SARUM MISSAL,
in Latin, with readings and music for the feast of the Nativity
England, late 14th century.
A complete folio leaf (376 x 268 mm (text area 272 x 165 mm)) with double columns of 38 lines written in a gothic liturgical script in dark brown ink, square and diamond-shaped musical notation on four-line red staves, ruled lightly in ink, large eight-line illuminated initial ‘P’>/> (Per omnia saecula) on recto in shades of blue and enclosing intertwining foliage in blue and rose against a burnished gold ground, full-page illuminated bar border extending between columns, formed from paired burnished gold and blue or rose bars with sprigs and sprays of foliage in blue, rose, orange and green, two-line initials in blue with red penwork in leafy designs, lesser initials alternately in red and blue, rubrics; rubbed and dust-soiled, a horizontal crease where once folded, a few minor tears and several small holes with associated rust-stains suggesting the insertion at some point of metal pins (or metal thread?).
A richly illuminated leaf from a Sarum Missal, the decoration probably of provincial rather than London production.
Characteristic of the late fourteenth century are the interlaces at the corners of the border and at the mid-point of the right-hand bar, the rounded three-lobed leaves with circular highlighted areas in their centres, and the palette of rose, blue and dull orange. Additionally the daisy bud motif, seen especially along the left-hand border here, ‘is typical of later 14th-century borders, . . . more usually as pairs on a sprig rather than on a spray. The calyx of the buds is of a wash green, with rose used at the tips of the unopened petals’ (K. Scott, Dated and datable English manuscript borders c. 1395–1499, p. 28).
