MS. Douce f. 1

Summary Catalogue no.: 21999

Parts of four leaves from a Missal

On fol. ii there is a list of contents

Henry A. Wilson identifies the contents as part of the ' Missa Chrismalis [...] the end of the missa for the night of Easter Even, and part of that for Easter Day, parts of the missa and other prayers for the Nativity of S. John Baptist and of the missae for the vigil and the festival of SS. John and Paul, the latter part of the missa for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, and the heading of that for the vigil of SS. Peter and Paul' (The Gelasian Sacramentary [Oxford, 1894], p. lvii)

According to Wilson, the order of the items in the fragment 'agrees exactly' with that found in St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 348, with the readings close to those of the first hand in Cod. Sang. 348. However, Wilson suggests that the fragmentary MS. Douce f. 1 is the older of the two (The Gelasian Sacramentary, pp. lvii-lviii)

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: parchment

Extent: iv + 15 leaves. Fols i, iii-iv, 5-end are blank paper

Dimensions (leaf): 155 × 215 mm.

Hand(s)

E. A. Lowe observes that these fragments are in a pre-Caroline script, 'the immediate precursor of the so-called Corbie a-b' (CLA, Vol. 2, Item 239)

Written by a female scribe at the Benedictine nunnery in Chelles

Decoration

Pächt and Alexander i. 410

Minor coloured initials

The Summary Catalogue notes that the Uncial rubrics and the capitals are in red, green and other colours

History

Origin: 8th century, second half ; France, Chelles, Benedictine nunnery

Provenance and Acquisition

The leaves were discovered by Francis Douce, 1757–1834 in the binding of Douce 306, an early printed copy of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Historiale from the press of Johannes Mentelin, Strasbourg 1473. A note about the fragment written by Douce in Douce 306 reads: 'This is a most curious and valuable specimen of very old Lombardic writing' (The Douce Legacy, p. 43)

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1834

Record Sources

Description adapted (May 2023) by Stewart J. Brookes from the Summary Catalogue (1897), with additional reference to published literature as cited. Decoration, localization and date follow Pächt and Alexander (1973)

Summary Catalogue, vol. 4, p. 625

Summary Catalogue, vol. 4, p. 626