Leaf from the "Beauvais" Missal

In the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, priests used missals as their guide to the mass. The missal included both directions to the celebrant and all the necessary prayers and gospel readings. Decorated letters and sumptuous illustrations frequently accompanied the Ordinary of Mass and the most important feast days of the year. The mass culminated in the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which the priest consecrated the bread and wine, transforming them into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The consecration begins with the prayer “Te Igitur,” because this is the most important section of the book, it usually receives the most elaborate decoration.

The Mass also included musical elements. A priest celebrating mass alone would find these in his missal; however, if there were a clerical choir participating in the liturgy, they would use a gradual, a type of choir book that contained the necessary music and texts used in the mass.

The Canon of Mass in a missal contained the text used by a priest during the consecration of the Eucharistic host. Taken from a missal that belonged to a cleric in the town of Beauvais, in France, this leaf includes part of the Canon’s text, surrounded by ornate decorations and playful animal representations in the margins. Introducing the Latin words that translate as, “Remove from us, O Lord, our sins,” the historiated initial depicts a priest in prayer, looking up towards the face of Christ that hovers in the right corner. Through the priest’s gesture, and the chalice resting on the altar before him, this illumination depicts the liturgical ceremony in which it was used.