ST GALL NEUMES for the feasts of the Dedication of a Church and St Cecilia: two substantially complete leaves from a noted Breviary, in Latin, manuscript on vellum. [Germany, late 11th or early 12th century]

ST GALL NEUMES for the feasts of the Dedication of a Church and St Cecilia: two substantially complete leaves from a noted Breviary, in Latin, manuscript on vellum

[Germany, late 11th or early 12th century]

two leaves, each c. 285 × 180–85 mm, prickings survive at the fore-edge, blind-ruled for 31 lines of text (cropped at the top, with the top line missing) in two sizes, larger for the spoken parts and smaller for the sung parts to allow space for musical notation in St Gall neumes, enlarged initials in red, the text comprising part of the feast of St Cecilia and the feast of a Dedication of a Church; probably recovered from use as flyleaves in a binding, with consequent imperfections, and overall wear and dirt; bound into a cloth-covered folder with gilt leather title-piece.

PROVENANCE

1. Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 1315: Bookhands of the Middle Ages, Part VII (2004), no. 58; bought by:
2. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1105.

TEXT

Both leaves are currently bound with their recto and verso reversed:

(fol. 1v–r) From the second line of a reading from Bede’s Homily on the Dedication of a Church, ‘mortalis ac terrenus, quamvis potentissimus et sapientissimus …’, to a reading from Habakkuk 2:20, ‘Deus autem in templo suo sileat a facie eius omnis terra.’

(fol. 2v–r) From the antiphon ‘Cecilia virgo Almachium’, starting at ‘[Vale]rianum ad coronas vocavit’ to the antiphon ‘Cantantibus organis Cecilia domino decantabat dicens fiat cor meum’, followed by a rubric ‘In matutinam’.

In the parent manuscript the feast of St Cecilia would have been on 22 November in the Sanctorale. The feast of a Dedication of a Church might have been in one of several places, potentially within the Sanctorale on the date of the Dedication of the church for which the manuscript was made, or potentially at the end of the Sanctorale or Temporale.