DIURNAL, Use of Sarum.

The only known copy of this miniature liturgical book printed in Paris, made specifically for an English market, containing the daytime offices of the rite of Sarum, the pre-Reformation rite for most of England south of the river Trent. It was ‘designed to render yet more compendious the already epitomised Breviary, and to make the Portos yet more portable […] we may infer that the parish priest who owned a ‘’Journal’’ would say his Matins in the church where his Breviary and Missal lay, before his Mass, and that, after that, he could use his handy little Diurnale for Sext, Nones, Evensong, and Compline, wherever he might chance to be at his usual times of prayer’ (Christopher Wordsworth, Old Service Books of the English Church, 101-2). The work splits the year into a winter and summer liturgical cycle, the former beginning in early December at Advent, and continuing until Easter. The summer officia (official prayers of the Church) open with the celebration of Easter itself, the Ascension and Pentecost, until the end of the season in August. Weeks are assigned a number or given a name relating to an upcoming religious celebration. A calendar in traditional Roman format follows, which lists all prayers required for each day of the year; each month is titled with its number of days and moons. Saints’ days are also recorded along with the relevant prayers, which are found in the last part of the work. These include dedications to St Andrew, Osmund, Nicholas, Barnabas, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, John, Paul, Peter, and Mary Magdalene. Local British saints are also venerated, such as St Alban, the first recorded British Christian martyr, St Etheldreda, an East Anglian princess and Northumbrian Queen who founded Ely cathedral in 673AD, and St. Cuthbert, the patron Saint of Northumbria.

Prior to these are the prayers assigned to specific parts of the day, which include the Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Vespers, Vigils and Complines. This layout of canonical hours marking divisions of the day through prayer is standard practice in Christianity, setting up a quotidian structure for the lives of monastic communities.