NOTED BREVIARY: a fragment of a leaf, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany (Cologne?), 10th century]

NOTED BREVIARY: a fragment of a leaf, in Latin, manuscript on vellum

[Germany (Cologne?), 10th century]

a fragment, c. 160 × 210 mm, the lower half or third of a leaf, blind-ruled, preserving 14 lines of text and part of a fifteenth, in fine late Caroline minuscule script, rubrics and a large initial in brick-red, the sung parts in smaller script to allow space for musical notation in early neumes, the text comprising part of Saturday between the third and fourth Sundays in Lent; recovered from use as a pastedown and flyleaf, with consequent imperfections including creases, small holes, and a few later scribbles: perhaps preserving the full widths of the outer and lower margins, the other two margins cropped, the formerly pasted-down area stained dark, with offsets of tanned leather turn-ins, but still fully legible; bound in a modern blue cloth-covered folder with gilt leather title-piece.

PROVENANCE

1. Hartung & Hartung, Munich, Auktion 108, 4–6 November 2003, lot 53 (ill.), ‘Vermutlich Köln’; bought by:
2. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 904

TEXT

The text on the recto, Luke 3:1–5, beginning ‘Anno quinto decimo imperii Tyberij Cęsaris …’, includes Luke’s quotation from Isaiah 40:3–4 used at the very beginning of Handel’s Messiah: ‘The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God; Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight’; the verso includes John 1:19–27, beginning: ‘In illo. Miserunt Iudęi ab Hierosolimis sacerdotes …’, in which John the Baptist denies being the messiah, also quotes Isaiah: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord’.

The script is a handsome sample, with the upright squareness typical of much German script; the text includes a few examples of the ‘punctus interrogativus’ punctuation, the forerunner of the modern question-mark.