Missal

A missal is a liturgical book containing instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Mass throughout the liturgical year. Versions differ across liturgical tradition, period, and purpose, with some missals intended to enable a priest to celebrate Mass publicly and others for private and lay use. The texts of the most common Eucharistic liturgy in the world, the Catholic Church's Mass of Paul VI of the Roman Rite, are contained in the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal.

Missals have also been published for earlier forms of the Roman Rite and other Latin liturgical rites. Other liturgical books typically contain the Eucharistic liturgies of other ritual traditions, but missals exist for the Byzantine Rites, Eastern Orthodox Western Rites, Lutheran and Anglican liturgies.

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 high medieval 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 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 some local prayers and feast days in addition.

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. On 28 March 2001, the Holy See issued the Instruction Liturgiam authenticam. This included the requirement that, in translations of the liturgical texts from the official Latin originals, "the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet." The following year, the third typical edition of the revised Roman Missal in Latin was released.

In Europe, the Lutheran Missal was printed in 1525, in Livonian, Latvian, and Estonian.