Readings for Holy Week
Two bifolia from a Lectionary in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany, mid? 12th century].
Readings for Holy Week with cantillation marks.

Each leaf c.210 × 170mm, with up to 24 lines per page, in a fine bookhand with a very distinctive form of ‘z’ (looking somewhat like a ligature of ‘T’ and ‘h’), the non-consecutive text comprising from the end of Tuesday in Holy Week to Holy Thursday (‘et deponens eum […] [Mark 15:46] Feria III […] In cena domini […] Dicit ei Symon Petrus Domine [John 13:9]’), including parts of the Passion narrative from the gospel of Luke with superscript cantillation marks: ‘e’ for the narrator, ‘t’ for Jesus, and ‘c’ for others, rubrics and initials in red (somewhat thumbed and grubby, one bifolium cropped with the loss of the top lines, otherwise fully legible)

Provenance:
Colker MS 109; acquired in 1966 from Maggs.

Cantillation marks have been of scholarly interest for more than a century (e.g. Karl Young, ‘Observations on the Origin of the Mediæval Passion-Play’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 25, 1910, pp. 309–54), but are still not fully understood: each letter clearly refers to a different person or group of people, but it is uncertain how they were used. Recent studies suggest the ‘parts’ were indeed read by different people rather than, as has also been suggested, being read in different tones of voice. See Michel Huglo, Les livres de chant liturgique, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, 52 (1988) and Karlheinz Schlager in the Sachteil (s.v. Passion), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2nd edition and online.

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