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156 Chapter 3
The evidence of the Pupilla oculi
Where England is concerned, the evidence of the Sarum Missal is
complemented by that of Johannes de Burgo, author of the Pupilla
oculi, ‘The Pupil of the Eye’ (the title is an allusion to the earlier
‘Eye of the Priest’ by William of Pagula), a late fourteenth-century
priests’ manual that was influential, to judge by its wide di·usion.
The Sarum rubrics etc. had probably got into the Sarum books before
the appearance of the Pupilla, but the popular pastoral handbook
would have reinforced the message of the liturgical books.
It was in fact a practically identical message. The following passage
from Johannes de Burgo is extremely close to the wording of
a passage from the Sarum rubric translated above:
But since several blessings are given at a wedding, that is, over the couple
getting married at the entrance of the church, over a cloak after mass, and
over the marriage bed in the evening, it should therefore be noted that
all the blessings or prayers of blessing that are said at a first marriage,
are said also at a second one—even where both spouses or one of them
had previously been blessed—apart from the one that begins: OGod,who
consecrated conjugal union [copulam] with such an excellent mystery up to O
God, through whom woman, in which the theme is the unity of Christ and
the Church which is represented in a first marriage, but not in a second:
see Decretals of Gregory IX, De bigamis, the chapter Debitum.
These explanations show that the symbolic rationale could have
penetrated well below the level of the ivory-tower ‹elite, one of the
criteria suggested above as a ground for treating it as part of the
social meaning of the ritual practice. This conclusion is strengthened
if one bears in mind a finding of the first chapter: that the loss
rate of manuscripts was huge, for some genres of book especially.
Pastoral handbooks which would lie around a parish priest’s house
and liturgical books that were functional rather than for show, used
(243)—that is, all three ‘O God who . . .’ clauses were suppressed, but no other
words—which would bring them into line with the questions in MS BL Royal
11. A. XIV.
On this work see W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century,
2nd edn. (1962; repr. Toronto etc., 1980), 213–14; see also introduction to Document
3. 9 for further references. The author was quite an important man: chancellor of
Cambridge University.
‘Almost certainly . . . these rubrics, etc., were already in the Sarum books when
the Pupilla appeared, having probably been introduced before 1370’ (Manuale, ed.
Collins, 56 (n. 65 from p. 54)).
Document 3. 9. 8:comparewithManuale, ed. Collins, 56, lines 6–end.