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 MISSAL

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MISSAL

stop in tliis evolution suenis to have been furnished by the introduction of certain smaller volumes called " Li belli Missjc" intended for the private celebration of Masses of devotion on ordinary ilays. In these only one, or at most two or three Masses, were written ; but as they were not used with choir and sacred min- isters, all the service hatl to be said by the priest and ail was consequently included in the one small booklet. A tN^pical example of such a volume is probably fur- nished by the famous "Stowe Missal". This little book of Irish origin of which the leaves measure only five and a half by four inches, is nevertheless one of our most priceless liturgical treasures. The greater part is devoted to a single Mass of the Blessed Sacrament, in which the Epistle and Gospel are inserted entire as well as a number of communion anthems, the private preparatioTi of the priest, and other matter including rubrical directions in Irish. Thus, so far as Mass was concerned, it was in itself a complete book and is prob- ably the type of numberless others — fragments of similar Irish "libelli Misss" are preserved among the manuscripts of St. Gall — which were used by mis- sionaries m their journeys among peoples as yet only half christianized.

The conx'enience of such books for the private cele- bration of Mass where sacred ministers and choir were wanting, must soon have made itself felt. When one thinks of the many hundreds and even thousands of Masses which in the eighth and ninth centuries every large monastery was called upon to say for deceased brethren in virtue of its compacts with other ablieys (see details in Ebner, " Gebets-Verbriidernugen", Ratisbon, 1890), it appears obvious that there must have been great need of private Mass-books. Conse- quently it soon became common to adapt even the larger sacramentaries to the use of priests celebrating privately by inserting in some of the "niissie quo- tidiana; votiviE et diversa;", or sometimes again in the "commune sanctorum" such extracts from the "Graduale", " Epistolare ", and " Evangeliarium " as made these particular Masses complete in them- selves. Examples of Sacramentaries thus adapted may be found as early as the ninth century. Ebner for instance, appeals to a manuscript of this date in the capitular library of Verona (No. 86) where in the " AfisscE votivce et divers(B" the choral passages are written as weU as the prayers. Whether the Word Missalix liber was specially employed for service books thus completed fo^ private use there seems no evidence to determine. Alcuin writing in 801 cer- tainly seems to contrast the term "Missalis libellus" with what he calls " libelli sacratorii " and with " sacra- mentaria maiora" (see Mon. Germ. Hist. Epist., IV, .370); but the phrase was older than Alcuin, for Arch- bishop Egbert of York in his " Dialogus " speaks of the dispositions made by St. Gregory for the observance of the ember-days in " Antiphonaria cum missahbus suis" which he had consulted at Rome (Haddan and Stubbs, "Councils", III, 421), where certainly the language used seems to suggest that the " Missalia " and "Antiphonaria" were companion volumes sep- arately incomplete. Certainly it may be affirmed with confirlence that what was afterwards known as the " Missale plenum", a book like our present Missal, containing all the Epistles, Gospels, and the choral antiphons as well as the Mass prayers, did not come into existence before the year 900. Dr. Adalbert Ebner, who spent immense labour in examining the liturgical manuscripts of the libraries of Italy, reports that the earliest example known to him was one of the tenth century in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; but although such books are of more frequent occurrence from the eleventh century onwards, the majority of the Mass-books met with at this period have still only an imperfect claim to be regarded as " Missalia plena".

We find instead a great variety of transition forms belonging to the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth

centuries which may be referred in particular to two distinct types. In the first place the .sacramentary, lectionary, and antiphonary were sometimes simply bound up together in one volume as a matter of con- venience. Codex 101 in the liljrary of Monza ofTers an example of tliis kind in which the three coinptuient elements are all of the ninth or tenth century, but even earlier than tliis in an extant notice "of the visitation of the Church of Vicus (Vieil-St-Remy) in 859 b)' Bishop Hincmar of Reims we find mention of a " Missale cumevangeliisetlectionibus sen aiitipluinario volumen 1 ". As a rule, however, the fu.sion between the original sacramentary and the books used by the readers and the choir was of a more intrinsic nature, and the process of amalgamation was a very gradual one. Sometimes we find sacramentaries in which a later hand has added in the margin, or on any avail- able blank space, the bare indication, consisting of a few initial Words, of the Antiphons, the Epistles, and the Gospels belonging to the particular Mass. Some- times the " Commune Sanctorum " and the votive Masses have from the beginning included the passages to be sung and read written out in full, though the " Proprium de Tempore" and "de Sanctis" show nothing but the Mass prayers. Sometimes again, as in the case of the celebrated Leofric Missal in the Bod- leian, the original sacramentary has had extensive later supplements bound up with it containing new Masses which include the parts to be reatl and sung. In one remarkable example, the Canterbury Missal (MS. 270 of Corpus Christi, Cambridge), a number of the old prefaces of the Gregorian type have been erased throughout the volume and upon the blank spaces thus created the proper Antiphons from the Graduale, and sometimes also the Epistles and Gospels for each Mass, have been written entire. In not a few instances the Gospels may be found included in the Mass-book but not the Epistles, the reason probably being that the latter could be read by any clerk, whereas a properly ordained deacon was not always available, in which case the priest at the altar had himself to read the Gospel. Regarding however this development as a whole it may be said that nearly all the Mass-books Written from the latter half of the thirteenth century onwards were in the strict sense Missalia plenaria conforming to our modern type. The determining influence which estabhshed the ar- rangement of parts, the selection of Masses, etc., with which we are familiar in the " Missale Romanum " to-day, seems to have been the book produced during the latter half of the thirteenth century under Fran- ciscan auspices and soon made popular in Italy under the name " Missale secundum consuetudinem Romanae curia; " (see Radulphus de Rivo, " De (lanonum Obser- vatione", in La Bigne, " Bib. Max. PP.", XI, 455).

Varieties of Missals. — .Although the "Mis.sale secundum consuetudinem Romanae curia?" obtained great vogue and was destined eventually to be offi- cially adopted and to supplant all others, throughout the Middle Ages every province, indeed almo.st every dioce-se, had its local use, and while the Canon of the Mass was everywhere the same, the prayers in the " Ordo Missa; ", and still more the " Proprium Sanc- torum " and the " Proprium de Tempore ", were apt to differ widely in the service books. In England espe- cially the Uses of Sarum and York showed many dis- tinctive characteristics, and the Ordinary of the Mass in its external features resembled more the rite at present followed by the Dominicans than that of Rome. After the invention of printinga great number of Missals were produced both in England itself and especially at Paris and other French cities for use in England. Of the Sarum Missal alone nearly seventy different editions were issued between that of 1487 (printed for Caxton in Paris), and that of 1557 (London). After Eliza- beth's accession no more Missals were published, but a Uttle book entitled "Missale parvum pro Sacerdoti-