Liturgical Studies: Primary Sources

Direct, uninterpreted records of the subject of your research project. Thus, a primary source can be almost anything, depending on the subject and purpose of your research.

Historical liturgical studies attempts to answer three questions with reference to past communal worship:

1) What did people do when they worshiped?

2) What did people say when they worshiped?

3) What did people think what they did and said meant when they worshiped?

Thus primary sources attempting to answer these questions could be broken down into two major categories: non-written and written.

Non-written primary sources for historical liturgical studies include:

Written primary sources for historical liturgical studies include two major sub-categories: