The Monastic Blessing of the Weekly Reader in Missal W 11 of the Walters Art Gallery

The versicles, Salvum fac servum tuum, etc., which are written by another scribe after the Agnus Dei in Missal W 11 (fol. 12r) of the Walters Art Gallery of Baltimore, are a formula—the shorter and, as I believe, the, older of the two formulae still printed in the Monastic Breviary—for the blessing of the weekly reader prescribed in Chapter xxxviii of St. Benedict's —Regula Monasteriorum. Since St. Benedict directs that the reader is to ask for the blessing on Sunday ‘post Missas et Communionem,’ the insertion of the formula at this point, that is, after the Ordinarium Missae, as we call it to-day, is not surprising. It is found similarly placed in at least one other book, the Sacramentarium Fuldense saeculi X, in which it is preceded by a title, Oratio pro ebdomadario refectorii lectore. Besides this Fulda book and our Walters Missal, the text is found in several customaries and ordinals which will be mentioned below, but for its earliest occurrence we must go to the commentary on the Holy Rule composed before 774 by Paul the Deacon in the monastery on Monte Pedale near Civate in the diocese of Milan. Accordingly, it is found also in the commentary ascribed to Hildemar, an amplified recension of the work of the Lombard monk of the preceding century.