Nooij, Lars B.
(2021)
A New History of the Stowe Missal: Towards an Edition of the Stowe John and the Irish Tract on the Mass.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The Stowe Missal is one of the earliest surviving documents of the Early Irish church and is a
key witness to the Early Irish liturgy, as well as one of the few manuscripts dating back to the
Old Irish period to contain a number of continuous texts in the Irish language. This thesis
investigates the origins and history of the Stowe Missal by means of a close study of the
manuscript and its scribes. Chapter 1 sets out the manuscript’s contents and the makeup of its
quires, and offers a detailed discussion of the Stowe Missal’s scribes. The relative order of their
activities is of particular concern and it is shown that the manuscript’s Irish language texts were
added to the Stowe Missal by (one of) its original scribe(s). The original purpose for which the
manuscript was made is also considered. Chapter 2 examines the available evidence for the
Stowe Missal’s dating and its place of origin, before considering the manuscript’s early travels.
It is argued that the manuscript’s traditional dating must be reconsidered and that there are
strong signs that the manuscript did not long remain where it was made. In Chapter 3, the
circumstances of the Stowe Missal’s early nineteenth century rediscovery are explored by
reviewing both the contemporary evidence and the more recent hypotheses for the manuscript’s
history in the centuries leading up to its rediscovery. Basic editions consisting of a diplomatic
transcription and normalised text of the Stowe Missal’s incomplete copy of the Gospel of John,
as well as the manuscript’s Irish Tract on the Mass are presented in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2,
respectively. For the latter, a new translation and full vocabulary are also included. A third
appendix contains an overview of the abbreviations found in these texts.
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