New editions and translations of the two earliest texts for the rite of royal anointing in Anglo-Saxon England.

This volume provides 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.