A leaf from a noted Breviary, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [northern Spain or southern France, late 12th century]

Staffless diastematic neumes
A leaf from a noted Breviary, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [northern Spain or southern France, late 12th century]
A large, handsome leaf from a manuscript doubtless produced on the border between southern France and northern Spain.

c.442 x 294mm, 2 columns of 26 lines written in a handsome Romanesque script of two sizes, blind-ruled, staffless diastematic (heightened) neumes, rubrics in red, initials in green with red penwork infill or red with brown infill (used as a wrapper and consequently with a horizontal crease across the middle, some staining, outer margin cropped, modern vellum repairs). Bound in grey buckram.

Provenance:
(1) It has been suggested that the presence of the Feast of St Saturninus, first Bishop and Patron Saint of Toulouse, indicates that the parent manuscript was produced in or around the diocese of Toulouse. The hymn as it appears here, beginning 'Post corporeum salvatoris', is also found in a contemporary, late 12th-century manuscript for the use of Marseilles in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 1090. But it is also found in two manuscripts of Spanish origin, one in Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Ms. 619 and one in Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capítulares, 44.1 (copied c.1020-1023 at Sant Sadurní de Tavèrnoles for Abbot Ponç at the royal court of Sancho the Great). The recto with the Feasts of the Spanish Saints Facundus and Primitivus could also suggest a northern Spanish origin.

(2) Used as a wrapper for an account book in northern Spain in the 16th century: the inscriptions on the recto of the leaf (verso as bound) read: 'Processus de partibus in causa oxomen sin/plius de baños' and again 'Oxomensis beneficii de bagnos'; a different hand above this second inscription is dated 1 December 1547. This is the diocese of Osma in northern Spain, in the ecclesiastical province of the Archdiocese of Burgos. Baños is most likely Baños de Valdearados, a town some 50km from Osma. Evidently the manuscript served as a wrapper for a document listing the benefices given to the diocese of Osma by the town of Baños: an entry in the 'Index Decisionum' taken by the Diocese of Osma in G. B. Cantalmaggi, Selectanea rerum notabilium ad usum decisionum Sacrae Rotae Romanae, 1639, p.208, confirms this information: 'Beneficii de Bagnos 27. Ianuarii & 1. Februarii 1548. Put. dec. 94. lib. 3.'

(3) Dr Gian Ludovico Mazza, Rome, acquired in 1989 by:


(4) Schøyen Collection, MS 254.

Text:
The text begins on the verso as currently bound with the readings for the Feast of Facundus and Primitivus, Agricola and Vitalis on 27 November: '[...] Sanctorum Facundi et Primitivi Agricole & [Vita]lis' and concludes on the recto in the Feast of St Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse (29 November): 'Apostolica jussione Saturninus vir clar[issimus] cum authoritate pontificali verbi divini se[mina sumens]'.

Script and music:
The text is copied in a handsome Romanesque script, a transitional form developing out of Caroline minuscule and evolving finally into Gothic minuscule. The letters are oval in aspect, and the feet of the minims consist of an upwards turn of the pen, features Michelle Brown describes as being typical of Continental manuscripts (see M. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600, 1990, pp.72-73).