Anonymous German scribe
Anonymous German scribe
A leaf from a Mass Book, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Southern or Western Germany, late 11th century].
A rare and evocative testament to the performative drama of Church ritual: an 11th-century leaf with text from the Passion sequence punctuated by superscript cantillation marks that provided instructions on how (or by whom) the passages should be read.
202 x 144mm. The text from Matthew XVII:21-46, beginning 'ait illis; Que[m] uu[l]tus uobis de duobus dimiti', and ending '[...] calmauit ihe[sus] uoca dic[ens]', 48 lines in a handsome caroline minuscule with a single 'St Gall' neumatic notation (to 'crucifigerent') and superscript cantillation marks 'c' and 's' in red, capitals touched in red (somewhat darkened, margin cropped just touching text). Bound in pink cloth, title label gilt. Provenance: (1) Bernard M. Rosenthal (1920-2017), his collection number I/206 in pencil on lower corner of verso: his collection sold en bloc to Quaritch. This leaf in Bookands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no 36. (2) Boehlen Collection MS 1000 ES, sold at Sotheby's 6 July 2006, lot 3.
The manuscript is notable for including the marks for performance of these Easter texts in church, a 'sacramental performance' that would be a precursor to the late medieval staging of Passion plays, and, as Christopher de Hamel put it in the entry for this leaf when it was offered at Sotheby's, 'the ultimate ancestor of modern drama'. By the 10th century, bishops had begun authorising the dramatisation of some parts of the biblical narrative as an inducement to parishioners to experience the lessons with more feeling, and it is in the superscript cantillation marks that these instructions are given. There is a debate as to what the precise meaning of the 's' and the 'c' might be: early scholarship suggested that there may have been a distribution of speaking parts, and that 'c' might have stood for 'cantor', 'clericus' etc. and 's' for 'subdiaconus', 'sacerdos' or similar. A more recent interpretation is that these related to the intonation and/or speed of delivery of the text (celeriter or clare and sonoriter or sursum, for example). For an in-depth treatment of these cantillation marks, see K. Schlager, 'Passion,' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2nd ed., 26 vols., 1994.
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Anonymous German scribe
A leaf from a Mass Book, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Southern or Western Germany, late 11th century].
A rare and evocative testament to the performative drama of Church ritual: an 11th-century leaf with text from the Passion sequence punctuated by superscript cantillation marks that provided instructions on how (or by whom) the passages should be read.
202 x 144mm. The text from Matthew XVII:21-46, beginning 'ait illis; Que[m] uu[l]tus uobis de duobus dimiti', and ending '[...] calmauit ihe[sus] uoca dic[ens]', 48 lines in a handsome caroline minuscule with a single 'St Gall' neumatic notation (to 'crucifigerent') and superscript cantillation marks 'c' and 's' in red, capitals touched in red (somewhat darkened, margin cropped just touching text). Bound in pink cloth, title label gilt. Provenance: (1) Bernard M. Rosenthal (1920-2017), his collection number I/206 in pencil on lower corner of verso: his collection sold en bloc to Quaritch. This leaf in Bookands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no 36. (2) Boehlen Collection MS 1000 ES, sold at Sotheby's 6 July 2006, lot 3.
The manuscript is notable for including the marks for performance of these Easter texts in church, a 'sacramental performance' that would be a precursor to the late medieval staging of Passion plays, and, as Christopher de Hamel put it in the entry for this leaf when it was offered at Sotheby's, 'the ultimate ancestor of modern drama'. By the 10th century, bishops had begun authorising the dramatisation of some parts of the biblical narrative as an inducement to parishioners to experience the lessons with more feeling, and it is in the superscript cantillation marks that these instructions are given. There is a debate as to what the precise meaning of the 's' and the 'c' might be: early scholarship suggested that there may have been a distribution of speaking parts, and that 'c' might have stood for 'cantor', 'clericus' etc. and 's' for 'subdiaconus', 'sacerdos' or similar. A more recent interpretation is that these related to the intonation and/or speed of delivery of the text (celeriter or clare and sonoriter or sursum, for example). For an in-depth treatment of these cantillation marks, see K. Schlager, 'Passion,' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2nd ed., 26 vols., 1994.
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