The book which contains the prayers said by the priest at the altar as well as all that is officially read or sung in connection with the offering of the holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the ecclesiastical year.

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A missal is a liturgical book containing all instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Mass throughout the year.

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The Roman Catholic Missal is a liturgical book outlining the instructions and prayers necessary for the celebration of the Catholic Mass throughout the year. The word Missal is taken from the Latin word “missa”, meaning sent. Some Catholic Missals are daily, weekly or strictly Sunday Missals. Aside from the standard Catholic Missal one can also find Marian Missals, Spanish Missals and children’s Missals.

Before the compilation of such books, several books were used when celebrating Mass. These included the Gradual (texts mainly from the Psalms, with musical notes added), the Evangelary or Gospel Book, the Epistolary with texts from other parts of the New Testament, mainly the Epistles (letters) of Saint Paul, and the Sacramentary with the prayers that the priest himself said.

In late mediaeval times, when it had become common in the West for priests to say Mass without the assistance of a choir and other ministers, these books began to be combined into a "Mass book" (missale in Latin), for the priest's use alone. This led to the appearance of the missale plenum ("full or complete missal"), which contained all the texts of the Mass, but without the music of the choir parts. Indications of the rubrics to be followed were also added.

The Roman Missal (Missale Romanum) published by Pope St. Pius V in 1570 eventually replaced the widespread use of different missal traditions by different parts of the church, such as those of Troyes, Sarum (Salisbury), and others. Many episcopal sees had in addition some local prayers and feast days.

At the behest of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI greatly increased the amount of Sacred Scripture read at Mass and, to a lesser extent, the prayer formulas. This necessitated a return to having the Scripture readings in a separate book, known as the Lectionary. A separate Book of the Gospels, with texts extracted from the Lectionary, is recommended, but is not obligatory. The Roman Missal continues to include elaborate rubrics, as well as antiphons etc., which were not in sacramentaries.

The first complete official translation of the Roman Missal into English appeared in 1973, based on the text of 1970. A revised translation is in preparation.

The term "missal" is also used for books intended for use not by the priest but by others assisting at Mass. These books are sometimes referred to as "hand missals" or "missalettes", while the term "altar missal" is sometimes used to distinguish the missal for the priest's use from them. Usually they omit or severely abbreviate the rubrical portions and Mass texts for other than the regular yearly celebrations, but include the Scripture readings.

The present Roman Missal, now almost universally used in the Catholic Church wherever the Latin Rite prevails, consists essentially of two parts of very unequal length. The smaller of these divisions containing that portion of the liturgy which is said in every Mass, the "Ordo Missae" with the prefaces and the Canon, is placed, probably with a view to the more convenient opening of the book, near the centre of the volume immediately before the proper Mass for Easter Sunday. The remainder of the book is devoted to those portions of the liturgy which vary from day to day according to feast and season. Each Mass consists usually of Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual and Alleluia or Tract, Gospel, Offertory, Secret, Communion, and Post-Communion, the passages or prayers corresponding to each of these titles being commonly printed in full. The beginning of the volume to the "Ordo Missae" is devoted to the Masses of the season (Proprium de Tempore) from Advent to the end of Lent, including the Christmas cycle. After the "Ordo Missae" and Canon follow immediately the Masses of the season from Easter to the last Sunday after Pentecost. Then come the proper Masses of the separate festivals (Proprium Sanctorum) for the ecclesiastical year; while these are often printed in full, it may also happen that only a reference is given, indicating that the larger portion of each Mass (sometimes everything except the collect) is to be sought in the Common of Saints (Commune Sanctorum), printed at the conclusion of the Proprium Sanctorum (Proper of Saints). This is supplemented by a certain number of votive Masses, among the rest Masses for the dead, and a collection of sets of collects, secrets and post-communions for special occasions. Here also are inserted certain benedictions and other miscellaneous matter, while appendixes of varying bulk supply a number of Masses conceded for use in certain localities or in certain religious orders, and arranged according to the order of the calendar. To the whole book is prefixed an elaborate calendar and a systematized collection of rubrics for the guidance of priests in high and low Mass, as also prayers for the private use of the celebrant in making his preparation and thanksgiving. It may be mentioned here once for all that the collection of rubrics now printed under the respective headings "Rubricae generales Missalis", "Ritus celebrandi Missam", and "De Defectibus circa Missam occurrentibus" are founded upon a tractate entitled "Ordo Missae" by John Burchard, master of ceremonies to Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, at the close of the fifteenth century. They are consequently absent from the first printed edition of the "Missale Romanum" (1474).

Although the "Missale secundum consuetudinem Romanae curiae" obtained great vogue and was destined eventually to be officially adopted and to supplant all others, throughout the Middle Ages every province, indeed almost every diocese, had its local use, and while the Canon of the Mass was everywhere the same, the prayers in the "Ordo Missae", and still more the "Proprium Sanctorum" and the "Proprium de Tempore", were apt to differ widely in the service books. In England especially the Uses of Sarum and York showed many distinctive characteristics, and the Ordinary of the Mass in its external features resembled more the rite at present followed by the Dominicans than that of Rome. After the invention of printing a great number of Missals were produced both in England itself and especially at Paris and other French cities for use in England. Of the Sarum Missal alone nearly seventy different editions were issued between that of 1487 (printed for Caxton in Paris), and that of 1557 (London). After Elizabeth's accession no more Missals were published, but a little book entitled "Missale parvum pro Sacerdotibus in Anglia, Scotia, et Ibernia itinerantibus" was printed two or three times towards the beginning of the seventeenth century for the use of missionary priests. Its size allowed it to be carried about easily without attracting observation, and as it contained relatively few Masses, only those for the Sundays and the principal feasts, it recalled in a measure the "libelli Missae" of the Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionaries nine centuries earlier. Even at this date the peculiarities of the Sarum Rite were not retained and the Canon and Masses of this "Missale parvum" were all Roman with the exception of one special Mass of the Holy Name of Jesus which is described in the 1616 edition as "taken from the Missal according to the Use of Sarum". Moreover, just as the Roman liturgy came in this way to prevail In England, so in France and throughout the rest of Europe the local uses have for the most part been surrendered by degrees, two of the principal influences at work being no doubt the advantage of uniformity and the authority and relative purity of the Roman Missal, as authoritatively revised and improved after the Council of Trent.

Different missals:

The first printed edition of the "Missale Romanum" lately republished by the Henry Bradshaw Society in two volumes (1899 and 1907), was produced at Milan in 1474. Numerous editions followed, but nothing authoritative appeared until the Council of Trent left in the hands of the pope the charge of seeing to the revision of a Catechism, Breviary, and Missal. This last, committed to the care of Cardinals Scotti and Sirlet with Thomas Goldwell (an Englishman, Bishop of St. Asaph, deprived of his see upon the accession of Elizabeth), and Julius Poggio, was published in 1570. St. Pius V published a Bull on the occasion, still printed at the beginning of the Missal, in which he enjoined that all dioceses and religious orders of the Latin Rite should use the new revision and no other, excepting only such bodies as could prove a prescription of two hundred years. In this way the older orders like the Carthusians and the Dominicans were enabled to retain their ancient liturgical usages, but the new book was accepted throughout the greater part of Europe. A revised edition of the "Missale Romanum" appeared in 1604 accompanied by a brief of Clement VIII in which the pontiff complained among other things that the vetus Itala version of the Scripture which had been retained in the antiphonal passages of the Pian Missal had been replaced, through the unauthorized action of certain printers, by the text of the newly edited Vulgate. Another revision bearing more especially upon the rubrics followed under Urban VIII in 1634. In the early part of the nineteenth century, owing largely to the exertions of Dom Guéranger, the Benedictine liturgist, a number of the dioceses of France which had up to this persistently adhered to their own distinctive uses upon a more or less valid plea of immemorial antiquity, made a sacrifice to uniformity and accepted the "Missale Romanum". The last authoritative revision of the Missal took place in 1884 under Leo XIII. It should be noticed finally that the term Missal has been applied by a loose popular usage to a number of books which, strictly speaking, have no right to the name. The "Missale Francorum", the "Missale Gothicum", the "Missal of Robert of Jumièges", etc., are all, properly speaking, Sacramentaries.







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