Beneventan script
Leaf from a Noted Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Southern Italy, Montecassino, early 12th century]
An extremely handsome example of Beneventan script and illumination, from an exceptionally fine Missal with early musical notation

c. 245 × 180mm. Blind-ruled for 29 lines written in a very fine regular Beneventan minuscule, the text from the beginning of the Offertory on the vigil (28 June) of the feast of Sts Peter and Paul (29 June) to the end of the reading from Acts 12:1–11 on the following day (‘Michi autem nimis honorificati sunt […] & de omni expectacione plebis Iudeorum’), five lines of music in adiastemmatic neums; illuminated with three foliate initials in gold edged with red and with blue in interstices; smaller initials also decorated, in red on fields of blue, green, and yellow; capitals with red, yellow, and green highlighting (the top line of text on each side worn but still legible, the edges darkened and somewhat ragged)

Provenance:
(1) At least two, and probably all, of the known leaves were owned by Erik von Scherling c.1935; he reported that they came from Neapolitan archives.
(2) Colker MS 286; acquired in 1980 from Maggs, Catalogue 1002: Western Text Hands from the Late 9th to Early 14th Century [1980], no 40 pl.17.

Twelve other leaves – described by Brown as of ‘Pure Montecassino type’ – from the same manuscript are known, most of them with nearly consecutive foliation:
[f. ccv] New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.830.2
[f. ccvi] the present leaf
(f. ccvii) Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, B.P.L. 2842
(ff. ccviii–ccix) London & Oslo, Schøyen Collection, part of MS 55
(f. ccx) Oberlin (OH), Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum, MS 58.19
(f. ccxi) Formerly Edward Ullmann Collection, Rome
(f. ccxii) New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.830.1
(f. ccxvi) Riverside (CA), California Baptist College, P. Boyd Smith Hymnology Collection s.n.
(ff. ccxxi–ccxxii) London & Oslo, Schøyen Collection, part of MS 55
(f. cxxvii) Chicago (IL), Newberry Library, Case MS 163
(f. ccxxviii) Waco (TX), Baylor University, Jennings Collection MS 2

The use of colour and/or gold for each piece of text marks this is as an extraordinarily luxurious production.

V. Brown, Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988), p. 623
V. Brown, Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura beneventana, II (Rome, 1994), pp.17, 68.

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