Anecdota. 267 There is one more reason for supposing that the invocations were drawn up almost as early as the year 900: though the grounds on which it rests are less conclusive than the former. Five of the personages here invoked have been distinguished by the scribe with capital letters and with slight red patches. They are St Mary, St Michael, St Peter, St Kenelm and St Benedict. Now of these five names the fourth is very seldom noticed even by the English hagiologists, and ere long disappears entirely from the catalogues of saints. His prominent position here was due, I think, to some 6clat which lasted only for a time ; and as his tragic death occurred in 819 4 , we seem to have another warrant for assigning a very high antiquity to the document before us. It may indeed be urged that the insertion of St Kenelm in larger characters was owing merely to some local influence ; for ex- ample, to the partiality of the monks of Winchcombe^, where his relics were preserved : but on the other hand, I think, this argu- ment is more than balanced by a clause in the Litany itself, which connects it not in any way with Winchcombe, but with one or other of the archiepiscopal dioceses 6. On the whole, I am quite convinced that the formulary pre- sents the earliest germ or outline, hitherto discovered, of our modern English Litany. It was apparently engrafted? on the Consuetudinarium of Osmund, bishop of Sarum, who revised the service-books about 1085 ; and the substance of it was after- wards rendered into the vernacular language for the use of laymen, as we see on comparing it with " The Letanie" printed in Mr MaskelTs Monum. Ritual, u. 223 sq.] 8 Kyrie eleison . Christe eleison . Christe audi nos. Pater de coelis Deus, Miserere nobis. Fili Redemptor mundi Deus, Miserere nobis. 4 See Florence of Worcester, A. D. in 1531 ; but owing to the frequent 819 (in Monum. Britain, p. 547, c.) changes introduced into the service- 5 Monasticon Anglic, new ed. II. 297, books, one cannot positively argue that 3- it formed part of Osmund's compila- 6 The words are " archiepiscopum tion. nostrum" etc., no mention being made 8 The spelling has been corrected in of a bishop. a few places, and the contractions writ- 7 It is at least contained in the ten out at length. For eleison the MS. edition of the Sarum Breviary published always reads leison.
