The Long Beach codex: An unexamined Italian Dominican missal from the fifteenth century

Abstract

While the fifteenth-century Italian missal CSULB MS Cat. BX2015 .A2 1450 might not be liturgically normative, close inspection of the manuscript can still unveil nuances of local practice. This thesis puts forth the first full manuscript description and study of CSULB MS Cat. BX2015 .A2 1450; the author argues for either Florence or Crevalcore as the manuscript's provenance, and calls attention to several liturgical feasts that connect the familial origins of this Italian manuscript to a local Germanic practice from the mid-thirteenth century. The manuscript's highly unusual version of the Feast for the Conception of Mary is discussed at length in this regard.