Remains of a Medieval Italian Antiphonal MATERIAL, CONDITION, LAYOUT AND RULING

The leaves are prepared animal skin with a distinct hair and skin side. Because it is impossible to prove if any of the leaves are consecutive, it cannot be determined whether the codex was constructed with hair facing hair or skin facing skin side, or opposites facing. Large illuminated initials are placed on both the recto and verso sides of the page, and on both hair and skin sides. The quality of the skin is high, with no holes or wormholes, and the few tears have been carefully mended so to be almost unnoticeable. The edges have some wear, and the occasional small rip in the corners. It is difficult to tell the history of the binding of these leaves. Once sliced from their original codex, the leaves appear to have been re-bound in some way; a slight pressing 3/4" wide, perhaps from some kind of adhesive, remains along one edge of a majority of the leaves , sometimes even on the outer edge. There has been substantial trimming of all four edges of each leaf, at times cutting off over an inch of painted decoration, but never interfering with the text. As they are, they all measure from approx. 20.25" to 20.75" tall and 14" to 14.5" wide. Originally, they might have had an extra two or three inches of height and one or two inches of width. The single columns of chant, approx. 15"-16" tall and 9"-10" wide, leave outer margins of approx. 3", inner margins of approx.1.5", bottom margins of 4" and top margins of 1.5".

Every column has six rubricated musical staves, each paired with a line of text below it. ⁹ The width of each line of the five-line staff, the height of the script from baseline to headline, and the spacing lines are all standardized at 3/8". Pricking on both inner and outer margin for the top and bottom of the text line, with two lines hard ruling for the text line and for the right and left hand margins, dictate the layout of the column. Three leaves contain catchwords written approx. 1" from the bottom: fol. 7v, "dies"; fol. 14v, "hominis"; and fol. 16v, "lis." These were likely at the end of separate quires. Small rubricated roman numerals in the side margins probably indicate the part of the service to which the chant of that line belongs, i.e. Nocturn I, II, III. There are also similarly-sized rubricated Roman numerals in the top left-hand corner of the verso pages, whose function is difficult to ascertain, since their order does not correspond at all with the probable order of the texts.

The method of numbering which has been retained for consistent identification of the folios is small penciled numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of the illuminated side of each leaf. They appear to be of a much later date than the manuscript, originating after their removal from the codex. Regardless of verso or recto, the numbers 1-18 order the pages in a curious way: beginning with an historiated initial for fol. 1r, all the odd leaves have historiated initials, while all the even leaves have floral initials. Analysis of the margins and the text reveals that the numbered side is not always the recto side. Numbering the illuminated side might indicate they were at some point intended for presentation purposes only, such as framing, and that their original function was irrelevant to the numberer. In any case the numbers do not reflect a knowledge of the contents of the leaves, and so cannot be relied upon either for identifying verso or recto, nor for ordering of the leaves as a whole. However, they have been retained as a convenient way of identifying each leaf in lieu of further markings on the manuscripts themselves. The penciled numbers are the folio numbers throughout this report, but the position of the number itself on one side or the other has been ignored; the contents of the pages themselves have determined which side is identified as verso or recto.

For the most part, the ink of the script is clear and of high quality. Fols. 1v and 11r bear the most deterioration, though not even to the extent of hindering their use and reading. In some places the ink has disintegrated the skin underneath it, usually in the musical notes. The paint colors and gold leafing are in almost perfect condition, still brilliant and vivid.

Image Source: Historiated initial 'M' from folio 9^r.

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