Derek Howard Turner • 1962
This MS is one of the earliest examples of a Missale plenum with 'Anglo-Saxon' neumes. It was written in the second half of the 11th century for New Minster, Winchester, in the scriptorium there, and before the French Revolution was housed at the abbey of St Wandrille.
It is one of five fairly complete surviving massbooks of probable English provenance from before 1100, and the oldest true Missal. The other four are the Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian, MS Bodley 579, SC 2675), the Winchcombe Sacramentary (Orleans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 127 (105), the 'Missal' (really a sacramentary) of Robert of Jumièges (Rouen, Bibliotheque municipale, MS 274), and London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.XVIII, a sacramentary probably coming from Wells c. 1061-1088.
Le Havre MS 330 presents some interesting variants upon books with which it might otherwise be grouped, including the Sarum books. It is most probably a deliberate compilation from its sources, not a simple copy. The text begins with Friday in albis.
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