Leaf from a Missal in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Austria or southern Bohemia, late 12th (or early 13th?) century].

An Austrian or Bohemian Missal leaf
Leaf from a Missal in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Austria or southern Bohemia, late 12th (or early 13th?) century].
An imposing leaf written in extremely regular and elegant script from one of Otto Ege’s finest manuscripts.

c.347 × 235mm. 24 lines in an extremely regular and elegant bookhand, the text comprising the end of one general mass for the dead, all of another, and the start of a mass for angels (‘Postcommunio. Sumpta quesumus domine sacramenta […] Generalis. Sanctę dei genitricis Marię […] De angelis. Adorate deum omnes angeli eius […] & angelica prestitisti suffra[gia]’, rubrics and elegant one- and two-line initials in red (two medieval sewn repairs in the fore-edge margin, overall in fine condition).

Provenance:
(1) Although always described in the past as Cistercian, there is no clear evidence that the parent volume was written for a Cistercian house: although it does use punctus flexus punctuation, typical of Cistercian books, but the text originally lacked the feast of St Bernard (d. 1153), patron of the Cistercian Order, canonised in 1174 (yet the script probably suggests a date later than this).
(2) From the library of the Cistercian abbey of Hohenfurth in Southern Bohemia (now Vyšší Brod in the Czech Republic, a little north of Linz, near the modern border with Austria): their Cod. CXXXIV; it was perhaps here in the 15th century that the feast of St Bernard was added.
(3) Emil Hirsch, Munich, offered in his undated catalogue Valuable Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Mostly Illuminated [1928?], no 17; Hirsch had many other manuscripts from Hohenfurth/Vyšší Brod, including one now at the British Library.
(4) Arnold J. Mettler, of St Gall, sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 29–30 November 1948, lot 317.
(5) Otto F. Ege (S. Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, 2013, Handlist no 2).
(6) Colker MS 442; acquired in 1992 from Ferrini.

For a demonstration of the Hohenfurth/Vyšší Brod provenance, see the blogpost ‘Hohenfurth, Emil Hirsch and Otto Ege’ by Katharina Kaska, posted on 15 April 2015. She also suggests that the manuscript should be dated to the 13th century.

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