Talk:Stowe Missal

I have a question of the author. What does the following sentence mean? "This missal is also the oldest surviving extant copy of Western liturgy." Is he or she saying that it is older than the Verona (Leonine) or the Gelasian Sacramentary? -- Fr Lev

The Leonine text is 7th c. - the extant copy (Verona manuscript) likely later, the Gelasian Sacramentary is between 6th - 8th c. in origin, the oldest surviving copy being the Ms. Reginae 316 copy in Rome which is believed to date about 750 AD to Paris (around the same time or a little later than Stowe: they both share the same canon. The Leonine Sacramentary has neither Canon nor Ordinary of the Mass - so, it is not a copy of the liturgy, but simply the moveable parts. The Verona manuscript also does not have a solid dating yet that I know of - the title of Leonine was arbitrarily attached to it without tradition or evidence. The Gelasian and Stowe missals are the oldest copies of Western liturgy (ie, Ordinary and Canon) we have - the attribution of 'Gelasian' to the Merovingian text is also arbitrary: we have no solid tradition that it is his, and the text itself is far later. So, there is an opinion among some liturgical scholars that the Stowe missal is the oldest surviving extant copy of Western liturgy... the Gelasian Sacramentary would be close behind: both represent a Northwestern Gallo-Roman liturgy as well. - Aristibule