Binding fragments from various manuscripts in a modern illuminated album, including a ninth-century Sacramentary and a tenth century copy of Walahfrid Strabo's De Exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum

107 fragments from various manuscripts, including (a) two strips (which fit together) from a single column from a large double-columned Sacramentary, approximately 200-210mm. by 34mm., 24 lines in dark brown ink in two sizes of elegant and accomplished Carolingian minuscule, initials touched in red, rubrics in red, probably France, mid-ninth century; (b) half a leaf bisected horizontally from a manuscript of Walahfrid Strabo, Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum, 204mm. by 145mm., double column, 17 lines in light brown ink in accomplished Carolingian minuscule, wide margins, some water-damage to lower right hand corner, France or more probably Germany, second half of the tenth century; (c) three fragments (two strips approximately 175mm. by 40mm. each and a torn and damaged rectangular fragment 130mm. by 70mm) from a Bible: 1 Chronicles 27: 29, 20 lines in dark brown ink in an excellent rounded early Gothic bookhand, Italy, mid-twelfth century; (d) a fragment cut horizontally from the centre of a leaf from an antiphoner containing the antiphon for Communion on Palm Sunday (Pater si non potest ...) with neumes, 150mm. by 67mm., four 4-line staves with text in light brown ink and neumes in black ink, large simple initial and rubric in red, Italy, early twelfth century; (e) a fragment, 166mm. by 100mm., including the last few lines of a text, and an explicit naming the text as 'De Anima' (almost certainly that by Aristotle), and recording the finishing of the manuscript on the feast of the discovery of the relics of St. Stephen (3 August) in 1334, perhaps Germany; (f) initial P on a cutting, 45mm. by 35mm., in pink heightened with white, enclosing a cross on a blue background with white penwork, all on burnished gold ground, with coloured fleshy acanthus-leaf extensions into border terminating in gold bezants, some flaking of paint from a single leaf else in excellent condition, Italy (perhaps Bologna), fifteenth century; and numerous other leaves from the twelfth to the seventeenth century in Latin, French, Greek, Hebrew and a single eighteenth-century Arabic leaf, encompassing liturgical manuscripts, texts from the University of Paris, Canon Law manuscripts, some examples of diplomatics, and a fragment of French fourteenth- to fifteenth-century vernacular verse, almost all recovered from bindings and somewhat defective, in a nineteenth-century album with parchment-covered pasteboards, front board excellently painted in a medieval style with a central panel enclosing Apollo dancing in a circle with nine muses, on liquid gold ground, all within a large blue frame heightened and edged with gold, from which sprays of coloured acanthus-leaves grow, terminating in other foliage, coloured buds and large gold bezants, signed I. Olivotto, Firenze and G. Giannini, white leather fastening tags

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
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This album contains a large and wide-spread nineteenth-century binding fragment collection. The vast numbers of fragments and their disparate sources suggest that the original owner was a binder himself or had access to waste discarded during the rebinding of a large number of manuscripts and early printed books (although note a few leaves from broken manuscripts, some cut-out initials, and the addition of the eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Sherborn school arms painted on vellum, perhaps added to the album by a later owner). Two of the binding fragments are of such significance that they warrant further comment here. Item a, the fragments of the mid-ninth-century Sacramentary, contain readings for John 9 on Christ curing a blind man on the Sabbath, and answering the charge of Sabbath violation with a discussion of spiritual blindness. The text begins part way through John 9:20, (Responderunt eis parentes eius et) dixerunt scimus quia hic est filius noster et quia caecus natus est, continuing through to 9:27, Respondit eis dixi ..., breaking off and re-joining on the other side mid-way through John 9:30, (Respondit) ille homo et dixit eis ... continuing to 9:38. The fragments were from a large and impressive double-column manuscript, and as the columns were only slightly wider than the fragments themselves, very little text has been lost from the edges. The hand is most probably French, and some similarities in script and decoration can be observed with British Library, Addit. 22820, a copy of Hrabanus Maurus, Super Hieremiam, from Cluny, dated between 948 and 994 (see A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, item 278, pl. 18). Manuscripts of such age are, of course, of great rarity, and the present examples are handsome and well executed examples. Item b, the fragment of the celebrated Carolingian scholar Walahfrid Strabo's Libellus de Exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum (a diverse history of the liturgy and liturgical practises in 32 chapters), from the second half of the tenth century is notable chiefly because of its age. Walahfrid Strabo was a gifted student of the scholars of Reichenau and Fulda, and among the latter of the great Hrabanus Maurus, and from there had a career as the abbot of Reichenau and subsequently as the private tutor of Charles the Bald, residing with the royal family until his untimely death in 849. The present manuscript begins on the recto a few lines into ch. 6, dicitur ecclesia, vel singulorum societas sancta locorum ... on the terms Ecclesia, Domus, Templum and Basilica, comparing their meanings in Latin and Greek, and postulating etymologies for the terms (corresponding to A. L. Harting-Correa, Walahfrid Strabo's Libellius de Exordiis et Incrementis, 1996, p. 64, line 6; with parallel translation into Modern English), breaking off after dicit Deus: quia inhabitabo et ... (Correa, line 17), and rejoining the text at frigorisque iniurias vitant ... (Correa, p. 66, line 1) and continuing to a basileo, id est ... (Correa, line 10). It is worth note that this manuscript has an extremely early place in the tradition of the text: it was written within approximately a century of the death of the author, and is most probably the second oldest copy of this section of the text: it is older than all but one or two of the nine manuscripts known to V. Krause in his edition of the text for Monumenta Germanica Historia (Legum section II. Capitualaria regum Francorum, 1897); the older ones being St. Gallen, MS. 446 (complete, ninth-century) and Paris BnF lat. 10757 (ch. 32 only, tenth-century). Krause records no manuscript of the work outside Europe.