The liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre is the practice adopted by the Latin Western Catholics once they settled in Jerusalem as a result of the first crusade, in 1099. It originated within the cathedral church of the Holy Sepulchre, the patriarchal see, and it was consequently adopted by most of the religious institutions within the patriarchate.
While being completely western, it cannot be traced back to the liturgical use practised in any single western diocese. However its individual components clearly do derive from diverse western sources, showing that the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre has a composite nature. With no extant records specifically related to the liturgy of the Hoiy Sepulchre to clarify for us what was its actual form, why was it put together in such a way, when, and by whom, only through the manuscripts has it been possible to reconstruct events for centuries left unsolved.
The purpose of this research is first to define and analyse the characteristics of the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre. Secondly, and most importantly, it is to identify the liturgy's western sources through a method, which we may call comparative liturgy, which allows its comparison against the widest range of western liturgical uses; and thirdly, to understand the process through which the western sources were incorporated as constituent parts of the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, providing new evidence for our understanding of the ecclesiastical organisation of Latin Jerusalem, as well as of some of the people most responsible for the liturgy's development.
The work includes a descriptive catalogue of the 18 liturgical manuscripts of the Holy Sepulchre, produced in Jerusalem, Acre, and Cyprus; a description of the 2 Templar manuscripts from European houses; finally an inventory of the 66 manuscripts and 9 early editions used by Hospitaller houses in Europe.