This vellum leaf is from a priest's working Breviary produced most likely in Southern France or Italy in the mid-14th century. The rounded, slightly compressed textualis rotunda letterforms, combined with square notation on a red four-line staff and unadorned red Lombard initials are consistent with a mid 14th century production. Rotunda-influenced textualis of this kind was used across a wide swath of Western Europe, but was especially common in Italian, southern French, and sometimes Iberian scriptoria, as opposed to the more angular, vertical textura typical of Northern French and Flemish productions.
Content: Recto includes a section of the Office of the Dead, Matins, First Nocturne.
It begins with the last few verses of Psalm 6: Laboravi in gemitu meo, lavabo per singulas noctes lectum meum: lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabo. (I have laboured in my groaning, every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears).
The rubric "Antiphona", in red, follows with the antiphon incipit Convertere Domine, et eripe animam meam, qui non est in morte qui memor sit tui. (Turn, O Lord, and deliver my soul: for there is none in death that is mindful of thee.)
Psalm 7 then begins and continues on Verso: Domine Deus meus in te speravi: salvum me fac ex omnibus persequen[tibus me. (O Lord my God, in thee have I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me.)
Size: Leaf approx. 170x130 mm.
Condition: Recto is in excellent condition in all respects, text, red Lombard initials and chant notation, while Verso has some ink loss from the black text, but not at the expense of legibility. Slight darkening in the bottom outer corner from page-turning. The leaf is unconditionally guaranteed genuine.
Notes: A Breviary, etymologically a compendium or abridgement, is the liturgical work which contains psalms, hymns, readings from Sacred Scripture, the writings of the Fathers, the prayers and the responses, which are combined to form the canonical hours of the divine office of prayer recited daily throughout the world by priests and the religious. The first breviaries, which appeared in the 11th century, were choir books containing the whole office in one book. After the appearance in the 13th century of the mendicant orders—religious orders whose work, primarily itinerant preaching and teaching, often did not allow them to reside in common—the need for portable breviaries, such as the parent book of this leaf, arose.
Item No: MOT109
