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

MS. Canon. Liturg. 340

Summary Catalogue no.: 19426

Contents

Gradual

Benedictine. Calendar (fol. 1) with the order of the gradual texts after the saints’ names; three Easter tables with verses of the epacts; combined temporale and sanctorale (fol. 9); common of the saints (fol. 123v); kyriale (fol. 127v) with tropes; proser or sequentiary (fol. 136). See Flotzinger 49–52 for a more detailed analysis; the sequentiary is also inventoried in Calvin Bower for the Cantus Database.

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
Extent: i + 153 + i fol.
Dimensions (leaf): 280 × 190 mm.

Layout

Gradual: 18 lines, written space 205 × 120 mm.

Proser: 30 lines, written space 213 × 120 mm.

Musical Notation:

Adiastematic neumatic notation, in the proser often lacking or added by later hands; above the original text corrections in square notation on staves of 4 red lines are made on fol.18 (troped introit of St. Stephen), fol. 19v (troped introit of St. John the evangelist); some square notation on black staves added on fol. 135.

Decoration

Good initials. (Pächt and Alexander i. 110, pl. VIII)

Coloured initials at the beginning of the greater feasts, a large one at the beginning of Advent (fol. 9).

Binding

17th century or 18th century, Italian: thick wood boards, no bevel, square-cut with large squares and a redundant strap-groove at centre edge of front board beneath the leather; paper paste-downs and flyleaves with ‘three moons’ watermarks; light brown leather over the groove and not allowing for any clasp(s), blind-tooled with double lines and one bee(?)-tool to form a simple panel with crossing diagonals, and with a thin wavy roll near edges; spine lost except for gilt red-leather label; edges plain. Same style (archaizing?) as at MSS. Canon. Liturg. 297 and 324.

Rebacked in similar leather, late 19th century, Bodleian, preserving the earlier label. 293–295 × 197–198 × c. 75 mm. (book closed).

The manuscript’s last page (fol. 153v) preserves scant stains from a previous binding.

History

Origin: 1200 × 1216 (?) ; Austria, South, perhaps Admont

Provenance and Acquisition

Flotzinger argues that the manuscript was written at Admont for export, with the calendar perhaps added at Moggio. The calendar contains the feast of St Cunigunda (2 Mar.), canonized in 1200; calendarial tables on fols 7v-8r run from 1216 to 1324, so that 'a date shortly before 1216 seems probable' (Watson).

Benedictine abbey of St Gall, Moggio Udinese (Mosach), near Udine: evidence of the calendar.

This is the manuscript 'in Archivio Comitis Marii a Puteo' (Mario del Pozzo) at Venzone, shown to Federigo Altan in the mid-18th century, as reported by Altan (Althanus) in his De Calendariis in genere, et speciatim de calendario ecclesiastico ... (Venice, 1753), 92, with an edition of the calendar on pp. 153–75.

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Description adapted (2018, rev. March 2021) from the following sources, with additional reference to published literature as cited:
S. J. P. Van Dijk, Handlist of the Latin Liturgical Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford : Vol. 1: Mass Books (typescript, 1957)
Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I (1966), no. 110
B. C. Barker-Benfield, Bookbindings of Canonici manuscripts : a survey of early and non-standard bindings, mostly Italian, in the Canonici collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Oxford, privately printed, 2020) [binding]
Summary Catalogue (1897)

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

    Rudolf Flotzinger, Choralhandschriften Österreichischer Provenienz in Der Bodleian Library, Oxford, Sitzungsberichte / Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse; Bd. 580 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991), 49–60

Last Substantive Revision

2021-03-02: Revised description with reference to Watson and Flotzinger and added provenance information for Mario del Pozzo.