and Inculturation in the Musico-Liturgical Manuscript Sources of the Secular Office in the Medieval Irish Provinces of Dublin and Armagh

This tripartite study of the extant musico-liturgical sources of the secular Office of Sarum Use associated with the medieval provinces of Dublin and Armagh interrogates what these liturgical service books reveal about the socio-political landscape and the cultural identity of the Irish church in the late medieval period. Building on previous scholarship that examined discrete elements of the nine different musico-liturgical Office sources associated with the medieval provinces of Dublin and Armagh, this thesis considers how the liturgy was shaped by a confluence of religious, political and cultural forces: it challenges traditional historical narratives and offers new perspectives on the spiritual lives of the Irish population. At the heart of this discussion is the Sarum liturgy, which once introduced and established, was transformed on the ground, enabling Anglo and Gaelic liturgical observances to co-exist. The formal adoption of Sarum liturgical practices in Ireland has a problematic historiography, with scholarly opinion differing as to when, how and why the Use was established. This study seeks to dispel certain preexisting narratives, such as the existence of two churches in Ireland, the idea that the Gaelic church was somehow supplanted by Rome, and finally, that Sarum Use was imposed wholesale on the Irish church to the detriment of an earlier Celtic rite. How widespread this ‘dialect’ of the Roman liturgy — introduced following the arrival of the Anglo-Normans — was, together with the matter of how and why it was adapted at diocesan and provincial level to suit the needs of the Irish church, will be explored. A descriptive catalogue of the extant manuscripts, comprehensive descriptions of the sanctorale contents pertaining to Irish saints, and transcriptions of the Irish material in the liturgical kalendars provide both a resource for further research and a ‘proof of concept’ of the approach taken in this study. A closer reading of the primary sources reveals that Sarum Use was slowly grafted into the cultural values, traditions, and institutions of the worshiping community. It was not imposed wholesale, an older Celtic rite was not lost as a result of its introduction, nor was the liturgy leveraged in order to subjugate an island of barbarous savages as certain Anglo-Norman commentary might imply. These Office books of secular Sarum Use crossed political, ethnic, cultural, and diocesan divides, demonstrating that the Irish church was a single, hybridized entity that could, and did, accommodate both ‘Anglo’ and ‘Gaelic’ liturgical traditions.