Public Events

In October 2010 the Pontifical was the subject of the T. Rowland Hughes Public Lecture, a public art history lecture hosted by Bangor University. Given by Dr Lynda Dennison FSA, the talk established that, based on its illumination, the Bangor Pontifical was made in around 1320, by an artist in the diocese of Ely who worked in the sphere of artists associated with the Queen Mary Psalter and related manuscripts.

On 18 December 2010 the Bangor Pontifical Project featured in Tom Service’s BBC Radio 3 programme, ‘A Welsh Christmas’. The Pontifical also featured as the subject of Service’s weekly Guardian blog.

On 6 February 2011, a special bilingual service of dedication and blessing, ‘The Bishop and his Book’, was held in Bangor Cathedral to celebrate the return of the manuscript following its conservation at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. The Pontifical was presented to the Dean of Bangor, the Very Revd Alun Hawkins, by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor John G. Hughes, and blessed by the current Bishop of Bangor, the Right Reverend Andrew John. The Pro Vice-Chancellors Mr Wyn Thomas and Professors Colin Baker and David Shepherd, were also in attendance.

The service was devised specially for the occasion by Bangor’s International Centre for Sacred Music Studies in collaboration with the Cathedral. Music was sung by the Cathedral Choir, an all-female schola from the University, and a professional cantor. Several of the plainchant melodies from the Bangor Pontifical were transcribed specially for the service, two of them known only from this manuscript.

The service also included readings from the medieval Life of St Deiniol (d. 584), patron and Bishop of Bangor, whose monastery stood on the site of the present cathedral. The Pontifical was blessed in the words of a medieval benediction, translated and adapted from a manuscript belonging to Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter from 1420 to 1455.

One of the benedictions from the Bangor Pontifical was used in June 2011 at a special Latin ceremony to dedicate vestments and liturgical objects made for use at the medieval church of St Teilo, St Fagans: National History Museum of Wales. All of these items, based on authentic medieval originals, were commissioned as part of ‘The Experience of Worship in Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church’, a research project led by Bangor University’s International Centre for Sacred Music Studies, for use in enactments of medieval liturgies. Each item needed to be blessed before being put to use in the church, and suitable medieval blessings with Welsh associations were explored. A benediction of vestments was chosen from the Bangor manuscript (f.154).