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.