Summary
The Kotor Missal of St. James of Lodja
The Kotor Missal is a Latin manuscript codex, a liturgical book written at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century in the Beneventan script (a medieval Latin script with round and angular letters), the place of origin of which scholars have not yet agreed on, whether it was written in the south of Italy. It bears the attribute of Kotor because that Missal was used for the longest time in Kotor. The original copy of the Missal has been in the National Library in Berlin since 1920.
The Kotor Missal is a photographic, so-called. a mechanical edition that can help further explore its peculiarities. With that, that book got an identity card that can define it. It is also a scientific popular publication that does not offer definitive answers. That Missal is also a time capsule, so it tells us something. He talks primarily about the masses, that is, about the liturgy. Since the book was used in Kotor for most of its history, it says a lot about Kotor and about general church history. The language of the book is not Latin, the words are written in that language, but the complete codex has its own special language. The language of that book is liturgy. That is its most important mark. It is a liturgical book. The liturgy is the basic medium, the basis from which this book grew and in which it was immersed. In order to understand it properly, we need to enter into the secrets of medieval liturgies, into the contexts of the 12th and 13th centuries, into the contexts of Western liturgies. It is a book of the Western, Roman liturgy and talks about the way of celebrating the liturgy in its time.
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.