Two Vellum Leaves from a Large-Format Latin Breviary in Gothic Script
October 2, 2021 in Manuscript Studies
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 1 (‘137’)r, Initial I (for Inclina). Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
A Pair of Non-Consecutive Leaves
from a Large-Format
Latin Breviary
in Gothic Script on Vellum
Circa 590mm × 447mm
< written area circa 397 × 307mm>
Single column of 15 lines
in Gothic Script
with rubrications, embellished initials,
and reiterated medieval and modern ‘folio’ numbers
Folio 1 (‘130’)
Vulgate Psalms (Septuagint Translation) 83:11 – 84:12 (Veri-[tas])
and
Folio 2 (‘137’)
Within Friday Matins:
Hymn Tu Trinitatis Unitas ([ . . . Ne corpus /] assit sordidum . . . Pater piissime)
Antiphon Inclina Domine, and Psalm 86 1:1–12 (Con-[fitebor])
14th or 15th Century, perhaps Italian or Spanish
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 130r, initials B and R. Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
Continuing to examine manuscripts and fragments in our blog on Manuscript Studies (see its Contents List), we turn to a pair of large, single leaves which arrived in a Private Collection several years ago, as a gift from another Private Collection. About this pair of leaves, we might exclaim: What beauties!
For the current owner, with an interest in manuscript studies, especially medieval manuscripts, these leaves comprise the first in the library (mostly books about books). Hence the assigned number, “MS 1”, with two detached leaves (Folios 1 and 2 in the set) from the same original manuscript.
The identity and origin of that manuscript remain, for now, unknown. Perhaps this blogpost, presenting the detached leaves to wider view through their photographs and related information, might bring to light more information about them and their travels across time and place.
The pair came on their own, safely packaged with mats in a large shipping box, but without any accompanying information. That is, apart from the former owner’s recollection.
These two large leaves would have come as a purchase some years ago, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, a repeated venue for some other purchases for the same collection.
“The two large ones are German and quite late, if I remember rightly. I bought them from a German dealer at the NY Antiquarian Book Fair. No, I don’t recall his name. It was a looong time ago. I suspect the two smaller ones [= MS 2, in another shipping] were purchased at the same venue, though different dealer.”
On their own, the two leaves must or can speak for itself. We bring to the table the willingness to examine them closely, to admire their resonant beauty, and to see what they can say. Their story resides not only in the text, which can be deciphered, abbreviations and all, but also in the features of layout, script, decoration, rubrications, annotations, the animal skins for the writing surfaces, the traces of a former binding, and other forms of material evidence.
Leaves 1 and 2 (or ‘130’ and ‘137’)
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 137r with guide. Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 130r with guide. Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
Made on vellum (probably calf- or cow-skin), the leaves originally belonged to a single large-format Latin manuscript bearing liturgical texts in stately, upright Gothic script, with rounded features. Enlarged and expertly embellished initials in blue and red pigment open sections (or verses) of the text. Those sections run together, as paragraphs.
The text is Latin, laid out in single columns of 15 lines on the page. The written area of the column measures circa 397 × 307 mm, defined by a ladder-like grid of narrow parallel horizontal lines drawn in black ink.
The main text is written in formal Gothic script with rounded features.
The bodies of the letters — the ‘lower-case’ minims (i, n, m, u) and such letters as a standard a, c, e, etc. — stand between those horizontal hair-line rulings, which provide the grid to guide the script within the column and within the lines. This positioning conforms with a known shift in scribal practice which took place principally in the second quarter of the thirteenth century (to judge by surviving manuscripts), from “above top line to below top line” for writing the first line of text on a page within the ruled framework. This shift was memorably observed and described by N. R. Ker (“From ‘Above Top Line’ to ‘Below Top Line’ “ and ditto).
The openings of individual sections or verses are highlighted by enlarged initials, painted and “built-up” mostly in red or blue pigment in a rhythmically alternating sequence. They are provided with pen-line embellishment in the contrasting color, such that blue initial has red embellishment, and vice versa. One initial (the B on Folio 130r) also has elements in green pigment filling parts of the background, within both the initial and the right-hand side of the frame.
The ornamental scheme is simple, yet effective, without reaching higher realms with costlier pigments. Perhaps such levels were afforded by major openings of the text, or the volume itself.
Inset within the text, the initials stand embedded in outlined rectangular frames which contain fillings of geometric and foliate ornament rendered expertly in pen-lines. Their effect resembles delicate filigree ornament. The pen-line frames and fillings are made in the contrasting color, to amplify the alternation, applying decoration in blue pen-lines to enclose the red initials, and red pen-lines to enclose the blue initials.
With their frames, the ‘lesser’ initials, opening sections or verses, usually extend the full height of the ruled line and the interlines above and below it. Some initials encroach upon the lines of text in ink. The overlap of the ink letters over the colored pigments shows that the bichrome embellishment preceded the writing of the lines of text.
Two major initials open passages of text, in each case individual Psalms. They appear midway down each recto at the right-hand side: B (for Benedixisti) on Leaf 1, and I (for Inclina) on Leaf 2.
The initials stand within the areas inset for them within the lines of text. The B stands 2-lines high; the I stands 3-lines high. Both are blue, with red ornament. Whereas the bodies of all other painted initials are solid, the B has four inset patterns of diamond-shaped motifs left ‘in reserve’, or unpainted. They stand at top and bottom of the stem of the letter, and at the outer curve of each of its bows.
One side of each leaf carries a ‘duplicate’ or reiterated set of arabic numbers in the lower outer corner, either 130 or 137. That side is the hair side of the animal skin on one leaf (Folio ‘1’ or 130), whereas the hair side is turned to the verso on the other leaf (Foli0 ‘2’ or 137).
The side with those numbers must be the recto of the leaf, as confirmed also by the stitching line of the inner margin, which stands at the inside of the leaf — that is, the left-hand side as we face that side, or page.
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 130v. Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
Private Collection, MS 1, Fol. 137v. Photography Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.
Turning the leaf over, to view the next page (the verso), we can observe the unbroken continuation of the text from the recto, in the same layout, script, and style of decoration. In addition, there are faint, or discreet, entries in pencil in the lower margin.
That the recto of each leaf in each case carries a more prominent decorated initial may have directed the decision to place the modern pencil entries on the verso. At the bottom of each verso there appear two entries, spaced at left and right.
A seller’s code in a long string of letters (upper and lower case) and arabic numerals stands at the left. The price in US dollars stands at the right. For one leaf, the price was “$135.00”, and for the other “$155.00”.
Folio 130: 5896nn4C13h5/45ST $135—
Folio 137: 5896qq4C13h5/45ST $155—
Entered by the same hand apparently at a single time, presumably after the leaves had been removed from their book, these entries evidently pertain to a single stage in the history of the manuscript. The style of coding might be familiar to others acquainted with specific sellers of manuscript or other fragments in North American markets in the past half-century or so. If so, the authorship and the meaning of the different elements in the code might be revealed more clearly. Does, for example, the element C13 here designate a 13th-century date or conjecture?
The seller’s codes might lead to information about when (and whence?) the leaves entered the inventory, and, by extension or inference, when that stock was sold, where, and to whom. As yet, those identities remain unknown. Might you have further information?
We examine the leaves one by one.
Continuing our series of interviews and reports, we explore the processes by which Mildred Budny’s 2-volume Insular, Angl0-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue (“The Catalogue” or “The Illustrated Catalogue”) was designed, laid out, and typeset to camera-ready copy for its publication as a set of 2 volumes of “Text” and “Plates”.
