The early Irish Stowe Missal’s destination and function

In 1929 the great James Kenney argued that the early Irish Stowe Missal must have been produced as a private service-book which a priest could easily carry around with him, but in recent decades scholars have claimed, either explicitly or implicitly, a different purpose for it. The codicological arguments proposed by Kenney are nevertheless still valid and this paper will argue that close linguistic examination of the manuscript's liturgical contents supports the theory that the Stowe Missal was an itinerarium, a book for a travelling cleric.