MISSAL (ante), Lat. plenarium or plenarium, the book which contains the ritual for the celebration of the various masses of the Roman church, was called in the early western church sacramentarium, but at that tome it contained only parts of what is now included in the missal. Those copies which contained the gospels, the sacrammi tary, prayers, prefaces, benedictions, the canon, lectionary, epistles and the antiphon were called plenars; but commonly these parts of the missal were in separate volumes. The entire missal was required when the priests began to say low mosses. The earliest Gothic or Gallican missals of the 6th c. contained only the canon, prayers, and prefaces, which were recited by the bishop or priest; afterwards, those of small churches had the introit, gradual. alleluia, offertory, sanctus and communion. To meet a general desire for an emendation of the missal it was decided by the council of Trent, after it protracted discussion, to recommeneto the pope the reform of the breviary, missal, and rituals.
lie cousented,and the work was begun in Rome under Pius IV., and finished under Pius V. in 1570. The new missal consists of an introduction, three parts, and an appendix. The introduction gives the calendar and the general rubrics; the three parts give the formu laries for the successive services of the year, those for the celebration of the mass on special feasts of saints, etc.; the appendix gives the annual mass, masses for the dead, some benedictions, and masses for certain prescribed tcasts.—In the English church before the reformation the missals were very different, and even after the compilation of the Roman missal, the English were generally used; but at the end of the 16th c. the Jesuits forced the Roman missal upon the Roman Catholic churches of England. Before, the invention of printing, the missals were elegantly written, ornamented with beautiful' initials, and superbly hound. In the 13th c. large letters were used in writing the missals.