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The 'Lesnes Missal'

Manuscript
ca. 1200-1220 (made), ca. 1830 (binding)
Place of origin
England (made)
Oxford? (made)

Foliation: parchment: i-ii (19th-century paper, f.i conjoint with pastedown, watermark) + 196 + iii, iv (as ff.i-ii) ff

Number of lines: 31 lines for the calendar, 22 lines and 34 lines (ff. 61r-72v, 173r-1778v, 181r-196v).

Language: Latin.

Script: gothic bookhand and additions in cursive scripts from the 13th-15th centuries.

Textual content:
f. 1r: Additions from the 13th-15th centuries (included a papal Letter from Stephen III dated 755, a list of relics and a list of treasures).
f. 1v: Additions from the 13th and 14th centuries of offices for the feast of Corpus Christi.
ff. 2r-7v: Calendar, two-thirds full. Notes added in the 14th and 15th centuries.
f. 8r: Office for St Edmund added after 1246.
f. 8v: Office, added in a 13th-century bookhand.
ff. 9r-60v: Temporale, from the first Sunday of Advent to Easter Saturday.
ff. 61r-72v: Prayers and meditations before Mass, including psalms.
ff. 73r-84r: Ordinary, noted, and Canon of the Mass (with slips of parchment inserted at f. 83 and 84 with prayers).
ff. 84v-85v: Further prayers and other texts for the Mass.
ff. 86r-112v: Temporale from Easter to the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, and the Dedication of a Church.
ff. 112v-149v: Sanctorale, from St Andrew to St Katherine.
ff. 150r-153v: Common of the Saints.
ff. 153v-173v: Votive masses.
ff. 173r-178v: Lessons for the Mass.
f. 179r: Mass, added in a 13th-century hand, for the Translation of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury.
ff. 179v-180v: Prayers and Masses.
ff. 181r-188v: Gradual psalms, tracts, offertories and communions for the Sanctorale and Common of Saints.
ff. 189r-196v: Sequences, without music.

Decoration: miniatures (ff. 73r, 76r), 8-line historiated initials (ff. 9r, 16r, 18v, 20v, 73r, 76r, 80r, 83v, 86r, 92v, 94v, 112r, 113v, 118v, 120v, 128v, 129r, 136v, 138v, 143v, 148r) and decorated initials of similar proportions to the historiated initials (ff. 9r, 17r, 17v, 18r, 19v, 60r, 97v, 98r, 122v, 135r, 140v, 141v, 146v). Colouring in mostly mainly blue, red, green and burnished gold. Rectangular green frames around the golden and coloured foliage that extends into the margin.

Binding:
(1) ca. 1830, England. Light brown calf over wooden boards; cloth glued over spine; roughly sewn on 4 double hemp cords ignoring medieval sewing stations but apparently respecting medieval quiring. Blind tooled design, consisting of a crocketted gothic arch with 2 pinnacles, in the centre of each cover.
(2) Medieval: sewn on five stations.

Object details

Categories
British Galleries
Books
Manuscripts
Medieval and Renaissance
Christianity
Religion
Bookbinding
National Art Library
Object type
Manuscript
TitleThe 'Lesnes Missal'
Materials and techniques
Ink, pigments and gold on parchment. Leather binding on wooden boards.
Parchment
Calf Leather
Ink
Pigments
Gold
Wood
Illumination
Brief description
Manuscript, Missal, known as the 'Lesnes Missal', England (Oxford?), ca. 1200-1220.
Physical description
Foliation: parchment: i-ii (19th-century paper, f.i conjoint with pastedown, watermark) + 196 + iii, iv (as ff.i-ii) ff

Number of lines: 31 lines for the calendar, 22 lines and 34 lines (ff. 61r-72v, 173r-1778v, 181r-196v).

Language: Latin.

Script: gothic bookhand and additions in cursive scripts from the 13th-15th centuries.

Textual content:
f. 1r: Additions from the 13th-15th centuries (included a papal Letter from Stephen III dated 755, a list of relics and a list of treasures).
f. 1v: Additions from the 13th and 14th centuries of offices for the feast of Corpus Christi.
ff. 2r-7v: Calendar, two-thirds full. Notes added in the 14th and 15th centuries.
f. 8r: Office for St Edmund added after 1246.
f. 8v: Office, added in a 13th-century bookhand.
ff. 9r-60v: Temporale, from the first Sunday of Advent to Easter Saturday.
ff. 61r-72v: Prayers and meditations before Mass, including psalms.
ff. 73r-84r: Ordinary, noted, and Canon of the Mass (with slips of parchment inserted at f. 83 and 84 with prayers).
ff. 84v-85v: Further prayers and other texts for the Mass.
ff. 86r-112v: Temporale from Easter to the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, and the Dedication of a Church.
ff. 112v-149v: Sanctorale, from St Andrew to St Katherine.
ff. 150r-153v: Common of the Saints.
ff. 153v-173v: Votive masses.
ff. 173r-178v: Lessons for the Mass.
f. 179r: Mass, added in a 13th-century hand, for the Translation of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury.
ff. 179v-180v: Prayers and Masses.
ff. 181r-188v: Gradual psalms, tracts, offertories and communions for the Sanctorale and Common of Saints.
ff. 189r-196v: Sequences, without music.

Decoration: miniatures (ff. 73r, 76r), 8-line historiated initials (ff. 9r, 16r, 18v, 20v, 73r, 76r, 80r, 83v, 86r, 92v, 94v, 112r, 113v, 118v, 120v, 128v, 129r, 136v, 138v, 143v, 148r) and decorated initials of similar proportions to the historiated initials (ff. 9r, 17r, 17v, 18r, 19v, 60r, 97v, 98r, 122v, 135r, 140v, 141v, 146v). Colouring in mostly mainly blue, red, green and burnished gold. Rectangular green frames around the golden and coloured foliage that extends into the margin.

Binding:
(1) ca. 1830, England. Light brown calf over wooden boards; cloth glued over spine; roughly sewn on 4 double hemp cords ignoring medieval sewing stations but apparently respecting medieval quiring. Blind tooled design, consisting of a crocketted gothic arch with 2 pinnacles, in the centre of each cover.
(2) Medieval: sewn on five stations.
Dimensions
  • Leaves height: 320mm
  • Leaves width: 225mm
  • Calendar text block height: 233mm
  • Calendar text block width: 155mm
  • Text block height: 235-240mm
  • Text block width: 165-175mm
Production typeUnique
Gallery label
(16/03/2018)
MISSAL Written 1200-1220; rebound about 1830

At a Catholic Mass the priest read and chanted from a missal, standing at the altar. This medieval missal had been in use for over 300 years before the Reformation, when it was probably rescued by a Catholic sympathiser. One piece of evidence for its rescue is the fact that references to St Thomas a Becket have not been cancelled, though Henry VIII had ordered this in 1538.

Written and illuminated on parchment
Probably made in Kent and Oxford
Made for the abbey of Augustinian Canons at Lesnes, Rochester, Kent, dedicated to St Thomas a Becket (about 1120-1170)
Given by Sir Otto Beit
National Art Library no. MSL/1916/404
Object history
(1) Written for the abbey of the Augustinian Canons, dedicated to St Thomas a Becket at Lesnes (diocese of Rochester, Kent), probably for Richard de Lucy (d. 1179) as suggested by the references to the arms of the Lucy familly on ff. 73r, 76r and the names added in the 13th and 14th centuries.
(2) Names added in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Probably of people of Catholic sympathies (Thomas Becket is not excised although his cult was proscribed in 1536).
(3) Said to be from the collection of Joseph Brooks Yates (1780-1855), antiquarian.
(4) Collection of Henry Yates-Thompson (1838-1928), sold at Sotheby’s, London, 18 December 1908, lot 299 to Quaritch.
(5) Bought by Sir Otto Beit (1865-1930) from Quaritch for presentation to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1916.
Association
Rochester (Kent)
Bibliographic references
  • James, M.R. A descriptive catalogue of fifty manuscripts from the collection of Henry Yates Thompson. Cambridge, 1898. pp. 30-37.
  • A catalogue of English manuscripts, historical documents and autographs forming the second supplement to a catalogue of books in English literature and history, London: Bernard Quaritch, 344 (June 1916), no. 62.
  • Clapham, A.W., Lesnes Abbey in the parish of Erith, Kent, London: Cassio Press, 1915, p. 33.
  • Victoria & Albert Museum. Review of the Principal Acquisitions during the Year 1916, London, 1919, pp. 28-32, pl. 10-11.
  • Mandy, W. H., The Canon from the Lesnes Abbey Missal, c. 1200 A.D.: with rubrics of much interest (Report of the Woolwich Antiquarian Society: Supplement to vol. 23), London: W. R. Dingle, 1925, pp. 1-21 [N.B. This text was superseded by the edition in Jebb's 1964 Missale de Lesnes].
  • Ker, N.R. Medieval libraries of Great Britain. A list of surviving books. 2nd edition. London, 1964. p. 114
  • Ker, N.R. Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries I. Oxford: 1967. p. 389
  • Jebb, P. Missale de Lesnes. MS L404 in the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Worcester, 1964, after p. 60.
  • Lesnes abbey. A short history and guide. London, 1968, p. 20.
  • Morgan, N. Early Gothic manuscripts, I, 1190-1250. vol. 4 of the Survey of manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles, ed. J.J.G. Alexander. London and Oxford, 1982. p. 73
  • Harthan J.P.An introduction to illuminated manuscripts. London: 1983. p. 18
  • Robinson, P.R.Catalogue of dated and datable manuscripts c.888-1600 in London libraries. London: 2003. I, p. 77, no. 192; II, pl. 18
  • Pfaff, R., 'The Kenilworth Missal (Chichester Cathedral, MS Med. 2)', in Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Palaeography and Performance: Essays Dedicated to Andrew Hughes, ed. by J. Haines and R. Rosenfeld, Farnham: Ashgate, 2004; reprint, London and New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 401, 404-409, 415, 417.
  • Morgan, N.J. and R.M. Thomson (eds.). Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, II, 1100-1400. Cambridge, 2008, pp. 176-177.
  • Pfaff, R.W. The Liturgy in medieval England. A history. Cambridge, 2009, pp. 188-190.
  • Morison, S., 'Black-letter' Text', in Selected Essays on the History of Letter-forms in Manuscript and Print, ed. by D.J. McKitterick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 (Digital edition, 2009), vol. 1, pp. ix, 189-193, 199.
  • Watson, R. Western Illuminated Manuscripts.Victoria and Albert Museum. A catalogue of works in the National Art Library from the eleventh to the early twentieth century, with a complete account of the George Reid Collection. London, 2011. vol. 1, pp. 62-71, cat. 9
  • Deeming, H., 'Music and Contemplation in the Twelfth-Century "Dulcis Jesu memoria"', in Journal of the Royal Musical Association 139, no. 1 (2014), p. 3.
  • Charles, S.J., 'Litterae florissae in English Manuscripts in the Late Twelfth/Early Thirteenth Century', in Manuscript Studies 5, no. 1 (2020), pp. 82, 88, 94-95.
Other numbers
  • KRP.C.93 - NAL Pressmark
  • 38041800591190 - NAL barcode
Collection
National Art Library
Library number
MSL/1916/404

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Record createdAugust 25, 2017
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1410794/the-lesnes-missal-manuscript/
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