This
volume fills a gap in scholarship by providing new editions and translations
of the two earliest texts for the rite of royal anointing in Anglo-Saxon
England. The First Ordo, believed to go back to the ninth century, perhaps
even a little before, is the earliest surviving coronation liturgy from
anywhere in the West. The compilation of the Second English Ordo has been
assigned to the late ninth or early tenth century. David Pratt’s edition and
translation presents this extremely important material in a scholarly but
fully accessible way for the first time. New editions are desirable, not only
for the intrinsic value of scrutinizing the text and transmission history of
both ordines, but for the light which can be cast on the early history of the
rite of royal anointing in England. That history is a subject which
unfortunately cannot be studied with reference to any single, authoritative
manuscript, but must rather be explored comparatively, by looking across the
manuscript record of later Anglo-Saxon and Frankish pontificals, and by
identifying patterns of development.