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The
Religious Life of the Cathedral
A
medieval cathedral was a complex organisation. Most Scottish
cathedrals served their local community as its parish church,
and would attract many of the faithful of the diocese on great
festivals. Yet it was even more important for contemporaries
that, as the leading church in its diocese, a cathedral was
the setting for an unbroken offering of worship in which only
the clergy expected to take part.
The basic form of this worship was the same as in the monastic
churches, with seven services together known as the Opus
Dei (work of God), consisting of psalms, prayers, readings
and anthems. In addition two masses were celebrated by the body
of clergy each morning, whilst there would be privately recited
masses as part of the individual devotions of the clergy or
as offerings on behalf of dead benefactors.
In the time of Bishop Geoffrey Liberatione (1236—49) it
was decided that the particular form which these services took
at Dunkeld, like the rules by which the chapter was conducted,
should be based on those at Salisbury Cathedral. This bishop
was clearly very much concerned with the details of the services
because he granted a charter to Scone Abbey on condition that
the abbey would provide the cathedral with a pound of incense
for censing the bread used at the mass when it was elevated
at the consecration.
In the later middle ages it is likely that the form of the worship
would have acquired a more specifically Scottish character.
We know a little of the services from a sixteenthcentury
choir book, known as an Antiphonary, which is thought to have
come from Dunkeld and is now in Edinburgh University Library.
This contains musical settings for the mass and a number of
anthems.
Return
To Dunkeld Cathedral
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