A thin manuscript volume of 36 leaves, it is the oldest extant liturgical monument of the Celtic Church to which an approximate date can with certainty be assigned, and which on this and other grounds is of particular interest to liturgical scholars, particularly in Ireland and Great Britain. The
codex, found by
Muratori in the
Ambrosian Library at
Milan, and named by him the "
Antiphonary of Bangor" ("
Antiphonarium Benchorense"), was brought to
Milan from
Bobbio Abbey with many other books by
Dr Federigo Cardinal Borromeo,
Archbishop of Milan, when he founded the
Ambrosian Library in 1609.
Bobbio, situated in a gorge of the
Apennines thirty-seven miles north-east of
Genoa, was founded by
Saint Columbanus, a disciple of
Saint Comgall, founder of the great monastery at
Bangor, in County Down,
Northern Ireland. Columbanus died at Bobbio and was buried there in 615. This establishes at once a connection between Bobbio and Bangor, and an examination of the contents of the codex placed it beyond all doubt that it was originally compiled in Bangor and brought thence to Bobbio, although not in the time of Saint Columbanus: there is in the codex a
hymn entitled "
ymnum sancti Congilli abbatis nostri", and he is referred to in it as "
nostri patroni Comgilli sancti". Again there is a list of fifteen
abbots, beginning with Comgall and ending with Cronan, the fifteenth abbot, who died in 691; the date of the compilation, therefore, may be referred to 680–691. and there are no sufficient grounds for connecting Dungal with Bangor at all. It is written, as regards the orthography, the form of the letters, and the dotted ornamentation of the
capital letters, in "the Scottic style", but this, of course, may have been done by
Gaelic monks at Bobbio. Here only a summary can be given of the contents of the codex, to which the name of "Antiphonary" will be found to be not very applicable: (1) six
canticles; (2) twelve metrical
hymns; (3) sixty-nine
collects for use at the
canonical hours; (4) special collects; (5) seventy
anthems, or versicles; (6) the
Creed; (7) the
Pater Noster. The most famous item in the contents is the venerable
Eucharistic hymn "
Sancti venite Christi corpus sumite", which is not found in any other ancient text. It was sung at the
Communion of the clergy and is headed, "
Ymnum quando comonicarent sacerdotes". A text of the hymn from the old manuscripts of Bobbio, with a literal translation, is given in "Essays on the Discipline and Constitution of the Early Irish Church," (p. 166) by Cardinal Moran, who refers to it as that "golden fragment of our ancient Irish Liturgy". although this interpretation is not universally accepted. ==References==