Dating an Early Dominican Missal

The Bergendal Collection of mediaeval manuscripts took its inspiration and inception in the nineteen-seventies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. Its guiding light from the beginning was the late Father Leonard E. Boyle, O.P., who taught at the Institute from 1961 to 1984. The author was a student of Father Boyle, and profited from his love for and extraordinary expertise in all things mediaeval, especially in the manuscript sciences of palaeography and diplomatics. In 1984 the present Holy Father Pope John Paul II appointed Father Boyle as Prefect of the Vatican Library. The catalogue of the Bergendal Collection was published just before Father Boyle’s death in Rome in 1999. The Collection that he inspired and that grew under his direction is the largest to be found in private hands in the Americas. That many of its manuscripts originated in the mediaeval Order of Friars Preachers is no coincidence, since Father Boyle was himself a priest of the Dominican Order. There is no similar private collection in Canada nor in the United States of America. There are three or possibly four larger private collections in Europe.