Preces

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

  • 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 ℟