A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

MS. Canon. Liturg. 325

Summary Catalogue no.: 19414

Ordinal, Use of Hirsau, and Miracles of the Virgin, in Latin with some German and Czech; south-eastern Germany, Austria, or northern Italy, late 12th or perhaps early 13th century

Contents

(fols. 1r–4v)

Miscellaneous additions, mostly 13th- and 14th-cent.:

(fol. 1r)

Miscellaneous late medieval notes, partially erased (cf. Provenance).

Language(s): Latin
(fols. 1v–2r)

Settings of the Sanctus and Kyrie, with square notation on four-line staves, partly erased and rewritten, followed by a partly-erased inscription (see Provenance).

Language(s): Latin
(fols. 2v–3r)
Hymn to St Nicholas, with neumes
Rubric: De sancto Nicolao
Incipit: Laude Christo debita celebremus inclita
Explicit: hoc est totum uite uere
Language(s): Latin
(fol. 3r)
Letter to members of a prayer fraternity at Admont
Rubric: De fraternitate
Incipit: Scire debet caritas uestra numerum missarum in congregatione aput Anesum ex tricenariis et duabus missis in ebdomadibus que fiunt per totum annum
Explicit: Similiter et femine eidem congregationi associate. Et tres pauperes pascunt admanus .xxx. infra annum. in nomine domini nostri Ihesu Christi Amen
Ed. by Barbara Gutfleisch, ‘Eine ostoberdeutsche Handschrift der ‘Mariensequenz aus Muri’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 119 (1990), 61–75, at 64.
Language(s): Latin
(fol. 3v)

Mnemonic verses on the reading of biblical books on the Sundays after Pentecost

Incipit: Pneumatis octavam domini lux quando sequatur
Explicit: Aditur Ezechiel Daniel ceterique prophete
Cf. WIC 14214
Language(s): Latin
(fol. 3v)

A line of verse in Old Czech , over an erasure: ‘ Czest ctnost stud bazen ktoz ma ten nenye bl⟨azen⟩ ’ (‘He who has honour, virtue, shame and fear is not a fool’, Jan Hus, identified by Danny Bate, personal communication). Followed by a Latin distich, ‘senex si iweniliter conuersatus fuerit | plus iuuenibus in derisum erit’

Language(s): Czech
(fol. 4r–v)

A setting of the Gloria with music in square notation on four-line staves, and other short added notes.

Language(s): Latin
(fols. 5r–10v)
Calendar, with many German saints, feasts graded up to 12 lessons, including Gallus (to whom the abbey of Moggio was dedicated) in red (16 October).

Added feasts by various hands include:

  • ‘Dedicatio Capelle S. Marie et omnium sanctorum’ (11 April)
  • ‘Dedicatio capelle S. Marie Mog(?)’ (28 April)
  • St Stanislaus of Cracow (8 May)
  • ‘Dedicatio capelle sancte Elizabeth’ (8 June)
  • ‘dedicacio huius ecclesie’ (9 June); cf. inscription on fol. 2r (see Provenance) and MS. Canon. Liturg. 346 which has the ‘Consecracio ecclesie monasterii Mosacensis’ on the same day.
  • ‘Dedicatio ecclesie sancti Benedicti’ (26 Nov)
  • Several added feasts are dated e.g.:
  • 1248, ‘dedicatio est ecclesia fratrum minorum in Glem. [Gemona]’ (15 March)
  • 1349, the death of Abbot Gi[l]bertus [of Moggio] (4 March)
  • 1350, the killing of the patriarch [of Aquileia] Bertrandus [of Saint-Geniès] (6 June)
  • 1388, John of Moravia, patriarch of Aquileia, arrival at Cividale (13 Sept)
  • 1389, an earthquake which damaged the ‘ecclesia mosacen.’ (20 Aug)

Language(s): Latin
(fol. 11r)
Easter table (the Great Paschal Cycle, with 19 columns and 28 rows)

Marginal notes include one for 1383

(fol. 11v)

A key to the preceding table, listing the 28 possible dates for Easter, with the corresponding dates for Septuagesima, Lent, etc.

(fol. 12r)

A table of years A.D. with their corresponding indiction, epact, and concurrent; largely erased and rewritten for 1344–1409.

Language(s): Latin
(fol. 12v)
A German translation of the Latin hymn ‘Ave preclari maris stella’, with neumes, the so-called ‘Mariensequenz aus Muri’
Incipit: Ave uil liehttiu maris stella
Explicit: můter unde maget beidiu
Edited from this MS. by Gutfleisch, op. cit., 66–68; cf. Konrad Kunze in Verfasserlexicon VI.50–4.

One of the earliest attested examples of a German text with musical notation.

Language(s): Middle High German
(fol. 13r–159v)
Ordinal, Use of Hirsau
Rubric: Incipit ordo diuini officii per circulum anni
Incipit: Quedam sunt festum festiuitates in quibus nichil amplius agitur quam in qualibet dominica die

With lists of feasts according to rank: celebrated in albs, copes, etc., some written in majuscules, some incipits with neumes.

(fol. 15v–159v)

Combined temporale and sanctorale, from Advent to the 25th Sunday after Trinity; common of the saints (fol. 139v); order of responsories after Pentecost (fol. 146v), followed by votive masses (fol. 157r).

Rubric: Hic incipitur ordo diuini officii per circulum anni secundum Hirsiacenses
Incipit: Dominica quarta ante nativitatis domini ad vesperas

With some marginal additions, and some passages re-written over erasures. See K. Heinzer, ‘Der Hirsauer ‘Liber Ordinarius’’ (1992), repr. in his Klosterreform und mittelalterliche Buchkultur im deutschen Südwesten (2008), 185–223, esp. section II.

According to Flotzinger, p. 41, text is missing between fols. 84 and 85.

(fols. 159v–160r)

Miscellaneous liturgical and other notes added by several hands, including the dates of the deaths of popes, and of Gilbert, abbot of Moggio, in 1349 (cf. the calendar; Provenance).

Language(s): Latin
(fol. 160v–223r)
Miracula beatae uirginis Mariae (BHL 5357)
Rubric: Incipit libellus De miraculis & beneficiis S. Marie
Incipit: (prol.) Ad omnipotentis dei laudem cum sepe recitantur miracula sanctorum que per eos egit divina potentia
Rubric: De archiepiscopo Hildefonso
Incipit: Fuit in Toletana urbe quidam archiepiscopus qui uocabatur Hildofonsus ualde et bonis moribus ornatus
Explicit: ut ipsa interuentrix sit pro nobis aput filium suum. Qui cum patre […] secula seculorum. Amen.
ed. T. F. Crane (Ithaca, NY, 1925), 4–79 (reprinting the edition by B. Pez, 1731); here ending at chapter 43 (edn. p. 78), thus lacking the short final chapter about Marcwardus. The text was wrongly attributed by Pez to Boto of Prüfening on the grounds of an additional chapter (c. 37 ‘visio cujusdam sacerdotis’, edn. pp. 55–8) found in two other manuscripts of the text; cf. Crane, xiv, and F. J. Worstbrock in Verfasserlexicon I.973.

The name of Mary, apostles, and other saints typically written in majuscules and stroked in red.

Language(s): Latin
(fol. 223r–224r)
A blessing for a bell
Rubric: Benedictio Campanę
Incipit: Benedic dominę hanc aquam benedictione cęlesti, ut assistat super eam uirtus spiritus sancti

To be followed by six psalms, and prayers, the first:

Incipit: Deus qui per Moysen legiferum tuum tubas argenteas fieri precepisti
Language(s): Latin
(fol. 224r)
Antiphon for the foot-washing, with neumes (lacking the last few lines)
Rubric: In cena domini ad mandatum
Incipit: Tellus ac aethra jubilent in magni cena principis
Explicit: Trux lupe Iuda pessime fers igni miti basia dans men⟨bra⟩
Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment, flaws sometimes repaired with red or green thread (e.g. fols. 154, 162, 164)
Extent: ii (paper) + iv (medieval parchment) + 220 + i (medieval parchment) + ii (paper)
Dimensions (leaf): 225 × 155 mm.
Foliation: i–ii, 1–227 in modern pencil

Collation

Uncertain: too tightly bound.

Layout

Ruled very faintly in plummet for 23 lines, fols. 13r-15r and 160v-224v in 1 column, elsewhere 2 columns. Written space 175 × 110 mm.

Hand(s)

Expert early Gothic bookhand.

Musical Notation:

See above: adiastematic neums; square notation on four-line staves.

Decoration

One 9-line foliate initial (fol. 160v) drawn in red ink, with a bird- or dragon-head terminal, the background filled with pale yellow and green washes One similar but simpler 4-line initial (fol. 15v); 4-line arabesque red initial, fol. 13r.

Other initials, mostly 1- or 2-line, in plain red.

Binding

18th-cent. brown calf, the covers framed with a blind and gilt roll tools, a standard Canonici style; marbled endpapers; rebacked, reusing the title-piece lettered in gilt capitals: ‘Ordo Div. Off | Mirac. BV et SS | et alia &c | cod. membr’. The first and last leaves with rust stains and holes caused by the metal fittings of a previous binding.

History

Origin: Germany, south-east, or Austria, or Italy, north-east, diocese of Udine ; 12th century, late (after 1173) (or very early 13th century?) (with additions)

Provenance and Acquisition

Written for a house of the Hirsau Congregation; probably, as argued by Heinzer, Buchkultur, 194–8, for San Gallo, Moggio (Mosach), where the manuscript certainly was later (see below), as suggested not only by the calendar but by the inclusion of local saints such as Hermagoras and Fortunatus (fol. 116r) in the ordinal itself. Watson's suggestion of an origin at Hirsau Abbey itself (Dated and Datable) is rejected by Heinzer and Gutfleisch on palaeographical and art-historical grounds and because of the dialect of the German text, all of which suggest south-east Germany or Austria and do not exclude the possibility that the manuscript was written at Moggio itself. Regarding the date Watson observed that Thomas Becket, canonized in 1173, is included by the original scribe in the calendar, while Cunegund (3 March), canonized in 1200, and her Translation (9 Sept, 1201), are additions (as is her feast at fol. 126v), and thus dates it between 1173 and 1200; Gutfleisch, op. cit., however, dated the manuscript slightly later palaeographically.

Benedictine abbey of San Gallo, Moggio (Mosach), in the patriarchate of Aquileia, as indicated by several inscriptions in the calendar (q.v.) and elsewhere:

  • ‘[ … ] in die sancte theodori [ … ]do de [ … ] abbat[ … ] monasterii mosacen. [ … ]’(fol. 1r)
  • ‘Millesimo Cxviiij dedicatum fuit monasterium siue [ecclesie?] Mosacum in festo sanctorum Primi et Feliciani [i.e. 9 June; cf. the calendar] [ … ]’ (fol. 2r)
  • ‘M ccc.lj die sabbati tercio mensis decembris venerabilis vir dominus Nicholaus [of Luxembourg] patriacha Aquiliensis, frater domini Caruli [ … ] fecit detruncari caput [...]’ (fol. 4v)
  • ‘M ccco xlviiij interfectus fuit Gilbertus abbas a mosacensis’ (fol. 160r)
MS. Canon. Liturg. 340 and MS. Canon. Liturg. 346 apparently come from the same house.

Giacomo Soranzo (?): J. B. Mitchell's card-index of Canonici manuscripts note that the endpapers are similar to those in other manuscripts owned by Soranzo: 'perhaps Soranzo's'.

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817. Former Bodleian shelfmarks: ‘E codd. Bodl. Miscell. Liturg. CCCXXV’ in ink (fols. ir, 5r, 13r), and ‘Miscel Liturg. 335’ in pencil, the second ‘3’ overwritten in ink with a ‘2’ (fol. ir).

Record Sources

Summary description (March 2021) by Peter Kidd, edited and dimensions supplied by Matthew Holford. Previously described in the Summary Catalogue.

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian(7 images from 35mm slides)

Bibliography

Last Substantive Revision

2021-03-02: Revised description for Polonsky German digitization project.