Ritual Memory ─ The Apocryphal Acts and Liturgical Commemoration in the Early Medieval West C.500-1215

Rose (Medieval Latin, Utrecht University) uses the examples of the liturgical lives of the six "minor apostles": Bartholomew, Matthew, Philip, James the Lesser, Simon and Jude, to demonstrate the prevalence of apocryphal material in readings, response and hymns of the medieval Masses for their feast days. Her exhaustive research covers several traditions and seven hundred years. She not only notes apocryphal elements in the liturgies but discusses the reasons for the choices of which ones were used. Much of the material was composed to commemorate the arrival of a relic of the apostle at a town or monastic house. However, some also reflected secular, political agendae. Rose also addresses the ambivalent attitude of medieval clerics and scholars toward the value of apocrypha. Chapters on the individual apostles demonstrate the wide variety among the stories about them and within the liturgies for each. This is an excellent and much-needed study of a neglected topic. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Els Rose, took her doctoral degree (2001, Utrecht University) with a thesis on language and liturgy in Merovingian Gaul. She teaches Medieval Latin at the same university, and has published recently on the apocrypha in medieval religious culture.