The Bobbio Missal: Liturgy and Religious Culture in Merovingian Gaul. Edited by Yitzhak Hen and Rob Meens. Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 232. $90.

The Bobbio Missal has been widely available to scholars for almost one-hundred years, since The Henry Bradshaw Society published it in facsimile and in an edition by E. A. Lowe, with a third volume of notes and studies by Lowe and André Wilmart (1917-1924), but it has not received a concentrated general scrutiny since that time. Unlike most of the liturgical remains of the early medieval Latin Church, it is not a deluxe manuscript, but a book meant to be carried about and used for a wide variety of pastoral duties, from saying mass throughout the liturgical year, to performing rites of penance and anointing, to giving blessings for almost every occasion, from marriage to exorcisms. The volume under review is part of a distinguished series that expands the investigation of medieval manuscripts in interesting ways, moving from close analysis of ink, quires, orthography, and paleography to hypotheses about their cultural milieus and the individuals and groups who produced and used them. It presents ten separate studies on various aspects of the Bobbio Missal, with an introduction by Yitzhak Hen and a conclusion by Hen and Rob Meens.

Frederick S. Paxton
Connecticut College