A page from a Sarum Use Missal.
Image: Cheetham’s Library.
Text and Illustrations: ONCE I WAS A CLEVER BOY
The Web-Site of ONCE I WAS A CLEVER BOY can be found
The Advaticanum Web-Site reports that the Archbishop
of Birmingham has agreed in principle to the Celebration
of a Sarum Use Mass within his Diocese.
The story has been picked up by other Catholic websites,
but the original article from Advaticanum can be read at Archbishop of Birmingham, UK, gives approval
The account of recent Celebrations includes two by permission of the then Archbishop in 1996 and 1997 in the glorious Chapel of Merton College in Oxford.
I was able to attend those two offerings of the Mass and
it was a great privilege, and indeed a beautiful experience,
to witness the Liturgy of Mediæval England in a building created for just such a Celebration.
On the basis of those two occasions, I think there can be no doubt that other such Celebrations would be very popular.
Photographs from the video - which can be found Online —
of the second of these Masses, that of Candlemas in 1997, together with some notes about the Sarum Use, can be seen
by scrolling down at Sarum Rite
Properly speaking, Sarum is a Use, variant form of the Roman Rite, rather than a distinct Rite, like Milan, Lyons, or Braga, or the Spanish Mozarabic Rite at Toledo - and akin to the Traditional Dominican form.
At the Council of Constance in 1414-1417, the different “Nations” Celebrated Mass according to their home usage and members of other “Nations” were especially impressed by the beauty of the English Celebration.
