CHAPTER IV
THE DUTIES OF READING AND SINGING
The clerk's highest privilege in pre-Reformation times was to take his
part in the great services of the church. His functions were very
important, and required considerable learning and skill. When the songs
of praise echoed through the vaulted aisles of the great church, his
voice was heard loud and clear leading the choirmen and chanting the
opening words of the Psalm. As early as the time of St. Gregory this
duty was required of him. In giving directions to St. Augustine of
Canterbury the Pope ordered that clerks should be diligent in singing
the Psalms. In the ninth century Pope Leo IV directed that the clerks
should read the Psalms in divine service, and in 878 Archbishop Hincmar
of Rheims issued some articles of inquiry to his Rural Deans, asking,
among other questions, "Whether the presbyter has a clerk who can keep
school, or read the epistle, or is able to sing as far as may seem
needful to him?"
A canon of the Council of Nantes, embodied in the Decretals of Pope
Gregory IX, settled definitely that every presbyter who has charge of a
parish should have a clerk, who should sing with him and read the
epistle and lesson, and who should be able to keep school and admonish
the parishioners to send their children to church to learn the
faith[35].
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