Found it!

You never know where a fragment could hide. When you search in a manuscript or printed book, a fragment is usually placed as a pastedown or a flyleaf or as a reinforce outside a quire. When it is used as a reinforce on the spine, it is much more difficult to detect its presence, since it is usually glued and hidden behind the cover… unless the binding is somehow broken. That’s when a fragment-searcher gets lucky: here there are some very small fragments from a 14th century French Breviary. Judging from the dimensions of the script and initials, the book was a portable one. The text we can see is not enough to determine the liturgical use of the original Breviary, but we can read the beginning of the first antiphon for Lauds, “Emissiones tuae”, used for the common of the virgins. (Found in Paris, BnF, fonds Latin).

Uncatalogued fragments at the BnF in Paris

On May 18th 2018 Francesco Siri and I presented at the IRHT Seminar in Paris a pretty interest discovery about fragments. Working at the BnF as part of the Polonsky project, we had the chances to find 19 boxes of fragments from bindings, which are still uncatalogued. The total amount of fragments is around 1000 pieces.

Among them, liturgical fragments are very well represented, with a bifolium from a Sacramentary dating from the 11th century and several pieces from later Antiphonals, Graduals and Missals. I was able to identify 67 fragments from an English Pontifical of the 12th century, with musical notation; what remains of a monastic Antiphonal from the abbey of Mouzon, in Lorraine notation, dating from the 12th century; and a small fragment of an Antiphonal noted in Aquitanian notation containing very rare pieces for st. Michael.

An article listing the pieces, their placement as a fragment, their actual dimensions, their date and content is currently being prepared. Stay in touch to find out more!

Pavia State Archive - Box 1

The State Archive of Pavia has an incredibly rich collection of medieval fragments. Fragments were used as wrappers for notarial documents: they were glued to cartonboards and recently they have been detached. Actually they are kept in 9 boxes and 42 folders. Each box contains 4 or 5 folders.
The first box contains 326 fragments: here are listed the 116 liturgical fragments.
Typologies are given in abbreviated form: ant (antiphonary), bib (bible), brv (breviary), cal (calendar), grd (gradual), hom (homiliary), lco (lectionary for the office), mis (missal), psl (psalter), scr (sacramentary).

 

nr.	Box	Folder	Fragment	Type
1	1	33 H 2	1585/1	hom
2	1	33 H 2	1585/2	hom
3	1	33 H 2	1585/3	hom
4	1	33 H 2	1261/1	ant
5	1	33 H 2	1484/1	mis
6	1	33 H 2	1484/3	mis
7	1	33 H 2	904/1	grd
8	1	33 H 2	904/2	grd
9	1	33 H 2	280/1	mis
10	1	33 H 2	1741/1	mis
11	1	33 H 2	1741/2	hom
12	1	33 H 2	1803/1	mis
13	1	33 H 2	1809/1	bib
14	1	33 H 2	867/4	brv
15	1	33 H 2	867/6	brv
16	1	33 H 2	867/7	brv
17	1	33 H 2	1017/1	hag
18	1	33 H 2	1149/1	mis
19	1	5 F 8	1821/2	mis
20	1	5 F 8	1825/2	scr
21	1	5 F 8	1820/2	mis
22	1	29 E 19	2147/2	ant
23	1	29 E 19	2147/3	ant
24	1	29 E 19	2147/4	ant
25	1	29 E 19	84/1	lco
26	1	29 E 19	1396/3	scr
27	1	29 E 19	SN1/1	lco
28	1	29 E 19	270/1	lco
29	1	29 E 19	270/2	lco
30	1	29 E 19	284/1	hom
31	1	29 E 19	735/1	mis
32	1	29 E 19	482/1	hom
33	1	29 E 19	482/5	hom
34	1	29 E 19	553/1	hom
35	1	29 E 19	394/1	mis
36	1	29 E 19	394/2	mis
37	1	29 E 19	323/1	mis
38	1	29 E 19	323/2	mis
39	1	29 E 19	323/4	mis
40	1	29 E 19	672/1	mis
41	1	29 E 19	672/2	mis
42	1	29 E 19	209/1	mis
43	1	29 E 19	209/2	mis
44	1	29 E 19	1096/1	lco
45	1	29 E 19	1100/1	hom
46	1	29 E 19	1100/2	hom
47	1	29 E 19	602/1	hom
48	1	29 E 19	602/2	hom
49	1	29 E 19	602/3	hom
50	1	29 E 19	602/4	ant
51	1	29 E 19	602/5	ant
52	1	29 E 19	1113/1	mis
53	1	29 E 19	1113/2	mis
54	1	29 E 19	1101/1	hom
55	1	29 E 19	SN3/1	mis
56	1	29 E 19	SN3/2	hom
57	1	29 E 19	SN3/3	hom
58	1	29 E 19	SN3/4	hom
59	1	29 E 19	38/1	mis
60	1	29 E 19	38/2	mis
61	1	29 E 19	38/3	mis
62	1	29 E 19	1680/1	hom
63	1	29 E 19	1685/1	hom
64	1	29 E 19	1685/2	hom
65	1	29 E 19	1641/1	hom
66	1	29 E 19	1641/2	hom
67	1	29 E 19	1498/1	hom
68	1	29 E 19	1606/1	hom
69	1	29 E 19	1606/2	hom
70	1	29 E 19	1606/3	hom
71	1	29 E 19	1606/5	hom
72	1	29 E 19	213/1	hom
73	1	29 E 19	1218/1	hom
74	1	29 E 19	1218/2	hom
75	1	19 E 9	2383/1	grd
76	1	19 E 9	2383/3	mis
77	1	19 E 9	2377/1	brv
78	1	19 E 9	814/1	brv
79	1	19 E 9	814/2	brv
80	1	19 E 9	1337/1	brv
81	1	19 E 9	1337/3	brv
82	1	19 E 9	1337/4	brv
83	1	19 E 9	1337/5	brv
84	1	19 E 9	1337/8	brv
85	1	19 E 9	SN1/1	psl
86	1	19 E 9	SN1/2	psl
87	1	19 E 9	SN1/3	psl
88	1	19 E 9	1658/1	brv
89	1	19 E 9	1503/1	brv
90	1	19 E 9	1445/1	hom
91	1	19 E 9	1445/2	brv
92	1	19 E 9	845/1	brv
93	1	19 E 9	845/2	brv
94	1	19 E 9	845/3	brv
95	1	19 E 9	845/4	brv
96	1	19 E 9	839/1	cal
97	1	19 E 9	839/2	cal
98	1	19 E 9	839/3	cal
99	1	19 E 9	839/4	cal
100	1	19 E 9	1079/1	brv
101	1	19 E 9	1079/2	brv
102	1	19 E 9	1079/3	brv
103	1	19 E 9	1079/4	brv
104	1	19 E 9	1303/1	mis
105	1	19 E 9	336/1	mis
106	1	19 E 9	1684/1	mis
107	1	19 E 9	36/1	mis
108	1	19 E 9	2/1	mis
109	1	19 E 9	356/1	mis
110	1	19 E 9	249/1	mis
111	1	19 E 9	1416/1	mis
112	1	19 E 9	1052/1	brv
113	1	19 E 9	506/1	mis
114	1	19 E 9	289/1	brv
115	1	19 E 9	SN2/1	lco
116	1	19 E 9	SN2/2	lco

Why study fragments?

The history of book is inevitably marked by destruction: as we all know, a great number of books has been lost in centuries for intentional causes or accidents. We are still dealing with the incredible loss of hundreds of medieval manuscripts in catastrophic events, like the WW2, but accidental destructions are not the only reason for the dispersion of books.

The intentional destruction of a medieval source seems to us a real crime, but the culture of preservation is relatively recent, and we know that our predecessors in the past centuries had no problems to dismember a manuscript that no one would read, and to reuse its parchment for fly-leaves, binding pieces or wrappers for notarial documents.

This kind of selective destruction is particularly relevant regarding the liturgical books. Liturgical books became soon obsolete, and as a consequence, most of medieval liturgical books were destroyed in order to renew the liturgical library by copying new books. In a number of cases these lost books were the only witnesses of local ancient liturgies, and they were the only sources of particular texts and music which were later suppressed. It is then clear that the study of the fragments are, in certain cases, the only way to discover the traces of the ancient liturgies.
This blog is dedicated to liturgical fragments, their text, music, and paleographical and codicological evidence. In particular, we focus on fragments kept in Italian Archives and Libraries. All contributions and commentaries to this subject are welcomed.