Missal (1)

Sts Peter Martyr, Thomas Aquinas, Vincent Ferrer?, Catherine of Siena, two Popes and four Dominican nuns kneeling before St Dominic
F151.d.4.20, title page
Missale Praedicatorum
Paris, 1519

The earliest printed edition of the Dominican Missal was printed at Venice in 1482 and at least ten further editions were produced up to 1500, and many more in the first half of the sixteenth century. This copy, the earliest in the library collections of Cambridge, was printed by Wolfgang Hopyl in Paris in 1519. The early copies of the Dominican Missal lack woodcut or metalcut frontispieces but the sixteenth-century copies, of which this is a fine example, usually have these. St Dominic stands holding his symbols, a lily and a church, flanked by two angels above groups of Dominicans, men on the left and women on the right. The men are Sts Peter Martyr with a palm of martyrdom and a cleaver in his head, Thomas Aquinas holding a book, and perhaps Vincent Ferrer as the third. Behind them are two popes, perhaps the Dominicans, Innocent V (1276) and Benedict XI (1303–1304). At the front of the kneeling women is St Catherine of Siena, holding her symbols, a lily and a cross, with four nuns kneeling behind her. Saints Raymund de Penãfort and Albertus Magnus are not included because they were not canonised until 1601 and 1931 (unbelievably late for such a great scholar of the Order) respectively.

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