The Bobbio Missal

The Bobbio Missal was copied in south-eastern Gaul around the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century. It contains a unique combination of a lectionary and a sacramentary, to which a plethora of canonical and non-canonical material was added. The Missal is therefore highly regarded by liturgists; but, additionally, medieval historians welcome the information to be derived from material attached to the codex which provides valuable data about the role and education of priests in Francia at that time, and indeed on their cultural and ideological background. The breadth of specialist knowledge provided by the team of scholars writing for this book enables the manuscript to be viewed as a whole, not as a narrow liturgical study. Collectively, the essays view the manuscript as physical object: they discuss the contents, they examine the language, and they look at the cultural context in which the codex was written.

This is the complete facsimile of the manuscript studied in volumes 53 and 58 of the present series. The Bobbio Missal is one of the most important and interesting liturgical books surviving from the early middle ages. It is the best known example of the `Gallican' type of missal, attesting therefore to the distinctive liturgical practices which were widespread in Merovingian and Frankish churches during the seventh and eighth centuries, before these began to tbe replaced by the Roman practices including use of `Gregorian' missals in various forms during the period of Charlemagne's reforms. In the opinion of modern palaeographers, the Bobbio Missal was written somewhere in northern Italy in the mid-eighth century. Although it was long regarded as a witness to Irish liturgical practice, it is now considered as essentially Gallican, but incorporating various prayers of Gelasian origin. Palaeographically the manuscript (now Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 13246) is of great interest, being written in an idiosyncratic mixture of uncial and minuscule, by an Italian scribe neither literate nor well-trained.

The Bobbio Missal is one of the most important and interesting liturgical books surviving from the early middle ages. It is the best known example of the Gallican' type of missal, attesting therefore to the distinctive liturgical practices which were widespread in Merovingian and Frankish churches during the seventh and eighth centuries, before these began to tbe replaced by the Roman practices including use of Gregorian' missals in various forms during the period of Charlemagne's reforms. In the opinion of modern palaeographers, the Bobbio Missal was written somewhere in northern Italy in the mid-eighth century. Although it was long regarded as a witness to Irish liturgical practice, it is now considered as essentially Gallican, but incorporating various prayers of Gelasian origin. Palaeographically the manuscript (now Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 13246) is of great interest, being written in an idiosyncratic mixture of uncial and minuscule, by an Italian scribe neither literate nor well-trained. HBS LVIII, HBSLXI