I am currently a PhD student at the university of Cambridge, researching ninth-century liturgical manuscripts and, in particular, the enigmatic set of texts known as ordines romani, a special genre of liturgical instruction arising from the Carolingian intervention in the liturgy. I am interested in performing a fuller analysis of the manuscripts in which the ordines are transmitted, which often do not fit into traditional categories of liturgical book, in order to better understand how exactly these texts were disseminated and received, and what kind of messages lay behind their transmission and transcription. These include a good dozen manuscripts from the ninth century, which form the heart of the current PhD project, and which are to be subjected to a total analysis, in content, form, palaeography and codicology.
