A Durham Book of Devotions

Harley 2965), from the turn of the ninth century or somewhat earlier, a collection similar in content and arrangement to the Book of Cerne.6 On the Continent, one of the results of the great ecclesiasti- cal reforms instituted by Charlemagne and continued by his son Louis the Pious was the production of new devotional anthologies, many of which show the influence of the Book of 4 Edited as an Appe [...] This can be taken as a sign of the growing recognition of the value of the Psalter as an aid to private devotion, a consequence of the ninth-century reforms.8 The Benedictine reform movement begun on the Continent reached England in the mid-tenth century, and after a long period of interruption collections of private prayers were once again produced in English monasteries. [...] The additions might include prayers from the Carolin- gian era, and the works, often anonymous, of Anselm's con- temporaries or imitators.14 The present edition offers for the first time a selection of this matter as it is found in a medieval manuscript, and well illustrates the diversity of origin and the miscellaneous character of such twelfth-century anthologies. [...] In this edition, the genuine prayers and meditations of Anselm are not printed because they are readily available in the excel- lent edition of F. S. Schmitt.16 In the Appendix I list printed editions of the items in the anthology (excluding the work of 15 On the development of the Anselmian apocrypha, see Andre Wilmart, 'La Tradition des prieres de saint Anselme,' Revue blnedictine 36 (1924) 52-7 [...] The attributed work of Anselm and the rest of the anthology begins on folio 40v and continues to the foot of folio 150v, where the text of item 34 breaks off in mid-sentence.