CISTERCIAN NUN'S POCKET PROCESSIONAL FOR MAJOR FEASTS, IN LATIN; GERMANY (HERRENALB), 1460

c.100x75mm, vellum, 78 leaves, COMPLETE, collation: i-x8, the penultimate (blank) leaf cancelled, the final leaf pasted-down, each page with 3 lines of text and music in Hufnagel notation on four-line staves, minor water-staining to last few leaves, CONTEMPORARY BINDING, sewn on two bands, blind-stamped polished brown leather over wooden boards, with a MEDIEVAL BOOK-MARK consisting of four woven strands sewn together at the top, vestiges of a strap-and-pin fastening, the strap missing but otherwise in very fine unrestored condition

PROVENANCE

(1) WRITTEN IN 1460 BY WILHELM KETHELLER, MONK OF THE CISTERCIAN MONASTERY AT HERRENALB (in Baden-Württemberg), FOR HIS SISTER DOROTHY, NUN AT THE CISTERCIAN ABBEY OF LICHTENTHAL (in Baden-Baden, less than 10 miles south-west of Herrenalb, and about 25 miles north-east of Strasbourg), with his colophon: ‘Scriptum per fratrem Wilhelmum Ketheller monachum in Alba Dominorum ad instanciam et usum sororis Dorothee Kethellerin in Lucida Valle sororis sui dilectissime. Anno domini M cccc lx’ (f.76r). (2) Since the 1960s in a private collection, Switzerland.

TEXT

Text and music for the feasts of the Purification, ‘Lumen ad revelacionem gencium …’ (f.1v), Palm Sunday (‘In ramis palmarum quando palmae distribuuntur’) (f.16v), ‘Duo sorores in ecclesia’ specified before the hymn ‘Gloria laus et honor …’ (f.31r), Ascension (f.38r), Corpus Christi (f.47v), Assumption of the Virgin (f.60r); colophon (f.76r); a Creed (f.76v).