Ɵ Missal, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Low Countries or Germany, early to mid-11th century]

Ɵ Leaf from a Missal, from the Temporal, with Masses for the 3rd Sunday in Lent and the Monday following, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Low Countries or perhaps Germany, early to mid-eleventh century] Single leaf, with single column of 26 lines in two sizes of a tall and rounded Romanesque bookhand, with a strong st-ligature and occasional et-ligature used integrally within words, one- and 2-line initials in red, reused in a later binding and hence with wear and trimming to edges of text, one side particularly worn, overall presentable condition, 270 by 210mm.; in cloth-covered binding Provenance: 1. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his I/97, acquired from Maggs Bros., London, in 1960.2. Quaritch cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages V, 1991, no. 28.3. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 629, acquired June 1990. Script:The appealingly large letters of this script are thoroughly Romanesque, but include a few of the last remnants of certain distinctively Carolingian features, such as the et-ligature used integrally within words, a feature usually eliminated by the eleventh century (but note very late examples from Germanic centres in an Egbert of Liège, Fecunda ratis, made in Liège c. 1050: reproduced Glaube und Wissen im Mittelalter, 1998, no. 71; and a Gospel book from Regensburg c. 1030-50: reproduced in Regensburger Buchmalerei, 1987, no. 20, pl. 100; E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script, 1914, pp. 143-44, comments in passing on the same phenomenon, recording there a single late eleventh-century example in Vatican, lat. 3741).