The Leofric Missal I. Introduction, Collation Tables and Index

New edition of, and commentary on, one of the most important liturgical books to have come down to us from the late Anglo-Saxon church.

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579, the so-called 'Leofric Missal', is for the most part not really a missal, but a late-ninth or early-tenth-century combined sacramentary, pontifical and ritual with cues for the sung parts of various masses by the original, possibly French or Lotharingian, scribe. Subsequently, over the course of a hundred and thirty or so years, the sacramentary-pontifical-ritual was considerably augmented, first most probably for thesuccessors of Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury (890-923), the man for whom it was probably originally compiled, then later at Exeter for Bishop Leofric (1050-72).

Nicholas Orchard is Deputy Slide Librarian, Courtauld Institute of Art.