Silesian notation
A leaf from a Missal, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Poland, Wrocław?, mid-15th century]
A leaf from a Silesian Missal, with 16th-century Wroclaw provenance.

c.334 x 206mm, 2 partial columns of 32 lines written in dark brown ink in a large Gothic bookhand, 3 lines of Silesian (Wrocław) notation on a single-line F-staff, large initials alternately red or blue with penwork flourishing, rubrics in red, contemporary foliation 'XXX' in red (recovered from a binding, and consequently creased with one side stained, part of one column cut away, a few smudges). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.

Provenance:
(1) An inscription in a 16th-century hand on the verso reads 'SYNODUS VVRATIS', i.e. Synod of Breslau (now Wroclaw).

(2) Bernard Rosenthal, his I/282.

(3) Bernard Quaritch, Boohands V, cat.1147 (1991), no 68, acquired in 1990 by:

(4) Schøyen Collection, MS 670.

Text:
The leaf, from the Sanctorale in a Missal, begins in the Feast of St Peter in Chains (1 August): '[beato Petro Apostol]o tuo vivificet nos [semper e]t muniat' and contains text for the services for Pope Stephen (2 August) and the Invention of Stephen Protomartyr (3 August), Nichodemus and Gamaliel (4 August), Sixtus (6 August), and Donatus and Companions (7 August), ending: 'Os iusti me[ditabitur] sapientiam et li[ngua eius] loquetur iudic[ium lex dei eius in corde ipsius]'.