Fragment of twenty-one Leaves
SARUM BREVIARY,
in Latin.
England, 1st quarter of 15th century.
21 leaves (211 x 137 mm (text area 154 x 96 mm)), written in double columns in two sizes of a good gothic liturgical script, dark brown ink, ruled lightly with ink, horizontal catch-words, numerous two-line initials in blue with fine red penwork incorporating leafy designs, one-line initials in blue, occasionally with red penwork, paragraph marks in blue, rubrics; dust-soiled and stained, worn in places, a few wax stains, one or two natural vellum flaws, corners creased and sometimes slightly crumpled, a few marginal tears and slight losses, but almost entirely legible, preserving pricking in outer margins; disbound.
A fragment of 21 leaves from a portable Sarum Breviary, with nineteenth-century Staffordshire provenance.
The leaves here come from the Temporal of a ‘secular’ Breviary (i.e. for use in a church, either by a parish priest or a friar), containing nine readings at Matins for Sundays and major feast days and three readings for weekdays (monastic Breviaries give twelve readings for Sundays and feast days and three for weekdays in the winter and one in summer). Included are prayers and readings for the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, Holy Innocents, and St. Thomas, and for the third and fourth weeks in Advent, Christmas Eve, and the week after Epiphany.
Provenance: Rev. William Jackson of Staffordshire, according to accompanying notes by his son William J. Marsh Jackson of Smethwick, formerly in that county. The first note, dated April 1887, states that the manuscript ‘formed part of the library of my father the Revd. Wm. Jackson MA and had been in his possession ever since I can remember, ie over 40 years’. The second note mentions, inter alia, that Jackson senior was vicar of Adbaston (Staffordshire).
