Collection of leaves from liturgical manuscripts, in Latin, decorated manuscripts on vellum [ninth to twelfth century]

5 leaves (including 2 bifolia), comprising: (a) substantial fragment of a bifolium from a Homiletic compendium with readings from Leo the Great, Homily 39 and Haymo (either of Auxerre, d.878; or of Halberstadt, d.853), De confessione peccati (Migne, Pat.Lat.118, col.924b), single column per leaf (with loss of a few words at each outermost extremity and base), 18 lines in a fine and early Carolingian minuscule with an open ‘g’ in dark brown ink, opening of homily with a single line of ornamental capitals, stains and holes from original binding down centre of bifolium, small hole without affect to text, splits at edges and painted section on reverse from reuse in binding with large letter ‘D’, probably Germany, ninth century; (b) two bifolia from a liturgical manual, each leaf approximately 210mm. by 170mm., single column, 20 lines of fine early gothic German script, titles announcing who in the community or congregation should say or sing the next reading in terracotta-red (oxidising in places to silver), small initials in red, seven large simple and elegant red initials, one leaf with border cropped away, another with similar but removing a few letters of outermost edge of text column, elaborate fifteenth-century addition of title of later book, they were used to bind along gutter of one leaf, Germany, twelfth century; all recovered from bookbindings with stains, scuffs and tears to edges

Item (a) is an early copy of a work by a prolific Carolingian author (identified variously as a bishop of Halberstadt or a member of the community of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre; and in fact the extant corpus probably includes works by both men). It was written within the author’s lifetime or the decades immediately following.