Carolingian liturgical books: problems of categorization

Fragments of liturgical books made in the late eighth and ninth centuries demonstrate that individual liturgical manuscripts may not fit simple narratives or general outlines : that booktype in which prayers, readings and chants for the divine office were collected together— long considered not to have existed before the eleventh century— can be traced in several ninth-century examples. Even more prominent among Carolingian manuscript sources for the liturgy is the equivalent book for the mass. A number of French manuscripts display different ways of bringing prayers and chants together in one book, while as many as fourteen plenary missals made in Italy are represented in fragments, or, in one case, a fullypreserved plenary missal made at Bobbio circa 900.Rankin S. Carolingian liturgical books: problems of categorization. In: Gazette du livre médiéval, n°62.2016. pp. 21-33