Beneventan neumes
A leaf from an Antiphonal, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Abruzzi, c.1200]
A decorated example of Beneventan minuscule and notation.

c. 226 x 152mm, single leaf, 9 lines written in brown ink in a small Beneventan minuscule, 9 lines of Beneventan neumes, blind-ruled, rubrics in red, a capital touched in red, 6 capitals infilled in red and green, large initial 'D' outlined in red and infilled with pale yellow, olive-green, brown and bright blue wash (edges a little frayed, recovered from a binding and with horizontal crease across the middle, a few holes and stains). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.

Provenance:
(1) Sotheby's, 22 June 1993, lot 17, to Quaritch.

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 1684.

Text:
The text is from the end of the Feast of St Sebastian (20 January) and the opening of the Feast of St Agnes, 'Discede a me pabulum mortis [...]' (21 January); from '[Ad hanc vocem Christi martyris Sebastiani] illico apertum est os uxoris Nicostrati' to '[...] et glorifico nomen tuum in eternum.'

Script and music:
Published in Virginia Brown's 'A second new list of Beneventan Manuscripts', where it is dated to the 12th century. The script is the typical script of Montecassino, with unusual letter-forms: the ‘e’ looks like a figure ‘8’ with an open lower bowl, the ‘a’ is shaped similar to a Greek alpha, which in turn can be confused with the letter ‘t’ which looks like an ‘oc’ ligature, the ‘ci’ ligature appears like a reversed Greek beta (‘ß’), and so on (see lot 33). The music follows the script, and is arranged along a single red line for the F-clef.

V. Brown, ‘A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (III)’, Mediaeval Studies, 56, (1994), p.318.
BMB. Bibliografia dei manuscritti in scrittura beneventana, 1994.