Preces

In Christian liturgical worship, Preces (Latin for 'prayers'; /ˈpriːsiːz/ PREE-seez), also known in Anglican prayer as the Suffrages or Responses,[1] describe a series[2] of short petitions said or sung as versicles and responses by the officiant and congregation respectively. Versicle-and-response is one of the oldest forms of prayer in Christianity, with its roots in Hebrew prayer during the time of the Temple in Jerusalem.[3] In many prayer books the versicles and responses comprising the Preces are denoted by special glyphs:[4]

  • Versicle: ℣, a letter V crossed by an oblique line — Unicode 2123, HTML entity ℣
  • Response: ℟, a letter R crossed by an oblique line — Unicode 211F, HTML entity ℟
  1. ^ Brench, Matthew (20 February 2019). "The Suffrage in the Daily Office". The Saint Aelfric Customary. Retrieved 8 April 2022.
  2. ^ Preces. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. 2001. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.22278.
  3. ^ "Bible (King James)/Psalms". En.wikisource.org. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  4. ^ Webb, Stephen (2018). "Versicle - ℣". Clash of Symbols: A ride through the riches of glyphs. Springer. p. 40. ISBN 9783319713502. Retrieved 12 December 2018.