Stowe Missal
The Stowe Missal, which is, strictly speaking, a sacramentary rather than a missal, is an Irish illuminated manuscript written mainly in Latin with some Gaelic in the late eighth or early ninth century, probably after 792. In the mid-11th century it was annotated and some pages rewritten at Lorrha Monastery in County Tipperary, Ireland. Also known as the Lorrha Missal, it is known as the "Stowe" Missal as it once belonged to the Stowe manuscripts collection formed by George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham at Stowe House. When the collection was bought by the nation in 1883, it and the other Irish manuscripts were handed over to the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, where it remains, catalogued as MS D II 3. The cumdach or reliquary case which up to this point had survived together with the book was later transferred, with the rest of the Academy's collection of antiquities, to the National Museum of Ireland (museum number 1883, 614a). The old story was that the manuscript and shrine left Ireland after about 1375, as they were collected on the Continent in the 18th century, but this appears to be incorrect, and they were found inside a stone wall at Lackeen Castle near Lorrha in the 18th century.
There are 67 folios, measuring 5 5⁄8 by 4 1⁄2 inches (14 by 11 cm). Only the last three folios are in Irish. These contain a short treatise on the Mass and, on the last page, folio 67v, three spells "against injury to the eye, thorns, and disease of the urine". The Latin sections contain extracts from the Gospel of John (f 1), which were probably from another manuscript, then the order of Mass and some special Masses (f 12), the Order of Baptism and of Communion for the newly baptised (f 46v), and the Order for the Visitation of the Sick and Last Rites (f 60). The version of the mass used is thought to be older than the manuscript, and reflects the early usage of Celtic Christianity. The five original scribes of the Missal wrote in an angular majuscule script. A more cursive hand was used by a scribe signing himself Moél Caích (f 37) who revised several pages. A few initials are decorated, notably the one on f 1, and the extracts from John contain a "crude" full page evangelist portrait of John with his symbol of the eagle, unusually placed at the end (f 11v), with panels of Insular interlace on either side of the standing figure, and the eagle above. Apart from the eagle, it is rather similar to the portrait of John in the Book of Mulling.
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