Déri Balázs (szerk.): Missale Strigoniense 1484 - Monumenta Ritualia Hungarica 1. (Budapest, 2009)
Introduction
XXVI INTRODUCTION mortalitatem seu pestem, quam papa Clemens sextus instituit cum collegio et cardinalibus, et concessit dictam missam legentibus sive audientibus ducentos dies indulgentiarum”. (1861)121 The fact that it is highlighted here is yet to be explained.122 The case of the Mass of Transfiguration is different. It is in the Missal in its “rightful place”, in the de sanctis part, on 6 August, so it is not among the Masses of the appendix! The only way to make sense of the cited text of the colophon (and the incipit) is if we suppose that in the unknown exemplar copy the entire new proper of the Transfiguration (except for the Gospel) was given in appendix,123 and it was inserted to supply the traditional text material of the feast, in the course of redaction. In the meantime, however, they forgot to remove the feast’s prosa, the Adest dies celebris, in order to include it only in the sequentiary. Formerly too, the feast was celebrated in Es2tergom on the same day, with its ancient proper and the benedictio uvae. After 1457, its special significance for Hungarians was due to the fact that in that year Pope Callixt III decided to extend the feast to the whole Latin church (along with the noontime tolling of the Angelus bells) in Thanksgiving for the defeat of the Turks in 1456 at Nándorfehérvár (today Belgrade, Serbia) by the armies of János Hunyadi (father of the future king, Matthias) and St John of Capistrano. There is not much we can say about the actual meaning of the phrase “correctum ас emendatum”. The situation could not have been very different from what we have described in relation to the 1480 Breviary,124 even if there may have been more time to prepare for the 1484 edition of the Missal. On the one hand, the later editions, while showing no real philological improvement,125 always emphasise their being corrected and emendated; on the other hand, correction and emendation seems to mean, for example, the above described transfer of the proper for the Transfiguration, the inni It was introduced by Pope Clement VI as a result of the black plague all over Europe (1358—1360). 122 The Mass is among the votive Masses even in the mid 15th century Pálóczi Missal. Due to the evident overlap of the de commune and votive parts with the Pálóczi Missal (see p. XL) it is not likely that in the exemplar copy the Mass in time of pestilence was given in appendix, and it was inserted into this place in the course of redaction of the Missal of 1484. 123 It is yet in the Pálóczi Missal at the very end of the votive masses, after the appendix-like Mass de sancto Bernardo. 124 See footnote n. 109. 125 The exceptions are scant, apart from the philologically thorough Nuremberg edition of 1498 (RMK III 44; CIH 2318), mention may be made of the Nuremberg edition of 1491 (RMK III 24; CIH 2314) which—if we take its colophon seriously—had been faithfully revised by some of the dignitaries of the cathedral chapter (fidelissime revisum per nonnullos dominos capituli). Subsequent studies will have to clarify where it meant mere addition-omission, and where actual—perhaps humanistically inclined—textual criticism.