The Blackfriars Codex

Extract

Recently the Dominicans of Blackfriars, Oxford, have become possessors, through the munificence of Miss Jean Smith, of a most valuable liturgical manuscript, a Dominican Gradual, which on examination proves to be contemporary with the establishment of the Order’s special rite by Humbert de Romans between 1254 and 1260. Hitherto only four examples have been known to exist, two of which, including the Codex Humbertinus, are in Dominican hands. Now this newly discovered Codex has been returned to the Order that produced it, but whereas the Codex Humbertinus was recovered, during the French Revolution, only at a great price, the Blackfriars MS. was most munificently restored, as a free gift, by one to whom the English Dominican Province thus owes a tremendous debt of gratitude.

The volume was undoubtedly written between 1254 and 1263, seeing that it contains the Mass of St. Peter Martyr but lacks those of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Edward the Confessor, whose feasts respectively were ordered to be celebrated throughout the Order by the General Chapters of Barcelona in 1261 and of London in 1263; whilst the Mass of Corpus Christi, with its famous sequence Lauda Sion, granted to the Order in 1264 has been inserted by a later hand between the de Tempore and the Proprium Sanctorum. The book throughout is written in extremely well-executed lettering, each minuscule letter being 5 cm. high, and there is an abundance of ornamented capitals done exclusively in blue and red, all of exquisite workmanship. The whole consists of 235 folios on vellum, each folio measuring 35.5 x 25 cm.