Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Hybrid Death Rites
[Catholic Church. Liturgy and Ritual. Offices for Dead. Caen. Abbey of Sainte-Trinité].
L'Ordre des ceremonies du Royal Monastere de Saincte Trinité de Caen. Contenant la forme d'administrer les sacremens aux malades, & faire les funerailles des trespasses.
Caen: [M. Yvon] for Pierre Poisson, 1622.
[Bound with:] Cérémonial qui s'observe actuellement aux inhumations. [Caen, ca. 1776].
[Bound with:] Le Libera. [France? 18th century]. Manuscript in French on paper with 8 lines of text and 8 music staves per page.
[Bound with:] L’Office des morts. [France, 17th century].
(BRF0016 A-D)
This hybrid gathering of death rites spans a century and a half of religious practice in provincial France, produced in print and in manuscript for rituals observed in the Abbey of Sainte-Trinité at Caen in Normandy. The 1622 L’Ordre des ceremonies (“The Order of Ceremonies”), the only edition of the liturgy and choreography of the services for the sick and dead nuns at the abbey, includes printed music in plainsong notation with instructions printed in French and liturgical texts, prayers, and songs in Latin. The late eighteenth-century Cérémonial, printed approximately 150 years after the original publication, updates and corrects L’Ordre. Following Louis XVI’s 1776 edict limiting the interment of bodies in cathedrals and chapels, these modifications to the monastic funeral service were issued. The single manuscript in the volume comprises music and the Latin text of the Roman Catholic responsorial Líbera me ("Deliver me") sung as part of the Office of the Dead. The fourth and final work is an eighteen-leaf section of an early seventeenth-century Hours of the Dead with instructive text in French and liturgical text in Latin. Including the prayers, chants, and lessons for Vespers, Matins, and Lauds, the original source publication has not yet been identified.
