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Breviary

Office for Sundays in summer.

F-6p84

Odense, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA L 31

Charlotte Epple, Fragmentarium, 2026 (Born Digital)

General Information

Title Breviary
Shelfmarks RARA L 31
Former Shelfmarks Herlufsholm 404.3, RARA 1596
Page/Folio Reference Covers
Material Parchment
Place of Origin Scandinavia?
Date of Origin 1250-1350
Script, Hands

Bold, round Northern Textualis with club-shaped ascenders.
General Remarks

Unless stated otherwise, the description refers to the large cover fragment. There are some other fragments in the binding, which have been listed as separate content items.

Original Condition

Page Height at least 40 mm
Page Width at least 30 mm
Number of Columns 2
Number of Lines 11 – 26

Current Condition

Extent 1 partial leaf
Dimensions 399 x 277
More about the Current Condition

Some loss of text due to how the leaf is folded and cut to fit around the covers of the host volume. The text is damaged from handling and rubbing against other books, but still legible.

Book Decoration and Musical Notation

Description

Red rubrics, as well as a large blue initial indicating the beginning of the sung part of the office. Cadel initials in black with red within the notated part.
  • Musical Notation

    Square notation on four-line staffs.

    • Content

    • Content Item
      • Text Language Latin
      • Title Office for Sundays in summer
      • Front cover r
    • Content Item
      • Text Language Latin?
      • Title Unidentified smaller fragments
      • Content Description

        A small scrap of a liturgical manuscript (potentially the same as the outer cover) is visible on the front guard. Originally it was glued to the board, but became detached at some point because the endband it supports snapped. Through the resulting crack one can see that there are spine supports inside the binding made from a different medieval manuscript, which may be non-liturgical.
      • Front guard r (host volume)
    • Content Item
      • Text Language Unknown
      • Title Printed fragments below pastedown
      • Content Description

        There is some printed waste that shines through the paper pastedown, especially on the back pastedown. There is likely some below the front pastedown, too, but it is less obvious. They have not been identified or dated yet. 
      • Back cover r

    History

    Origin

    Hope & Holck suggest a Scandinavian origin of the fragment. Uraniborg (astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory on the island of Ven, in the middle of the Øresund) as the place of printing in combination with the Northern German/Danish host volume provenances seems to indicate that the waste parchment was procured somewhere in this area. 
    Provenance

    The host volume belonged to Herlufsholm Skole, a private Latin school located in Næstved, Sealand founded in 1565 on the grounds of a secularised Benedictine monastery, St Peders Kloster. The old library of Herlufsholm was transferred to the University Library of Southern Denmark in 1968-69.

    A spine label with the initials BV - bibliotheca vetus - indicates that the book is part of the older layers of the school's collection, i.e. before a large donation made by Count Otto Thott in 1777-1785. The names of three prior owners of the book are noted on the title page, each followed by a year: Hamburg-based poet and scholar Michael Richey (1703), Northern German theologian Johann Henrich von Seelen (1713), and Danish politician and book collector Christian Friedrich Temler (1776), indicating that the book arrived at Herlufsholm just before Thott's books. 

    Host Volume

    Title Tycho Brahe, Epistolae astronomicae.
    Date of Origin/Publication 1596
    Place of Origin/Publication Uraniborg
    Shelfmark RARA L 31
    Remarks

    Laced-case binding with three visible endbands. This volume was restored by bookbinder Axel Pedersen in 1976 according to a stamp on the back endleaf ('A.P. Kons').

    Bibliography

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