Good morning, we're back with more #MissalMondays!

Today we have a fascinating item:

📖 The 1932 Missal-Vesperal with Commentary... featuring 'Symbolico-liturgical' illustrations

It's notable for a few things:

✅ Longest missal ever (!)
✅ Unique illustrations

Check it out⤵️ ImageImageImageImage
Unlike most missals, which focused on offering commentary, notes, and context for the various sundays and feasts of the ecclesiastical year...

The Missal-Vesperal offered the unique feature of "Symbolico-liturgical illustrations" by carmelite Fr. Fath. Berthold
These were black and white symbolic drawings relating to the liturgy

While the actual texts of Sunday or Feast would receive a brief two-sentence explanation, the drawings were each explained with several paragraphs of text Image
The Missal-Vesperal was also the longest missal ever published

It clocked in at a whopping 2,565 pages for the basic edition, and was boosted to nearly 2,800 pages when printed with country-specific supplements (e.g. England & Wales).
This handily beat the two other very large missals from the 20th century:

🔵 St. Andrews "large edition" (which topped out at 2,188 pages)

🔵 Cathedral Daily Missal (2,319 pages)
All in all, it seemed like Brepols was trying to make a splash in a crowded missal market with this very unique offering

It remained in print until the 1940s, but was not popular, sold poorly, and now survives in a very small number of copies

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More from @HandMissals

Jan 2
Good morning, we're back with #MissalMondays once again

Today, we're interrupting our regularly-scheduled content... here's a short thread on the hand missal Pope Benedict XVI requested for Christmas in 1934 at age 7.

🧵
Several years ago, a childhood Christmas letter from Ratzinger and his sister were found:

"Dear Baby Jesus, quickly come down to earth. You will bring joy to children. Also bring me joy. I would like a Volks-Schott [...] I will always be good. Greetings from Joseph Ratzinger"
The hand missal requested by young Joseph Ratzinger was the "Volks-Schott" mass book.

This was a simpler abridgmenet of an extraordinarily popular and groundbreaking German hand missal originally published by Anselm Schott, OSB
Read 6 tweets
Dec 19, 2022
Good morning! We've got a bit of a doozy for #MissalMondays

The Saint Jerome Missal, published in 4 volumes in 1964.

It features the most .... unusual .... art we've ever seen in a hand missal (and that's saying something!)
Published by The Catholic Press of Chicago, it was clearly intended to be a new, major "flagship" missal property which was chock full of selling-point features.

They pulled together a large (and slightly unusual) cast of experts to contribute, including Father Andrew Greeley
(interesting note: it holds an imprimatur of January 1963 and a copyright date of 1964, and does not survive in many copies.

It's clear this was immediately overtaken and made irrelevant by the many sudden a d rapid changes to the mass which happened in 1964)
Read 7 tweets
Dec 18, 2022
There are many interesting comments and replies in this thread, go check it out!

For anyone interested in the history, I did a series of short, illustrated articles on the history of microphones & loudspeakers in Catholic worship between 1922-1958

handmissalhistory.com/feature-microp…
Part 1 reveals that mics & speakers were widely installed in Catholic churches throughout the world in the 1920s, and used for a variety of surprising things like radio broadcasts, simultaneous masses, and audio for overflow crowds.

handmissalhistory.com/feature-microp…
Part 2 demonstrates that microphones were soon placed directly on the altars and throughout the sanctuary by the 1940s.

Much of the mass was heard via electronic amplification, thanks to altar, lapel, and moveable microphones.

handmissalhistory.com/feature-microp…
Read 6 tweets
Dec 16, 2022
There is a long history of publishing things like this for the Catholic laity! Re-discovering and documenting them is one of the main reasons I started this project.

Quick illustrated🧵
Limiting myself strictly to the modern period... did you know that the American bishops did exactly this?

At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, they ordered the publication of an official prayerbook for the laity containing all of this &more

Called "A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity", it was published in 1888 and would remain in print right up until the 1950s.

(interesting note: this Council of Baltimore also was responsible for creating the well-known Baltimore Catechism!)
Read 9 tweets
Aug 22, 2022
You've all heard the story of how the Catholic sacraments went from Latin to vernacular, right?

“Thanks to the advocacy of the Liturgical Movement, the church finally changed things following Vatican II…” etc.

But what if almost everything about that story was wrong? 🧵
It is commonly believed that the switch to vernacular sacraments occurred in September 1964, following the liturgical decrees of the Second Vatican Council. The Catholic Transcript, Aug 20, 1964. Page 1.
There were some limited vernacular permissions available in 1961 and 1962…

but did you know that in *1954* the American bishops had unanimously approved a vernacular ritual which permitted the sacraments and blessings to be administered almost exclusively in English? The St. Louis Register, December 24, 1954. Page 9.
Read 21 tweets

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