Beinecke MS 139                                                Byzantium, s. XV, 1606
Divine Office (in Greek)

     1. ff. 1r-225v    [Hymns and Prayers for the Office:] [Greek].
     [Greek]...[explicit, in hand of Scribe 2:] [Greek].

     2. ff. 226r-315v    [Canons and Laments for Vespers for each day of the
     week; title, in black and red:] [Greek]. [in margin:] [Greek] [text
     begins:] [Greek].

     3. ff. 315r-318v    [Prayer for Saturday Vespers; text begins, after
     rubric stating occasion for use:] [Greek] [colophon of Scribe 2:]
     [Greek] [remainder illegible] [Greek]

          Paper (watermarks similar to Harlfinger Ancre 67), ff. iii (paper)
     + 318 + i (paper), 210 x 145 (145 x 88) mm. Written in 19 long lines;
     single horizontal bounding lines at top, double at bottom; triple
     vertical at sides; ruled in hard point.
          I-VIII^^8, IX^^8 (-5), X-XL^^8. Signatures at top of first folio of
     each quire, recto: a cross in the center, a letter of the Greek
     alphabet at right.
          Written in angular Greek minuscule mainly by one copyist. A second
     scribe, Sophronius, wrote ff. 315v-318v and made additions elsewhere;
     he dated the manuscript on f. 318 to 1606 (see art. 3 for colophon).
     Marginal notes in several hands.
          Headpieces in red and black. 2-line capitals with floral motifs
     above and below, in orange-tinted red. Same color for 1-line capitals
     and to mark headings and sections of the text; many spaces for rubrics
     were not filled in. Punctuation added in red over the original black.
          Discoloration from mold on ff. 303-318.
          Binding: s. xvi. Wound sewing on three round, vegetable fiber
     cords laced into beech boards and frayed out on the inside of them.
     Beaded, colored endbands are sewn on what is probably the spine lining
     but are not tied down through the quires. The spine is square, with a
     coarse, hand-woven cloth lining extending on the inside across more
     than one third of the boards. Covered in dark, red-brown goatskin with
     the turn-ins pasted over the paste-downs. A central medallion of the
     crucifixion very heavily impressed in the center of the upper board
     within concentric borders, all blind-tooled. A barely visible different
     design using the same border tool on the lower board. Two strap and pin
     fastenings, the pins in the edge of the upper board, the triple strands
     of the clasps laced through the lower board to the inside of the
     pastedown. One strand broken.

          Written in Byzantium in the 15th century and supplemented in 1606
     by Sophronius. Brought by Archbishop (Kurios) Manasses from Moscow in
     February 1668 (note on f. i recto; various other marginal notes of the
     17th century also refer to Moscow). Sold by Maggs (Catalogue 542: The
     Art of Writing [London, 1930] no. 158, pp. 278-79, with plate).
     Acquired by Stonehill's in 1936. Purchased 18 January 1937 as a gift of
     the Yale Library Associates.

     Bibliography: Faye and Bond, p. 34, no. 139.

     Barbara A. Shailor