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DURANTUS, G., Rationale Divinorum officiorum V-VI. Ediderunt A. Davril et T.M. Thibodeau. Brepols, Turnhout, 1998. 621p. Original terra-cotta gilt stamped cloth. Small sticker glued to paste-down endpaper. Series: Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, CXL A. Nice copy. ‘At long last, two qualified medieval scholars (…) have inaugurated the publication of William Durand’s magnum opus, the ‘Rationale divinorum officio rum’. This activist bishop of Mende (1285-1296), (…) was, (…) determined to instruct his clergy in the mysteries of the liturgy by compiling and redacting in one great whole the writings of the eminent liturgiologists of the twelfth en early thirteenth centuries. It is a true summa of the venerable allegorical method of interpreting the enacted liturgy and, as such, one of the most important and influential compositions of the high Middle Ages (…). Unlike his predecessors, Durand, in his capacity as an eminent canonist and author, used and listed in the margin his valuable juridical sources; it is one the merits of this edition that these references are carefully identified in a special apparatus. (…) As the most popular liturgical commentary of the following three centuries, the Rationale survives in over a hundred manuscripts and confronts the editors with a daunting task. (…) They opted for a ‘scientific’ rather than a strictly critical edition, based on eight fine manuscripts. By so doing they have published a completely reliable and readable text without cluttering the apparatus with useless and expensive minutiae. The editors are to be congratulated for putting so accurate and serviceable an edition of this vast text in our hands.’ (WILLIAM G. STOREY in Church History, 1997, pp.565-566). € 195.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9782503044033