Leaf from a Choirbook in Beneventan minuscule, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [southern Italy (most probably Montecassino), eleventh century, or perhaps c.1100]

single leaf, 302mm. by 192mm., with 12 lines of small and precise Beneventan minuscule in black ink with neumes arranged around a single red clef-line, red rubric identifying feast of St. Sebastian at foot of leaf, small initials partly infilled in red, remains of a large floral initial coloured in red, later medieval folio number "xxvij" in ornate penstrokes at head, recovered from a binding and hence with stains, tears and small holes, substantially rubbed and stained on verso with later scribbles

Beneventan script survived the Carolingian reforms and continued to be written at the Abbey of Montecassino (founded by St. Benedict of Nursia c.529) and its subsidiaries from the eighth to the sixteenth century, as a form of paleographical ‘living fossil’. It evolved from Roman cursive models, drawing on that for its cacophony of ligatures and connecting strokes, but also developed a distinctive angularity and broken appearance which is all its own. This is a notably early example, close in script to that of an eleventh-century fragment of a Gradual sold by Quaritch, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, IV, 1990, no.4 (now Schøyen MS.66), and with a floral cross bar on the remnant of initial here similar to that of no.8 there (illustrated opposite introduction; and now Schøyen MS.63). Examples of this script on the market are rarely as early as the present one.