Sarum Use

In Brief

The Sarum Use is the medieval use of Salisbury — the form of the Roman Rite that, by the late Middle Ages, had spread far beyond Salisbury to become England's own.¹ It was never a separate rite: the 1549 Act that abolished it calls it "the use of Sarum", and every modern authority files it as a local form of the Roman Rite.²¹ Its books — the Missal, the Breviary, the Customary — are the great surviving witness to what English Catholic worship looked like before the break: a Roman Mass with Sarum's own calendar, votive Masses, sequences and ceremonial.³⁴ Tradition attributed the books to St Osmund, bishop of Salisbury (d. 1099); Frere showed in 1898 that no evidence supports the attribution — the Consuetudinary "as it stands, is not the work of S. Osmund" — and the Sarum books belong substantially to the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries.⁵

Where to Experience It

The Shape of the Liturgy

The shape of Sarum is the shape of the Roman Rite with local additions: the Roman Canon and the Roman skeleton of the Mass, clothed in Sarum's own sanctoral calendar, proper hymns and sequences, votive Masses and a rich ceremonial.³¹² The Sarum Customary — the constitutional-ceremonial core of the "use" — survives in several versions, and the Bangor project's editions show directly that the "Sarum Use" was never one fixed text: it was a living local tradition that kept being copied, revised and adapted.⁵¹³

The entry covers three English uses together. York, the northern use, had more proper hymns and sequences than Sarum and many minor variants from both Sarum and Rome.¹² Its Missal was edited from the manuscripts and printed editions by Henderson in 1874.¹⁴ Hereford kept its own medieval diocesan rite, with its own Missal and Breviary, documented in the modern monograph by William Smith.¹⁵¹⁶ Neither was a separate rite: all three were local uses of the Roman Rite, and the 1549 settlement treated them as such.

History

The Sarum Use did not come from St Osmund's pen. The legend that Osmund compiled the books runs through Daniel Rock's Church of Our Fathers as seen in St Osmund's Rite (1849–53) and even Bergh's Catholic Encyclopedia article of 1912 — but Frere's introduction to The Use of Sarum (1898) had already dismantled it: there is "no sign that S. Osmund left behind him any written liturgical prescriptions at all".¹⁷¹⁸⁵ What Osmund left was constitutional — the Institutio and the chapter of Salisbury — and the Sarum books were formed in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries out of that foundation.⁵¹ The modern scholarship of Pfaff and the Bangor project has developed Frere's line: a gradual, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century formation, not a founder's code.¹¹³

The use ended by statute, not by Rome. The Act of Uniformity of 1549 names and abolishes "the use of Sarum, of York, of Bangor, and of Lincoln" — Hereford is not named in the Act, though the Prayer Book's own preface names the Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor, York and Lincoln uses before decreeing that "the whole realme shall haue but one use".²¹⁹ Duffy has documented what followed: the dismantling of the old liturgy between 1547 and 1559, experienced by laypeople who had known nothing else.²⁰ The Marian restoration revived the uses in 1553–58 — the last complete Sarum Breviary was printed in 1557 — and they died again with the Elizabethan settlement of 1559.²¹¹

Three things did not happen. Rome never suppressed Sarum: Quo primum (1570), which exempted uses older than two hundred years, was promulgated when Sarum was already dead in England.²¹ The Book of Common Prayer did not continue Sarum: it replaced the uses with "one use", whatever it kept of their calendar and collects.¹⁹ And the restored English hierarchy of 1850 did not formally reject Sarum: its first synod in 1852 simply presupposed the Roman books, as the recusants had done for three centuries — the word "Sarum" does not occur in its decrees.²²

Milestones

1. 1099Death of St Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, to whom the use was later attributed⁵
2. c. 1200–1325The early state of the Sarum Missal preserved in the three manuscripts Legg edited¹⁰
3. 1549The Act of Uniformity names and abolishes 'the use of Sarum, of York, of Bangor, and of Lincoln' — Hereford is not named in the Act²
4. 1549The Book of Common Prayer preface names the Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor, York and Lincoln uses and decrees that 'the whole realme shall haue but one use'¹⁹
5. 1553The Marian restoration revives the uses; the last complete Sarum Breviary is printed in 1557^2,11
6. 1559The Elizabethan settlement ends the uses in England²
7. 1852The restored English hierarchy's first synod presupposes the Roman books; no decree 'decides against' Sarum²²

Texts & Books

The standard complete Latin text of the late-medieval printed Sarum Missal is Dickinson's 1861–83 edition, which edits the sixteenth-century printed editions; Legg's 1916 edition, from three early manuscripts, gives the early state for thirteenth-century arguments.⁴¹⁰ The Breviary was edited by Procter and Wordsworth in 1879–86.¹¹ Frere's Use of Sarum (1898, 1901) prints the Customary, the Ordinal and the Tonal — the ceremonial constitution of the use — and his Graduale Sarisburiense (1894) is a facsimile of a thirteenth-century gradual, not a critical edition.⁵⁸ For York, Henderson's 1874 Surtees Society edition gives the Missal; for Hereford, Henderson's 1874 Missal is now joined by Smith's 2015 monograph on the Hereford sources.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶ The Sarum Rite site at sarum-chant.ca, directed by William Renwick, offers free performing and scholarly editions of the Missal, Breviary and chant with a solid bibliography — a practical edition project, not a critical edition.⁹

Family & Relations

Sarum descends directly from the Roman Rite: it is a use, not a rite, and "Sarum Rite" is a modern label the Index does not adopt.³² The Book of Common Prayer is the uses' historical replacement, not their continuation: its calendar, lectionary and some of its collects descend from Sarum — Bergh notes that the BCP's Sunday Gospels perpetuate the Sarum sequence — but its Mass rite and theology do not.¹⁸¹⁹ The Anglican "English Use" programme of Percy Dearmer's Parson's Handbook (1899), which argued that Anglican worship should be ceremonially Sarum, is a primary source for the reception claim, not evidence for it: Dearmer describes what he wanted Anglicanism to be, and the Index states the Catholic position separately.²⁴ Sarum sits in the Index alongside the other great medieval uses of the Roman Rite — Braga, Lyon — and against the Order books, which survived because Quo primum exempted them while Sarum died by English statute.²¹

Compare with

• Braga Use: the Portuguese medieval use of the Roman Rite — still living where Sarum ended in 1549³
• Lyon Use: the French medieval use of the Roman Rite — still celebrated weekly at Lyon where Sarum survives only in enactments²³

The Rite Today

There is no ordinary Sarum practice anywhere today. What exists is occasional and must be named honestly. In the mid-1990s, Fr Sean Finnegan celebrated Sarum-use liturgies at Merton College, Oxford — including Candlemas 1997, which survives on video — and no document of permission for these celebrations has been found.⁶²⁵ Separately, the Bangor University project The Experience of Worship (2009–13) practically reconstructed the Sarum Lady Mass, Jesus Mass, Holy Name procession and Vespers, enacted in 2011: academic enactments, not Catholic liturgical celebrations.⁷ Renwick's editions keep the chant and texts in the hands of performers and choirs.⁹ The Sarum Use lives now in books and reconstructions — which is exactly why the books matter.

Disputed Questions

Go Deeper

The most important question about Sarum is what a "use" is. Matthew Cheung Salisbury's historiographical essay argues that the category itself was constructed: the "uses" were not fixed editions handed down from founders, and the Sarum Customary Online's several versions of the Customary show a tradition being continually remade.²⁶¹³ That is the real answer to the Osmund question too. Frere did not deny Osmund a role — he credited the bishop's constitutional "handiwork" — he denied that the legend was liturgy.⁵ Sarum was never one man's rite. It was England's way of celebrating the Roman Rite, made over two centuries by canons, scribes and printers, and then unmade in one decade by statute — which is why the 1549 Act, not any Roman decree, is the document that ended it.²

## Sources

• Gee, Henry, & W. J. Hardy (eds), Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London: Macmillan, 1896), no. LXIX — the 1549 Act of Uniformity: "the use of Sarum, of York, of Bangor, and of Lincoln".
• The First Prayer-Book of King Edward VI, 1549 (London: Griffith, Farran, 1900), preface — "Salsbury use, … Herford use, … Bangor, … Yorke, … Lincolne"; "the whole realme shall haue but one use".
• Frere, W. H. (ed.), The Use of Sarum, vol. I (Cambridge: CUP, 1898), pp. xvii–xviii — the Osmund critique: the Consuetudinary "as it stands, is not the work of S. Osmund".
• Dickinson, F. H. (ed.), Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum (Burntisland: E prelo de Pitsligo, 1861–83) — the standard complete Latin text of the printed Sarum Missal.
• Legg, J. Wickham (ed.), The Sarum Missal, edited from three early manuscripts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916) — the early state.
• Procter, Francis, & Christopher Wordsworth (eds), Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum (Cambridge: CUP, 1879, 1882, 1886) — the Sarum Office; preface: no entire edition printed since 1557.
• Pfaff, Richard W., The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge: CUP, 2009) — the central modern account.
• Salisbury, Matthew Cheung, "Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York: A Historiographical Essay" (2016) — what a "use" is.
• Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992) — the dismantling of the old liturgy, 1547–59.
• Thurston, Herbert, "Use of York", The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 15 (1912) — York's more proper hymns and sequences, and its variants.
• Henderson, W. G. (ed.), Missale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis (Durham: Surtees Society, 1874) — the York Missal.
• Henderson, W. G. (ed.), Missale ad usum percelebris ecclesiae Herfordensis (Leeds: McCorquodale, 1874) — the Hereford Missal.
• Smith, William, The Use of Hereford: The Sources of a Medieval English Diocesan Rite (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015) — the modern Hereford monograph.
• Dearmer, Percy, The Parson's Handbook (London: Grant Richards, 1899) — the Anglican "English Use" reception claim.
• Rock, Daniel, The Church of Our Fathers as seen in St Osmund's Rite (London: C. Dolman, 1849–53) — the Osmund legend's classic form.
• Acta et decreta primi concilii provincialis Westmonasteriensis (Oscott 1852; Paris: Migne, 1853), decree 19 — the Roman books presupposed, with no decree against Sarum.
• Sarum Customary Online (Bangor University, 2011–12) — the customaries in parallel, showing the use was never one fixed text.
• The Experience of Worship (Bangor University, 2009–13) — the 2011 academic enactments of the Sarum Masses and Offices.
• Renwick, William (dir.), The Sarum Rite (sarum-chant.ca; Gregorian Institute of Canada) — performing editions and bibliography.
• New Liturgical Movement, "Sarum Use at Merton" (2006) and "Candlemas celebrated in Use of Sarum" (2016) — the reported Merton celebrations; no permission found.
• Quo primum (1570) — the exemption of uses older than two hundred years; Sarum was already dead in England.

On Domus Dei

• The Roman Rite
• The Braga Use
• The Lyon Use

Official resources

• Sarum Customary Online — the Bangor University project
• The Experience of Worship — the Bangor enactment project

Recommended reading

• Pfaff, Richard W., The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.The central modern account.
• Frere, W. H. (ed.), The Use of Sarum, vol. I: The Sarum Customs as set forth in the Consuetudinary and Customary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.The Osmund critique, free on archive.org.
• Gee, Henry, and W. J. Hardy (eds.), Documents Illustrative of English Church History, London: Macmillan, 1896.The 1549 Act of Uniformity, the legal abolition. Read online
• Salisbury, Matthew Cheung, “Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York: A Historiographical Essay”, Understanding Medieval Liturgy, ed. Gittos & Hamilton, 2016, 103-122.What a 'use' is.
• Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.The dismantling of the old liturgy, 1547–59.

Sources

1. ScholarshipPfaff, Richard W., The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): Crossref doi:10.1017/CBO9780511642340. The central modern account; chapters 'Old Sarum: the beginnings of Sarum Use' (pp. 350-364), 'New Sarum and the spread of Sarum Use' (365-387), 'Southern England: final Sarum Use' (412-444). Not opened
2. Primary textGee, Henry, and W. J. Hardy (eds.), Documents Illustrative of English Church History, London: Macmillan, 1896. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · archive.org OCR read locally: no. LXIX, the Act of Uniformity of 1549, p. 358: 'of Sarum, of York, of Bangor, and of Lincoln' (the OCR reads 'Qf Sarum'; the words before it are illegible in the OCR and are not quoted; the 1549 preface's 'Salsbury use' confirms the reading)
3. ReferenceFortescue, Adrian, “Rites”, Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, 1912. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · read in the New Advent text: the general part, signed ADRIAN FORTESCUE (New Advent's citation line names P. Griffin, wrongly): 'merely the Roman Rite with local additions and modifications, most of which are to its disadvantage'; dioceses (e.g. Lyons) and orders 'keep their special uses'. It misdates Quo primum to 19 July 1570 (the bull: pridie Idus Julii, 14 July), so that date is not repeated
4. Primary textDickinson, F. H. (ed.), Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum, Burntisland: E prelo de Pitsligo, 1861.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata (Burntisland, 1861). The standard complete Latin text of the late-medieval printed Sarum Missal; it edits 16th-century printed editions, not medieval manuscripts. Not opened
5. Primary textFrere, W. H. (ed.), The Use of Sarum, vol. I: The Sarum Customs as set forth in the Consuetudinary and Customary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.Verified 2026-09-14 · Seen (review), pp. xvii-xviii: 'it is clear that the Consuetudinary, as it stands, is not the work of S. Osmund'; 'no sign that S. Osmund left behind him any written liturgical prescriptions at all'; yet the tractate 'enshrines some of the undoubted handiwork of S. Osmund', i.e. his constitutional work
6. ReferenceNew Liturgical Movement, Sarum Use at Merton, 2006. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · Reported: Fr Sean Finnegan celebrated Sarum-use liturgies at Merton College, Oxford, in the mid-1990s. No document of permission was found
7. ScholarshipHarper, John (PI), et al., The Experience of Worship in late medieval Cathedral and Parish Church, Bangor University, 2009. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · Seen (about page): the AHRC/ESRC project that practically reconstructed the Sarum Lady Mass, Jesus Mass, Holy Name procession and Vespers/Compline, enacted 2011. Academic enactments, not Catholic liturgical celebrations
8. Primary textFrere, W. H. (ed.), Graduale Sarisburiense, London: Bernard Quaritch for the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 1894.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. A facsimile (not an edition) of a 13th-century Sarum gradual. Not opened
9. ScholarshipRenwick, William (dir.), The Sarum Rite, Gregorian Institute of Canada. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · Seen (the site and its bibliography): free performing and scholarly editions of the Missal, Breviary and chant, with a solid bibliography; a practical edition project, not a critical edition
10. Primary textLegg, J. Wickham (ed.), The Sarum Missal, edited from three early manuscripts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The early (c. 1200-1325) state of the Missal, the corrective to Dickinson for 13th-century arguments. Not opened
11. Primary textProcter, Francis, and Christopher Wordsworth (eds), Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1879.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The Sarum Office in 3 vols (1879, 1882, 1886), editing the Paris 1531 edition; its preface says no entire edition of the Breviary had been printed since 1557. Not opened
12. ReferenceThurston, Herbert, “Use of York”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15, 1912. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · read (citation block): York had more proper hymns and sequences than Sarum, and many minor variants from both Sarum and Rome. A sober summary
13. ScholarshipHarper, John (dir.), et al., Sarum Customary Online, Bangor University, 2011. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · Seen (the site and its about pages): single-source Latin texts and English translation of the Old and New Customaries alongside Frere's composite. It shows directly that the 'Sarum Use' was not one fixed text
14. Primary textHenderson, W. G. (ed.), Missale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis, Durham: Andrews & Co. for the Surtees Society, 1874.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The York Missal, collated from the known manuscripts and five printed editions. Not opened
15. Primary textHenderson, W. G. (ed.), Missale ad usum percelebris ecclesiae Herfordensis, Leeds: McCorquodale, 1874.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The Hereford Missal. Not opened
16. ScholarshipSmith, William, The Use of Hereford: The Sources of a Medieval English Diocesan Rite, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): Crossref doi:10.4324/9781315551807. The modern monograph on Hereford. Not opened
17. ScholarshipRock, Daniel, The Church of Our Fathers as seen in St Osmund's Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury, London: C. Dolman, 1849.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The English Catholic antiquarian recovery of Sarum; its title embodies the 'Osmund's rite' legend. Not opened
18. ReferenceBergh, Frederick Thomas, “Sarum Rite”, Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, 1912. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · read in the New Advent text: the title, the opening '(More accurately Sarum Use)' and its definition. Not cited for origins: it repeats the legend that St Osmund compiled the books, which Frere rejected in 1898
19. Primary textThe First Prayer-Book of King Edward VI, 1549, London: Griffith, Farran, 1900. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · archive.org OCR read locally: the preface, p. 4: 'some folowyng Salsbury use, some Herford use … all the whole realme shall haue but one use'
20. ScholarshipDuffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. Lay experience of the Sarum-era liturgy and its dismantling, 1547-59. Not opened
21. Magisterial / canonicalPius V, Quo primum (bull promulgating the Roman Missal), 1570. LinkVerified 2026-09-15 · Latin read in the front matter of the 1962 editio typica (archive.org sp07mr62-editio-typica, page images pp. [V]-VI) and of an 1862 Missal: 'nisi ab ipsa prima institutione a Sede Apostolica approbata, vel consuetudine, quae, vel ipsa institutio super ducentos annos … assidue observata sit'; dated 'pridie idus iulii' 1570; the Council of Trent's decrees had left the Missal to the pope: 'inter alia Sacri Tridentini Concilii decreta, nobis statuendum esset de sacris libris, Catechismo, Missali, et Breviario edendis, atque emendandis' (1862 front matter)
22. Magisterial / canonicalActa et decreta primi concilii provincialis Westmonasteriensis, Oscott / Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1853.Verified 2026-09-14 · Seen (review): decree 19 requires the rubrics of the Roman Missal for the last three days of Holy Week; no decree 'decides against' Sarum — the Roman books are simply presupposed, as they had been the recusant norm for three centuries
23. ReferenceGoyau, Georges, “Lyons”, Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9, 1910. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · read in the New Advent text: Pius IX's assurance of 4 Feb 1864, the Brief of 17 March 1864, the primatial church's adoption of the Roman books on 8 December 1869
24. Primary textDearmer, Percy, The Parson's Handbook, London: Grant Richards, 1899.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): archive.org metadata. The Anglican 'English Use' programme: a primary source for the reception claim that BCP worship should be ceremonially Sarum, not evidence for it. Not opened
25. ReferenceNew Liturgical Movement, Candlemas celebrated in Use of Sarum, 2016. LinkVerified 2026-09-14 · Reported: Candlemas 1997 at Merton College, Oxford (video). No document of permission was found
26. ScholarshipSalisbury, Matthew Cheung, “Rethinking the Uses of Sarum and York: A Historiographical Essay”, Understanding Medieval Liturgy, ed. Gittos & Hamilton, 2016, 103-122.Verified 2026-09-14 · Catalogued (citation): Crossref doi:10.4324/9781315562988-6. The key modern statement on what a 'use' is. Only its record has been read; nothing is characterised beyond its title