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A primer (Latin: primarium, also spelled prymer) is the name for a variety of devotional prayer books that originated among educated medieval laity in the 14th century, particularly in England. While the contents of primers have varied dependent on edition, they often contained portions of the Psalms and Latin liturgical practices such as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Primers were often similar and sometimes considered synonymous with the also popular book of hours. Primers remained popular during and immediately after the English Reformation among Protestants in the Church of England, where it developed into an educational tool for schoolchildren. While Anglican and Catholic editions were occasionally produced up to the 20th century, their popularity as Christian texts waned as the word "primer" came to be associated with introductory secular textbooks.

Origins and contents

The Primer of Claude of France, an illuminated primer from c. 1505

While the etymology of the word "primer" in reference to a type of prayer book is unknown, its origins were in texts produced for laity in the 14th century that developed out of and in correspondence with editions of the breviary and the related portiforium. Liturgical historian Edmund Bishop forwarded the view that these primers were pious devotional developments from the Divine Office according monastic use that were gradually viewed as obligatory within those communities. However, it is likely that the distinction between these devotions and the Divine Office were maintained and understood by those employing them. The earliest of these accretions were the Seven Penitential Psalms and the Fifteen Psalms. Further additions came with the 10th-century ascendancy of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Laity in Western Christendom would attend recitation of the Divine Office, with women noted to have said the prayers in a low voice. However, the time needed to thoroughly learn the intricacies of the breviaries were prohibitory to laypersons, and those devotions which were mostly invariable were adapted into primers. The introduction of the Office of the Dead and its variants of Matins and Vespers would, alongside the Little Office, form the basis of primers for several centuries. Editions of the primers would match the local liturgical use in their ordering of the Psalms, with known variations for the Roman Rite, Sarum Use, York Use, Parisian practices. Standardization of these devotions and the early primers would generally occur within monastic communities and cathedral and collegiate chapters.

The contents of one primer dating from circa 1400 were:

• 1. Matins and lesser hours of the Little Office
• 2. Evensong and Compline of the Little Office
• 3. Penitential Psalms
• 4. Fifteen Psalms (Psalms of Degrees)
• 5. Litany
• 6. Vespers of the Office of the Dead (Latin: Placebo)
• 7. Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead (Latin: Dirige)
• 8. Psalms of Commendation
• 9. Pater Noster
• 10. Ave Maria
• 11. Nicene Creed
• 12. Ten Commandments
• 13. Seven deadly sins

It is from Dirige, the Latin word for the Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead as they were contained in primers, that the English word "dirge" is derived; Placebo and Dirige being among the first words recited of the evening and morning offices respectively.

Typically, the liturgical contents of primers, both manuscripts and printed editions, would be wholly in Latin. While some late 15th-century English-language manuscript primers rendered the Little Office, the Office of the Dead, and the Psalms into English, printers in England would officially produce none that translated these elements into the vernacular prior to the independence of the Church of England. Pre-Reformation, the production of translations of the Bible or its contents was prohibited in England. To circumvent this, some early English Reformers and late Lollards successfully imported foreign-printed vernacular primers in the 1530s despite official efforts to suppress this trade.

English Reformation and later primers

The title page of Yny lhyvyr hwnn, a 1546 primer that became the first Welsh-language printed book

Immediately prior to Henry VIII's full separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church in 1534, an unreformed primer according to the Sarum Use was printed in Paris. Reformed vernacular translations of the primer were officially authorized and printed that same year as English ecclesial independence. In 1535, printer and translator William Marshall collaborated with John Byddell to produce a second reformed English primer. In 1539 John Hilsey produced a more conservative translation that retained some Latin at the behest of Thomas Cromwell.

Another primer, King Henry's Primer–also in English and Latin–superseded these prior editions and included the English Litany of 1544 and additional devotions. An injunction accompanied this primer, imploring schoolmasters to use it in teaching children to read and learn prayers. An 1546 modified primer, Yny lhyvyr hwnn, by John Prise would become the first book printed in Welsh. This text lacked the canonical hours and featured significant humanist elements; its educational qualities have been compared to the later Elizabethan The ABC with the Catechism.

Henry VIII's primer was reprinted under Edward VI in 1547 and 1549, the latter with the revised Litany as present in the first Book of Common Prayer. These were followed by a reversion to Sarum primer formulas under Mary's reign.

The restoration of Reformation principles with Elizabeth I's ascent to the English throne saw the primer increasingly associated with the catechisms also produced during her reign, as well as the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. Despite some reformed sentiments towards prayers for the dead, the Church of England's primers from 1559 until their gradual disuse retained the Office of the Dead but deleted Marian devotions. With the 1559 Elizabethan primer, both Matins and Vespers were consolidated under the name of Dirige. It was during this period that the primers increasingly lost their religious emphasis and were adapted into secular primer textbooks.

Catholic primers continued to see occasional production. Among them was a translation of the post-Tridentine Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis into English by Richard Verstegan and printed in Antwerp. John Dryden, England's first poet laureate, is thought to have translated several hymns found in a 1706 Catholic primer. A renewed edition of the Catholic primer was officially sanctioned in the early 20th century, but was cooly received and failed to attain the same popularity as in prior centuries.

See also

• Book of Common Prayer (1552)
• Exhortation and Litany