A number of pre-reformation church service books were printed, and this naturally included breviaries, some of which contained readings from the Life of St Botolph. I don’t know if there is a list somewhere of what exists and what is in each, beyond the excellent Usuarium website.
In 1505 a breviary for Hereford Abbey was printed in Rouen (Rotomagus) by a certain Inghelbert Haghe. I learn from an 1893 book1 that:
Of this book only three copies are known. One, textually perfect, and containing both parts, is in Worcester Cathedral Library. The Bodleian has a Pars Estivalis, slightly imperfect, and another copy is in private hands.
A wretched microfilm of the Bodleian copy of the first part is in Early English Books Online (EEBO). This database is only accessible to research libraries who subscribe, which is a bit sad. But as I discovered today, it is actually quite difficult to find this book even in EEBO, thanks to the abbreviated title. The searcher is advised to look for “Breuiariu secundu vsum herford”! The url is here.
Breuiariu[m] secundu[m] vsum herford
Alternate title: Breviary. Hereford
Bibliographic name/number: STC (2nd ed.) / 15793.
Anonymous; Catholic Church. EEBO Bodleian Library records – unstructured. [526] p. London: Emporio [P. Olivier and J. Mauditier] impensis et cura Ingheiberti haghe [in London, at the expenses of Margaret, Countess of Richmond] ,, 1505.
The copy comes complete with copyright notice, or rather, admission of guilt.
The rest of the PDF is no better, and often far worse. Is it better than nothing? Not really. If anybody from ProQuest is reading this, it would be good to improve things here.
The Hereford Breviary was edited under that title in three volumes for the Henry Bradshaw Society by W.H.Frere, in 1904. Here are the volumes at Archive.org:
- https://archive.org/details/herefordbreviary01cath/page/n5/mode/2up – vol 1
- https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XFZOAQAAMAAJ – vol 2
- https://archive.org/details/herefordbreviary03cath – vol 3
But, incredibly, it is not printed in full! p.vii:
It has already been stated that the text is not given in full; various reasons led to this course: the full text seemed unnecessary because so much of it is common to other Uses ; and moreover a student with one Breviary before him, wishing to trace out its differences from another, is hindered rather than helped by having the second one in full; he would rather have its differences pointed out than its whole text.
The man who wrote those works must have anticipated the infuriated reaction of researchers. And indeed the lections of the saints’ offices are not included. The only information is from vol. 2, p.194, where we learn that there are three readings.
While an 1893 book is not necessarily the last word on bibliography, it seems that the only way to access the full text is to be very nice to the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral. A fine body of men, no doubt! But I think that, just between you and I, this breviary may get omitted from my collection of Botolph materials.