A customary is a Christian liturgical book containing the adaptation of a ritual family and rite for a particular context, typically to local ecclesiastical customs and specific church buildings. A customary is generally synonymous to and sometimes constituent of a consuetudinary (Latin: consuetudinarius or consuetudinarium) that contains the totality of the consuetudines—ceremonial forms and regulations—used in the services and community practices of a particular monastery, religious order, or cathedrals. The distinctive qualities of medieval liturgical uses are often described within customaries. In modern contexts, a customary may also be referred to as a custom book. Description Customaries are generally liturgical books containing the liturgical and regulatory customs of a particular place or group. Typically subordinate to and in accordance with a given ritual family's primary texts for celebrating a given ritual–such as editions of the Book of Common Prayer within Anglicanism–they adapt these texts according to the spatial constraints of particular church buildings, cathedrals, or religious communities. Customaries were often anonymously written and general in coverage. While some liturgical historians, such as Walter Frere, would distinguish the consuetudinary from the customary, later scholarship has described these texts as concurrent in content but successive in time; others have identified both as proximate and even synonymous with the medieval ordinal. Compared to texts like the Ceremoniale Romanum and the Ceremoniale Episcoporum that were meant to standardize cathedral and collegiate church worship according to the Roman Rite, customaries were dependent on the buildings hosting the liturgies. The Sarum Use customary was of particular note in providing for celebrations outside the cathedral. Customaries simultaneously developed to contain the community customs and daily organization of a religious order, and often individual customaries would contain material both liturgical and regulatory. While individual monasteries were generally autonomous or semiautonomous during the European Medieval period, individual customaries would trend towards conformity with of the largest contemporaneous monastic communities, such as that at Monte Cassino. They were part of a variety of interrelated other books that directed all aspects of a liturgical celebration and, in the context of religious orders, were supplemental to monastic rules. Academic appraisal Medieval customaries have received recent academic appreciation, particularly from historians of monasticism, who appreciate the detail available in descriptions of the ceremonies and their interactions with local infrastructure. Since the first half of the 20th century, the study of customaries has evolved into its own discipline. Among the notable publications that led