The first leaf from a Noted Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [England or France, early 13th century (c.1220)]

320 × 225 mm, pricked in both margins and ruled in leadpoint for two columns of 34 lines written above top line in a fine early gothic bookhand, rubrics in red, the musical parts in smaller script on alternate lines, the intervening lines ruled with four-line staves, one line in red, the text comprising the beginning of the temporale from Advent Sunday to the gospel reading on following Friday (“Dominica prima in adventu domini. Ad te levavi animam meam … Omnis ergo arbor non”), decorated with one-line initials alternately red or blue, two-line initials alternately red or blue often extending up and down the margin, with penwork in the other colour, the start of the text with a six-line illuminated initial, extending down the margin, formed of a dragon and foliage on a burnished gold ground; some parts of blank margins missing, and with overall staining, but still a handsome and substantially complete relic of an impressive volume.

The opening leaf of the Temporal, with Masses for the first Sunday in Advent, and following days. The writing ‘above top line’ suggests a date not later than about 1230, and the pricking in the gutter margin as well as the fore-edge suggests a date somewhat earlier than 1230.  The text is close to the Use of Sarum, but not identical: the texts are the same as far as the epistle reading for the first Wednesday in Advent, but the gospel reading is different: both concern John the Baptist, but Sarum has a reading from Mark 1 while the manuscript’s is from Matthew 3 (which Sarum saves until the following Friday; see J. Wickham Legg, The Sarum Missal Edited from Three Early Manuscripts (Oxford, 1916), pp. 14–16). For the first Friday in Advent, the manuscript has a reading from Luke, not used in Sarum. This may be evidence that the manuscript is not English, or may simply be a feature of the fact that, in England especially, liturgical texts were always somewhat fluid and lacked conformity; indeed, the promotion of the Use of Sarum from the mid-13th century onward was an attempt to impose a greater degree of uniformity on English liturgical practice.