tidy gothic scipt – textualis – both sides of the fragment were written by the same scribe.

Paragraphs are marked by a pilcrow symbol and sometimes trigons are found at the end or in the middle of a line. The text is written in a dark blue ink, with ample use of abbreviations. Capitals, however, are rarely used.

The fragment is in an archival folder, V6, titled "membra disiecta en losse stukken, geen muzieknotaties, 13e-16e eeuw", with the two sides numbered p. 49 and p. 50 by the archivarian.
The folder membra disiecta was created in the 1970s and contains the fragments recovered during book restoration carried out in the convent’s workshop under supervision of sister Regina ‘t Hoen. The ledger from which pp. 49-50 was taken must have been in the convent’s own possession; this is clear from the fact that the book restoration workshop diligently returned those fragments that were recovered from ledgers and codices which were not their own. The membra disiecta folder also contains other fragments which must have been part of the same binding as pp. 49-50. It is likely that the above described fragment was glued to some of these other fragments, judging from the fact that it shares the same size dimensions and glue damage.

The fragment consists of part of a bifolium, the two sides of which are numbered in the archival folder as p. 49 and p. 50. The folding line, at 150 mm from the left at p. 49 and at 50 mm from the left at p. 50, reflects the center fold of the codex. Each folio side contained three columns of text. The text of the recto (right) side of p. 50 (ending with lemma alo) connects loosely to the verso (left) side of p. 49 (starting with lemma alter), showing that the text of the lemma alius was lost between the bottom of the right side of p. 50 and the top of the left side of p. 49.

The parchment has been cut to size, resulting in a loss of written material: this amounts to the loss of two columns of text on the recto (right) side of p. 49 and one on the verso (left) side of p. 50, including the marginal glosses. There is also a loss of text at the top and bottom of the fragment. The fragment has three crease areas running through it horizontally. There are also several small horizontal cuts (three sets of two slits, six in total) in the parchment at the folding line, presumably made for the purpose of binding. The distance inside paired slits is around 10mm, with 95 mm from the first to last slit. In the margin of the verso (left) side of p. 49, there is a round stain in a bright blue pigment. At the bottom right of the recto side of p. 49, there is a small natural hole in the parchment. The entire fragment shows signs of water or glue damage, but p. 49 more so than p. 50. Because of this, in some places the text on p. 49 has faded significantly. The round blue ink stain was probably caused by the colored capital of another fragment (possibly p. 27 in the same archival folder) with which it was glued together as binding material. On the upper part of the leaf at the verso side of p. 49 there is a small stain of quadrangular letter shapes running perpendicular to the text (possibly from p. 28 of the same archival folder). On the top right corner of p. 49, the number 49 is written in thick pencil lines, corresponding to the page number in the modern folder. At the right side of the folding line, along the fold at p. 50, there is written F.A.L. in a thin pen line by a significantly later hand.

absent

The scribal features of the Oosterhout fragment are similar to those of BSB Clm 14056, for which an Italian origin is assumed (cf. Riessner 1965: xvii). The fragment likely made its way to the Low Countries through either France or Germany, France being more likely because of the cultural orientation of the duchy of Brabant to France.

The MS containing the fragment is lost and no information about it can be reconstructed. The following conjecture might be allowed: since the MS from which the fragment was cut must have been in the possession of the St-Catharinadal convent in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, it seems reasonable to assume we are dealing with a codex that had been in their possession for a long time. If this were the case, it is thinkable that we are dealing with a thirteenth-century book dotation from one of the early benefactors of the convent, arguably the lords of Breda (ca. 1250-1282). This would make the fragment of St-Catharinadal a tangible trace of the oldest derivationes-copy that made its way to the Low Countries.

In all likelihood, the fragment was cut from its MS somewhere in the Early Modern Period. This may have happened in the sixteenth or seventeenth century when pieces of scrapped parchment were used in the convent as binding material for administrative documents. The same archive also holds a seventeenth-century ledger of rents (MR30) that still has this binding consisting of older manuscript fragments.

More research is needed on how this fragment relates to other manuscripts in the derivationes tradition. It is interesting to note that the text is not identical to that of BSB Clm 14056; e.g. in the Oosterhout fragment, a small part of the lemma of alter has been lost (p. 49, verso side), ending with invenitur per mutuo at line 18 instead of plico alterplex like in BSB Clm 14056. The text then continues with the beginning of the next lemma altus, where the headword is connected with lines to the three definitions subtilis, sublimis and profundus, a scribal choice which is also not found in BSB Clm 14056.