YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
GENERAL COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS AND
MANUSCRIPTS
PRE-1600 MANUSCRIPTS
Beinecke MS 55 Yugoslavia, s. XV-XVI
Documents (Sebenico)
Documents and accounts (ca. 1400-1530) pertaining to the church of
St. Gregory in Sebenico (Dalmatia). Folios 63v-64r contain a copy of a
will, in Latin, of Gregory of Sebenico. Other items, including an
inventory of the church of St. Gregory (dated 8 Sept. 1403) are in
Italian.
Paper (sturdy; watermarks: unidentified mountain) ff. 139, 410 x
155 mm. Arranged in a tabular format and written in many different
cursive hands. Some entries have been crossed out.
Too fragile to be collated. Numerous folios are stained and partly
illegible; final leaves mutilated; loss of text throughout.
Binding: Date? Sewn with coarse thread on seven double, wound
thongs. Tacketed to a brown goatskin wrapper with seven sets of four
tawed, pinkish-brown thongs, wound around each other on the outside of
the spine. Sewing holes about 10 mm. apart outline the edges of the
spine, sides, fore-edge and envelope flaps. Mold has eaten into cover
and book, and the wrapper has shrunk so that it is now much smaller
than the bookblock. Home-made notarial binding? Covers are lined with
fragments of a noted antiphonal (s. XII); part of one sheet containing
responds and antiphons for Epiphany and its octave is legible. Ca. 17
lines of text. Diastematic notation on a dry point staff with one red
line. C and f are used as clefs, but from the condition of the sheet it
is not possible to tell which clef should be associated with the red
line. The neume style (of French aspect) is similar th that in Rome.
Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urbin. lat. 393, of unknown
provenance, which H. M. Bannister groups with North and Central Italian
manuscripts (Monumenti Vaticani di paleografia musicale latina
[Leipzig, 1913] I, no. 477; II, pl. 92a). We thank K. D. Hartzell for
his assistance with these fragments.
Written in Yugoslavia during the 15th and 16th centuries
presumably at the Church of Saint Gregory in Sebenico. Given to Yale in
1935 by Gustave R. Sattig.
Bibliography: De Ricci, v. 2, p. 2252, no. 55.
Barbara A. Shailor